WHEN TO LET GO OF RELIGION

Thirteen years of hard-core Catholic School right here. Catholic born and bred.
Atheist now and it wasn't a big change--I look back on all that crazy stuff and I pick out what really fascinated me. It's a really witchy and superstitious religion. Blessed mothers and saints and torture and dying for your faith--horribly--and this when you're 7 years old. What nuttiness.
My husband grew up the same way but his school years were with the priests and brothers; he did not like them at all and he was atheist before he even got out of school. No god would invent the kind of stuff Catholics do.

Anyway, I have integrated some of it into my life. May Day--hail to thee, oh beautiful mother, just lovely. Easter--eggs and new growth and all that. Christmas and the days begin to get longer, Candlemas and the light returns...
So, I guess it made a pagan out of me.
I don't have any particular resentment against them any more. I do think that religions in general are a painful scam to control people and take everything they've got--even their peace of mind--is that resentment?

Happy Summer Solstice!

This is Chuck of Pool's photo but its so pretty

..that I use it to illustrate this morning in Tacoma. Gray but hopeful.

Hey, Hermana, what a great tirade about the globalization question. And that picture is beautiful.

The globalization thing is kind of crazy--I thought maybe I was missing something important but you straightened me out good. Stuff just naturally gets around this small world. Wind, weather, birds, planes, coconuts, megalomaniacs. We all just breeze through life for this tiny amount of time; as a species we should be more particular about what we get hysterical over. The intellectual question bothers me as well. Why do you suppose that the USA is anti-intellectual?--I think its a good thing to look around and be interested in what you see. I KNOW it is. What's so scary about it?

And what's wrong with elite? Everybody is some kind of elite. You wouldn't want to be an elite serial killer. But an elite assassin might be profitable. An elite good ole boy--it worked for GWB. I could go on.

Is it a jealousy thing? Don't Republicans and Christian fundamentalists go to college? Don't they take literature courses?, don't they study western civilization? Comparative religions? Oh, maybe not that.

I've run out of words---I'd better get some sleep.

PHOTO thanks to Charles Winpenny.

Cornwallcam