Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

As I write, our daughter, M., whose nose is not as tolerant as mine, is de-skunking Amber with some substance she purchased at Petsmart. This process will culminate in a shower for Amber (in my shower). I have to admit I'm smiling as I imagine my slender, petite daughter wrestling a 50 pound dog into the shower. I hope I still have an intact bathroom to come home to!

J. called me on his cell phone from the nearby woods, where he had taken the three dogs to run. "Amber got skunked!" 'OK, how is she?" I asked. "She wiped her face on my pants," he said. "Well, her eyes were burning," I suggested. "How is she now?" "She's rolling in the dirt," he replied. "What should we do?" "Not much, necessarily," I replied. "We'll leave her outside for awhile. Maybe bathe her in peroxide. Let's see how she is when you get home," Of course, he was unconvinced, not realizing that dogs have been skunked for thousands (if not millions) of years. When they got home, Amber was mostly herself (aside from smelling a little funky). Skunk smell has never bothered me much -- it's a sign that I'm (finally) in the country. I took J's jeans and proceeded to the basement, to put them in the wash. And all the time I was thinking, "You weenie! What's a little s

I've just finished reading The End of Faith , by Sam Harris, which I picked up in a bookstore on Dupont Circle while traveling on business in DC last week. Sam Harris is apparently a philosophy grad who is getting a Ph .D. in neuroscience, "studying the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty," according to the back cover. He writes an impressive book, I must say. Since I am married to an agnostic who is the son of an agnostic, I figure it behooves me to pay attention to the opposition, even if I start off as a hard sell. The basic tenet of the book, as I surmise, is that religion -- any religion -- that cannot prove its claims scientifically has no claim to anyone's belief. Harris also claims (correctly) that religion has become an inappropriate subject for criticism in the modern world ... a taboo subject, particularly as far as Islam goes (he presents a rather devastating summary of Islamic beliefs, which I am not qualified to critique). And

Calendar-wise, it's spring. In terms of temperature, it's spring (68 degrees today, 74 tomorrow, in the high 60s or low 70s for the extended forecast). The frost/freeze tables have me hamstrung. The popular wisdom I absorbed from my granny is that you never, never plant outside until May 15th. She was a great storyteller, and one story she loved to tell was the one about Pop- Pop's planting 60 tomato plants on the 20 th of April, and how they perished in a late-season snowstorm. But that was before global warming, I guess. The frost/freeze tables I consulted today suggested that our last freeze will probably occur by April 15th. This would not be an issue, were the morning-glory babies not taking over my basement. I started them on March 15th, under lights, and they're now a foot tall, curling around each other and looking somewhere, anywhere, for an anchor to latch onto. I really want to plant them outside . In the end, it's a judgment call, just like when I

I've just finished reading Thich Nhat Hanh's Living Buddha, Living Christ , his comparison of Buddhism and Christianity. What a delight it was -- I want to read more of his work. I felt elevated to a new plane of ecumenism! I've added a new link to the Plum Village Practice Center, where I got the photograph to the right. I'll be doing a lot more reading on Buddhism. I know I have lots to learn to learn from all religious traditions. Well, maybe not all. Thanks to MadPriest for his post on 3/29, alerting us to more words of wisdom spoken by my own personal nemesis. Pastor Rick Warren's enlightened stance on LGBT issues was quoted in the Monitor , published in Uganda, in the issue for that same day. I looked it up in Westlaw, and I think it's worth quoting in full (just for that full, rancid, fundamentalist flavor): Famed American pastor, Dr Rick Warren has said he supports the decision by Ugandan bishops to boycott the forthcoming Lamebth [ sic]