My wife looked at me with an expression that was somewhere between horror and total disgust and told me a giant goober was hanging from my nose. I should have found the life preserver she threw me truly a socially life saving gesture.

Instead, I wondered why, goober or no goober, she had a look that said she was, at that moment, unable to lay a big wet kiss on my lips. She is also very quick to point o the fact that my zipper is down.

I think it is her attempt to steal my only hope for 15 minutes of fame.

For a very longtime, I was neither a supporter or a detractor of the war. I wondered, as did so many Americans: what is it we really don't know that could be making this war a righteous war?

When you couple that with the radical political spin from both sides on the war, is it any wonder Americans were split, and still are privately (too risky to be pro-war for some publicly in light of the botch job.

If you think about it logically, it is clear our leadership took every liberty they could to assure support of the effort. Given the fact that no matter how many jokes we make about Bush and Co., none are stupid. They fully understood the level of deceit used to gain license for the war. Given the slight of hand along with shameless partisan politics on such a vital issue, it was understood they could gain support through their own misinformation along with media and political hyperbole.

Will there ever be a time that we bring facts to bear on our actions in the future, or must we continue manipulate every platform? Frankly I am sickened.

I, too, found her essay interesting and will probably read the book. As far as pulling me into a Sunday-go-to-meeting sort of fellow again, never.

I was brought up the opposite. I came from a strict Italian/Catholic family. I went to public schools and religious instructions on Saturday mornings, "Saturday School" we called it. I questioned certain remarks in first grade and went on to continue questioning (silently) for a long time. In the name of the Lord I recited newly learned prayers in front of the priest. Sister Rose Ellen(?) squeezing my hand tighter and tighter as I floundered for the words in front of Father O'Connell. What a bitch.

Soon enough I noticed my father never went to church, but was very respectful of all who did. He was born in the faith. I pondered his defiance in such a holy family. In my early teens I began to sneak away from the church with my buddies until one day, I quit pretending. Not only was it not magical, it was tedious, year after year the same stuff. The daily missal was used over and over, year after year, with no real quest to search for meaning...just turn to page 32 on the second Tuesday after Advent.

As an adult I had a cardiac incident at 42. My good and holy mother beside my hospital bed praying for me. I searched my inner self for some sense of His presence. Nothing. I knew it right then. We are alone, or at least I was, in this world. Our connections are our human ones on earth.

My mom has passed and my 81 year old dad and I discuss faith, spirituality, religion and most often "The Mystery of Life." The Tao, although he doesn't really know that concept except via his experience.

He respects all religions and the practitioners of each, allowing them their crutch. "We all have crutches of some sort," he says. "I just can't believe any of this one."

I learned at 40 he was a death camp liberator. He never talked about it and rarely will now. It changed his view of a loving God. He lives his life quite deliberately. He is kind to all. He is always honest. He causes no harm (the only person I know who never has to anyone). He practices the notion that being satisfied is one's most precious gift to the self and others, and he helps all who are in his agnostic and stead-fast anti religious life.

If I ever pray again, it will be to leap forward to his level of living. There is no hubris that "we are right...those other folks are going to hell."

I wish the author well. I hope her religion brings her peace. I will work to find mine tethered to the earth and the great mystery of being.

Hell, yes! Bush would be at the helm of some American company.

He exemplifies the behaviors, deceptions, lies and pain that CEO's impose on others with little regard to the human debris left in the wake of their bullshit.

Bush is the typical fetid creep who sleeps at night knowing full well he has impacted the lives of others, often irreparably, and sleep soundly as long as he and his get theirs.

God, if there is such a thing save us from what we have become.

Even Kundera, with his many demands, striking out for new-isms, can only tell the story of man. Beneath all the nuance of change of circumstances lies the essential sameness of existence. Yes, it is what we do with it, but ultimately we do with it, and art, those tricks the pony already knows.