In well over 20 years of being a scientist, and as a seeker for many years before that, I have to agree with your sentiment that god is in everything, but, truly, are you sure?

I have thought many times that the incredible beauty and truth I found in science made me feel more immediately connected with the future I hoped touched a godliness, but still, learning to be an atheist has served better.

As an atheist, I am learning to think without fear, I am understanding more about my world without the perversion that religiosity has imposed upon my emotional life.

I am enjoying, as an atheist, the mythologies I have read, rather than trying to compare and contrast them with the mythology of Xtianity that was inculcated into my brain as a young child.

I prefer, as an atheist, to not wax poetic about god, using science, no matter how beautiful that histological slide looks under the microscope, no matter how that electron imaging stuns me, no matter how joyful the birds play in my trees in winter.

It is all so cool.

But does that mean that a god (or gods) demands fealty just because it makes me feel good?

Perhaps not.

More importantly, which may be to the point, the Republican Conservative Christian demand to perpetuate ignorance of science so as to not disturb the fragile and fungible status quo of an earth history of only 6,000 years and a story of all creation arising in a matter of less than a week, is weak, it is very, very, weak as an exultation of god, any god.

While House Republicans Prove the Clown Car Holds More than Prez Candidates...

The Do-Nothing Republican House of Representitives, while attempting to obstruct progress on the simple issue of over-taxing the lowest-income Americans, has completely missed the fact that the EPA of the Obama Administration was successful in promulgating rules to regulate toxic mercury emissions. Finally.

This is good regulation because preventable impacts of mercury pollutants on birth defects and learning disabilities, as well as respiratory illnesses, have a positive impact on our economy and the potential of people to be productive citizens.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/the-meaning-of-mercury/?nl=opinion&emc=tyb1

Holiday Hot Clam Dip for Bread

Hot Clam Spread for Bread

12-ounces chopped clams
1 to 6 cloves garlic (tsp of butter)
1 bunch green onions
2 Tbs fresh cilantro chopped
1- 8 ounce pkg cream cheese
2 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbs Horseradish sauce
Baguette French Bread or Bread Bowl

- slice or dice garlic and heat in butter
- drain clams of juice and heat with garlic
- slice green onions and mash in a medium bowl with cream cheese, cilantro, Worcestshire and horseradish sauces; stir in clam-garlic mixture and mix thoroughly.
You can add salt and up to two tablespoons of lemon juice, if you prefer.

Bowl: Remove soft bread from inside bowl and fill with mixture. Cover and Bake at 350 to 370F for 20 minutes. Uncover and broil for two minutes. This can be used as hot dip.

Baguette: slice and spread dip on each slice then broil for two minutes under high.

My Mom is So Funny, page 9

My Birth Story:

My sister says: " I always thought our birthday stories were great indicators of our later personalities."

Summer 1955, hottest day on record for the Puget Sound area. Cut to the Hospital Maternity Wing, where halls & rooms are overflowing with pregnant women at term or nearly so. Some are actually in labor, others are not but very much want to be.

EM, the mother-to-be: “My baby’s coming, I think it’s time for me for me to push.”

Nurse Midwife: “No, we are not moving you to the Labor Ward. It’s not your turn.”

EM, looking up, incredulous: “I don’t think my baby is interested in whose turn it is. I can feel the head.”

Within 10 minutes, her new baby Bretta arrives in the pre-labor-room staging area.

EM: “Would you like me to go into the labor room and show them how it’s done?”

Nurse Midwife: “No, you have done quite enough already.”

Wild Horses Couldn't Drag Me Away

Can I be your wild horse? he asks.

Do you know what you are asking? I say.

He says, yes... do you know what I am asking?

No, I say,
Either you want to be my pony or
you want me to ride you.
I just have to adjust to the idea of
just using you for sex but not
sleeping all night with you.
It's not a bad thing - I just don't want it to be a short-term thing.

So, tell me what you're asking.

I beg of you - I've wanted you for so long.
I know you have wanted me.
I know you.
But I don't know you.
I don't think it will last,
but that doesn't matter - because
why,
why do I think I'm entitled to a sex life?
It isn't an ordained right, it isn't a godly promise,
It is just lust, it is just desire.
A biological drive, a bent that will get me into more trouble than not.

Chances are I won't take the safe path
I will anticipate your first kiss
I will anticipate your fingers in my lady-stuff
I will anticipate how you hold my hips
I anticipate how you will be deep inside me
I am in you and you in me and we...

Moose and Mother as Muse

It's like something important dropped from my hands, crashed to the kitchen floor, shattered to a thousand sparklies and it's gone. You can expect something for a long time, and know it's coming, even want it, yet still not be quite prepared. Just like that, it was dropped and gone.

I called the nurse after I washed and lotioned and dressed her, after I painted her nails, put her lipstick on and did her hair, so she'd be ready; the nurse called the chaplain.

Chaplain Fran came right over, but before sitting down to her prayers, a tiny moose walked under the window - a moose far, far too young to not have a mama nearby.

A moose represents movement to and from this world, movement in the void, truths acknowledged that were denied, parts of the hidden self that are found, strength and self respect, and unseen speed.

With unseen speed she was gone, even if we both knew for weeks it was coming, but like seeing the bullet train I can only remember the Doppler effect.

The tiny moose is back this morning, looking hungry; it is not quite light yet. Something scared it back between the houses; the wind is up, and it has lain down next to my crawl-space vent. Something about it taking shelter at my house comforts me, even more than knowing my mother is free of the in-valid body that had trapped her for the last forty years.

"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger." If that is true my mother was the strongest person I ever knew. Making the step to trust me, to come from her lifelong home to live with me in Alaska was a huge step; the trusting me, I mean. In the last two years she told me many things about her I never knew - even one or two things I think she had never acknowledged to herself.

Lucky me - I was not her favorite child - yet we have had a lovely time.