Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

Pride goeth before a fall. It began with the turkey. The turkey had to be better this year! I went to the market on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and bypassed the frozen turkeys in favor of a fresh one, a nice little 13- pounder . I have trouble getting frozen turkeys defrosted in time, no matter how soon I put them in the fridge. So this year would be different. The turkey would be fresh . If I noticed the words organic and free-range , they failed to register. Until I got to the register, I mean. Imagine the deer-in-the-headlights look on my face when that turkey rang up at $41.11. I stared blankly at the bored, gum-snapping teenage cashier. How could I admit to her that I wanted to trade in my organic and free-range turkey, unpolluted by antibiotics, used to the happy, carefree life outside the coop, for a deep-frozen, overfed lump of turkey which would end up, even after days of defrosting, in my sink on Thanksgiving morning with me cursing at it? Naturally, I lacked th...

Actually, that's all I'm seeing at my backyard birdfeeder. Sparrows. Back in the summer I had quite a variety of birds: cardinals, tufted titmice, chickadees, and a bird which I think was a type of woodpecker. Now? Sparrows. I know all the birds haven't flown to warmer climes. The question, then, is: where are they? I posed this question to my friend, who looked at me with pity before asking me what I was using as feed. "I don't know," I said. "Seed. I get it in bags at the grocery store." My friend winced, and gave me the address of a nearby birdseed emporium. I found my way there, and was suddenly in bird wonderland. There I found every birdfeeding and bird-watching accessory known to man. Ground feeders. Pole feeders. Squirrel baffles. Birdhouses of all sizes, even bird apartment-buildings for purple martens. High-powered optics for viewing birds. And a puzzling array of foods: nyjer seed, peanuts, corn, you name it. Plus several seed blends, in ...

OK, the election is history. The lawn signs are gone. I am sleeping like a baby, in the knowledge that Obama will be our next President. It's now time for me to turn to the other issues that matter to this blog. One is the Prop 8 fiasco that has taken place in California, where a slender, 52% majority voted to deny a basic human and civil right to a significant segment of the human population. What next? It's a slippery slope, ladies and gents. It's not much of an imaginative leap from marriage to property ownership, enfranchisement, and other basic rights. Are you going to take those away from the LGBT folks as well? Of course, speaking prominently on the question of Prop 8 was one of its major supporters, Saddleback Church's Pastor Rick Warren, who appears on this blog from time to time whenever I need an example of a wolf in sheep's clothing, or a portrait of an aquatic bottom-feeder. In justifying his views, Pastor Warren had recourse to the Bible, a 2000-yea...

OBAMARAMA!