The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
Whenever there is news of a terrible shooting, I wonder why America has so miserably failed to enact even common-sense gun legislation.
The central tenet of Christianity as it has come down to us is that we are to reach out when our instinct is to pull inward; to give when we want to take; to love when we are inclined to hate; to include when are tempted to exclude.
In America, now, let us - Christian, Jew, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, wiccan, whatever - fight nativism with the same strength and conviction that we fight terrorism. My faith calls on its followers to love one's enemies. A tall order, that - perhaps the tallest of all.
I believe that my children, who are young, will look back on the early years of the 21st century in rather the same way I look back on the middle of the 20th: as a time when seemingly respectable people supported discrimination against Americans simply because those Americans were different from themselves.
I am a southerner who grew up with and around guns. I own some still. My father gave me a. 22 rifle when I was 9 and a single barrel. 410 shotgun when I was 10.
Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.
I'm actually one of those people who get up energetic in the morning.
To attain to the human form must always be a source of joy. And then to undergo continuous transitions, with only the infinite to look forward to: what incomparable bliss is that!
The short amount of time I'm out on the runway is like going on a rollercoaster. It's such a happy, exciting feeling. I'm more like a racehorse ready to go - I just want to get out there.
Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.