One night, when I was about eleven or twelve years old, my Dad came home and showed me what he'd been given; a beautifully bound Quran. It seems the local Islamic community group had presented it to him. They'd donated money and time to the shelter he worked for. I don't remember much about the message written to him inside, but I do remember that ( Read more... )

Just for the record....I'm not Muslim. Nor do I aspire to be. I don't particularly like the theology of Islam anymore than I like Christianity or Judaism. I find all of them pretty paternalistic and certainly none of them fall in line with my political or moral beliefs, much as I may have tried to squeeze them in during my years in the Christian ( Read more... )

My balcony looks over a dirty little creek, full to overflowing right now from all the rain, and I can hear the water trickling from up here for once. The trees are near to bare, a few golden leaves still clinging to the branches. I can see right across to other people's windows lit golden from within. I can see enough to know other people are ( Read more... )

Some of you know I've had some pagan leanings in the past, and at this time of year, for whatever reason, I feel them tugging at me again. Maybe it's that idea that mortality is so well represented by this season, by the failing of the sun. Maybe it's all the time indoors when it's cold and windy outside. Maybe it's all the Christian holidays ( Read more... )

Nothing is ever quite symmetrical is it? The nature of nature is a sort of lopsidedness that defies perfect imitation, and I suppose that is the nature of fate as well, if there is such a thing. One door closes...a window cracks.

Once again saved by simple chance, a nagging thought, remembered words of a long lost friend.

It isn't all that I remember on a second and third moment's consideration. But such are all memories, all perception. We look to events with an eye for reinforcing what we hold as truth, adding shades of meaning to everything to preserve our fragile beliefs and identities until the resulting product is all but unrecognizable. This could be viewed ( Read more... )

You know, it really wasn't that long ago that we had a certain senator singing cutesy little songs about wiping these people off the face of the planet. Now they struggle, as we did once, for freedom and honest representation ( Read more... )

Today, the gremlins are following me ( Read more... )

I followed this woman for about twenty minutes on the way home this morning with a bumper sticker that said, "My husband fights so your husband can sleep at night ( Read more... )

I can't help it...gotta get it out of my system ( Read more... )