So every few months, I get what I think is a bog-standard grief dream. My dad is alive. The death was a mistake. The funeral? An error.

( Cut for discussions of death and grieving. Because you might have something more cheerful, or at least less morbid, to do today. I won't be hurt if you do! )

Scientific knowledge is based on empirical evidence, and is appropriate for understanding the natural world, but it provides only a limited understanding of the supernatural, aesthetic, or other ways of knowing, such as art, philosophy, or religion.1
Here follows a very short rant. Maybe a rantlet ( Read more... )

This is what empathy looks like.

'Nuff said.

Hat tip to rivka, and thanks for bringing a smile to my day

When I finished my first comment on this thread over at marnanel's, I had to take a shower.*

It turns out that this was a good response, because I had a shower moment (does anyone else, other than sabotabby have Useful Moments of Political Insight in the shower?). I was shampooing my hair, and thinking about how embarrassed I am by Mr. Harper's comportment in Bali ( Read more... )

A long, long time ago, a friend took me to Alateen. She and I had bonded, in part, over the substance-abuse problems in our respective families, and she'd found a lot of good in the program. It didn't take with me, long term, but it didn't do me any harm, and some of the people I met there had some useful things to say, from their experience ( Read more... )

Last night I was talking with a friend about, well, various things, including work and government. He pointed out that leaders can fall into roughly two camps: those who surround themselves with smart, hardworking people who will be better than they are at certain things, and those who surround themselves with people who will make them feel smart ( ( Read more... )

sabotabby reminded me that today is Blog for Choice Day:


( Read more... )

Thursday night my brother and I went to my uncle's visitation. We arrived at the funeral home and found a queue lined up down the hallway of the funeral home, down the steps, practically to the cloakroom. I could see my dad and my horrible step-mother (I have only the one step-mother, and she's horrible, but I'm glad my dad had her this weekend), ( Read more... )

No grand insights here. But I'm thinking about death, and illness, and liminal stages, and I figure other people know more than I do.

From a conversation with the Voice
zingerella: Do you think that in some way pain and suffering make it easier for us to accept death when it finally comes? I mean, if my uncle has to die, for whatever reason, oh I don't ( Read more... )

My Flist was on fire last week, and I'm only now getting a breather to post about it:

onceupon in a notable blaze blames the Romantics for encoding some truly messed up patterns of social interaction in western culture:

This ideal that REAL love is tragic, that REAL love is a huge and grand affair, that REAL love is somehow above the laws of social ( Read more... )