I’m sure that the new novel, Prayers for the Assassin, was written to increase understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims, and in no way takes advantage of the fears of (non-Muslim) Americans:
The year is 2040. New York and Washington, D.C., are nuclear wastelands. Chicago is abandoned, and Phoenix is the site of a civil war battle. […]

[Read more →]

I was privileged to witness history in the making yesterday.
True, it wasn’t history on a grand scale, but it was a watershed event in the life of the Irvine United Congregational Church (IUCC for short) as they welcomed their new pastor and his partner of twenty years into their church family.
I‚Äôve visited the IUCC about […]

[Read more →]

A couple of weeks ago, our whole family decided to check out the Trinity Broadcasting Network headquarters. TBN is hard to miss–it stares across the 405 freeway at South Coast Plaza, and at Christmastime is lit up brighter than Vegas. I’m including our visit in my pilgrimage because it is an important Orange […]

[Read more →]

There are a lot of worthy causes in the world, and it’s impossible to focus on more than a handful at a time. Sometimes I wonder why I find the cause of feminism to be so compelling. Here’s a few reasons (of many that I could mention):

Because murder by domestic partners is a […]

[Read more →]

I’m considering a series of “Feminism 101″ posts. This would be a space in which I can explore nuances and try to apply the concepts I encounter in my reading.
I decided to focus my (currently random) study of feminism into a three-prong approach:
1) The History of Feminism: My interest in this subject springs from […]

[Read more →]

This is the last of three posts in a series. If you haven’t done so already, please read the first and second parts.
I’ve studied theology and philosophy, trying to understand the death of God in my life. Oddly, the deepest insight came from a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick called […]

[Read more →]

This is the second of three posts in a series. If you haven’t done so already, please read the first part.
Recently I connected being disowned by my father to the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. This requires a bit of explanation. To me, the book of Genesis is a compound literary […]

[Read more →]

Thanks to Jana and Holly, I’ve learned a thing or two about images of women in the media and in Western history, religion and literature. I decided to explore some of the options I had available to me in terms of attractive women and men tempting the viewer with luscious fruit.
There were two or […]

[Read more →]

I wrote this piece in response to an invitation from Holly to participate in a panel presentation at the annual Sunstone conference. The panel was described as an effort to examine “how reading forbidden works of literature can be a soul-saving act of resistance to spiritual and political oppression�Ķpanelists will explore the relationship between […]

[Read more →]

Last night we finally buckled down to watch Mel Gibson’s Passion of Christ. I received the DVD from NetFlix weeks ago; every day for the past month it sat on the shelf, its red envelope a baleful reminder of the bloody spectacle that awaited me.
Some friends offered to baby-sit at the last minute, […]

[Read more →]