Water...

  Empty is a full space. The void contains timelessness. I have been anxious to meet empty     very, very anxious. I have avoided empty feelings     only to notice empty more prominently. Sometimes I have saught for empty spaces     nature dressing up the unfathomable     sheltered, I have for brief moments,     relished a deep inhalation of empty air     pregnant with morning dew, ladened with pollens     empty air rushing into gasping, expanded     lung-sacks, permeable organic things     squeezed into companionship among billions     of cells made up of stardust.   The spaces between stars, empty? Between breaths, universes? Empty is not so empty: impish a-void-er!     Nothingness vastly embraces and fills you. Full of space, I step through the portal of this Thursday morning: 6/22/23

John 8:58  Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was born, I am. John 8:59   They took up stones therefore to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.   I had the joy of reaching out about a year ago to my sister.  She finally left a difficult high demand situation.  I had left my guru, Ricky Neville almost 10 years ago.  My sister stayed, the only person in my family to stay.  She stayed for another 9 years.  She might be defined and labeled accurately as damaged.    Deeply damaged.  In attempting to reach out after years of not being able to do so.  I wrote her a letter.  In this letter I speak of I AM.  To those of us who have a context of what the Judeo-Christian teach regarding the Christ being the "I AM" this may hold some meaning. I wrote my sister: I'm saying something very deep and something very healing.  I AM.  YOU ARE....

" Honest Atheism " First appeared in Free Inquiry, vol 35 issue 1 By permission of author: D. Cameron Webb this is the unedited version of the FI article: As atheists, we hear it all the time: how miserable our lives must be, how utterly devoid of meaning and purpose. Without the promise of eternal life, without knowing that our lives are intrinsically important to the machinations of a creator god, we must agonize daily, endlessly, under the weight of crushing despair and pointless suffering. This widespread notion was recently brought into sharp focus in a piece written for  The Week  magazine by Damon Linker. Asking “Where are the Honest Atheists?” under the guise of reviewing A. C. Grayling's book  The God Argument , Mr. Linker articulated what millions of Americans simply take as brute fact: The style of atheism rehearsed in these books has reached a dead end. It’s one thing to catalogue the manifest faults within this or that religious tradition, which...