This comic by Kate Beaton perfectly captures the resignation I often feel towards work, simplicity/consumerism, and ascetic spirituality.  Following the link gets you to a long page of unlinked comics–find in page for “Hiked to Italy” for the complete comic.

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I’m sorry for all the sparks recently, but I couldn’t resist this one. Enjoy!

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I did some bad things during my stint as a Mormon missionary in Japan.  I’d like to repent of one of them right now.
Some of my Japanese friends confided deep, personal spiritual experiences with me.  In several cases I coopted their experiences for my own ends, and using my words, contorted them so that they […]

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I’ve been collecting emails since the success of the last Fun Quotes post. Without further ado:
A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
-James Kern Feibleman, philosopher and psychiatrist (1904-1987)

This is definitely something I’ve believed in for awhile. It’s just nice to hear someone with authority say it (in this case, the […]

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I checked out this survey on a prompt from Pharyngula. I recommend that you do the same. We may indeed be giving the creator of the survey food for thought, but what I found was that it was a good, concrete way to think about my own beliefs, hang-ups, and tendencies. I think it’s a […]

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By now, many of you will have heard that one of the Vatican’s astronomers has indicated that there might be life on other planets. Even that they might be without sin. Many of my favorite science fiction books involve the intersection of religion and space travel (Dune and Ender’s Game chief among them). But really, […]

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I was happy to receive a link from Rick Heller about the Humanist Contemplatives of Houston, who
focus on self improvement, introspection, and achieving eudaimonia. They gather to meditate or contemplate in a serene setting, offer mutual moral support in meeting personal challenges, experience the profound in the arts, and share new ideas and traditional inspirations […]

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I don’t really feel that I’ve been pulling my feminist weight around here recently (and that big long post about American Gladiators really rose from my husband’s comment; I expanded it because I wasn’t certain all our dear readers knew what AG was). And that really also means I’ve not been pulling my blogging weight […]

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There is a place within atheism for mystical experience.  By this I mean those sublime moments in which we feel a deep awe and a sense of connection to humanity and the universe.  I’ve had a number of such instances throughout my life, and I treasure the lasting sense of inspiration, peace and sense […]

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This one’s for John.
On NPR the other morning, I caught the last piece of this report and it got me thinking. I’ve always said that “funerals are for the living” and so I really don’t find the practice of having funerals for pets all that weird. As one of the interviewees said,
Their grief is genuine […]

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