Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

I get around round get around I get around, I get around (ooh--OOH--ooh) I get around .... I'm dating myself, of course, but nobody says this like the Beach Boys. And that's not my car in the picture, either, just one I stole from Google Images. I'm more the humble Honda type than the Mustang type. Well, the New Seminary has kept this Olde Seminarian on the move. In addition to a lot  of writing, first-year students are charged with observing, or participating in, varying types of religious services. Though I was a bit intimidated by this at first (I am Episcopalian, after all!), I've come to love worshiping with people of different faiths. My first forays were in traditions close to my own Christian tradition, which let me put a toe into familiar waters. My initial experience was attending a service at Union Church in the Wilderness. They aren't kidding about the wilderness -- the way there took me a long way down an unmarked, dark country road tha...

It's been gray and dark here, last weekend especially. The skies hovered close above my house, while the rain poured down. It was so dark, even near the noon hour, that my electric window candles in the living room remained lit. Then the rain ceased for a while, and the skies lightened. I ventured outside, because it was unusually warm. The light is different in winter, I think, especially on a gray day. Trees' branches stand out sharply, black skeletons against the sky, and their every movement in the wind is visible. The lawns are bare of leaves now, and the grass dormant, yet every tuft of grass stands out in sharp relief, every undulation in the lawn is now visible. These details are not so easy to see during the riotous growing season, when all my lawn becomes a mass of seething green. Looking around, I saw squirrels' nests in a couple of trees. If the trees were in leaf, I would not have seen them. And then I saw it, in a neighbor's tree, about three house...