I can’t remember when I first wanted to get a tattoo, but it was sometime in high school. I wanted a yin yang on my ankle. In college, I finally got it, but at the last moment, I changed its placement to my lower back. It was amazing. It was transcendent. It was painful. It [...]

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said the friend sitting next to me at Christmas Eve dinner, with a vague look of disgust on her face, like I’d just admitted to enjoying self-flagellation. I was in the company of a number of people who had escaped Western religion (all some form of Christianity) and landed firmly in Eastern religion (all some [...]

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I have a playlist called “Holiday” that contains 379 songs, including a startling number of “O(h) Holy Night”s. One of the things I miss the most about Christmas with my family (probably the only thing, really), is singing. I remember harmonies and piano accompaniment and Spike Jones. Now, I play holiday songs in my car [...]

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Thanksgiving is a religious holiday. When the pilgrims first gathered to give thanks that they made it through their first few months in a wild new world, they weren’t thanking the natives for helping them, they were thanking their god for making the natives to help them. As a harvest festival, it has its roots [...]

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I had my first final today. In preparation, I spent some time on the library’s balcony, enjoying the view, the silence, and the not-school-ness. I also spent some time in the library’s prayer room. (I also spent some time watching the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam, but this post is not about that.) Hanging out in [...]

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I have to post this, since it’s lolreligion. By now, I’m sure everyone has heard that a particular Christian called others to join in prayer at the bronze bull on wall street to ask god to “shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the ‘Lion’s Market,’ or God’s control [...]

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WaPo’s On Faith asks its panelists Does religion empower women? This is one of the few On Faiths that I’ll probably read each response to. I’m looking forward to the Christian/Catholic answer, which I’ve found generally centers around “having kids is empowering!!1!” There is some wonderful evidence for non-child-based empowerment which I’ve yet to hear [...]

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While reading chandelle’s recent post and the comments that followed, I had occasion to think about my dualism, which I’ve discussed at length before. Many of the comments discuss the “spectrum of sexuality”, how there may be some people who are completely heterosexual or completely homosexual, but that most people likely fall somewhere in between [...]

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A vid take on MoF’s Sparks: First up, Stuart Shepard, who I’d not heard of before today but is apparently a member of Focus on the Family’s activism arm, is encouraging everyone to encourage his God to rain on Obama’s acceptance speech. Which seems to me to be incredibly petty: pray for peace? pray for [...]

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During Obama’s recent visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, according to tradition, he wrote a prayer on a piece of paper and left it there. However, since he is under media scrutiny right now, it was stolen by a young seminary student (who should have known better!). While I disagree completely with its theft, [...]

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