Skepticism is a stimulant, not to be repressed. It is an antidote to smugness and the great glow of satisfaction one gains from being right. You know the self-righteous -- I've been one myself -- the little extra topspin they put on the truth, their ostentatious modesty, the pleasure they take in being beautifully modulated and cool and correct when others are falling apart.

especially that "topspin" business.

Greetings

This is so 'on the money' especially today, this week, this year...

Very well done!

Thanx for sharing your vision

Enjoy the journey

WarLord

Call it what you will, this is a basic principle of the cosmos. Jesus knew it. Stars blow up, and give material for new stars. The grass dies and feeds the new grass. We get to live down, live over (like run over, not just like live again), our defeats and career-ending mistakes and sins.

Our teeth fall out, and better teeth grow back. We live again, better, in our gap-toothed daughters. Garrison, you are on the right track, even if Daylight Savings Time makes you grumpy on Palm Sunday morning. In an hour, you will feel more like yourself. Persevere.

I've been grumpy since Christmas about the fact that Easter comes so early this year. I feel like I barely had time to recover from New Year's and Lent was upon us. And then this line comes along:

God, in His humorous way, sometimes schedules high holy days for a time when your faith is at low tide, a mud flat strewn with newspapers and children's beach toys, and while everyone else is all joyful and shiny among the lilies and praising up a storm, there you are, snarfling and grumbling.

You see, to add to my grumpiness, I am finishing my last year in seminary. Soon I will be ordained a priest. And I'm grumpy and cynical - it's been a tough process. There are many days where I have forgotten why I am here and feel the urge to graduate and go back to my previous career. But, then Easter comes. Right in the middle of my doubts and my grumblings.

So I'll join you for a while in the doubter's chair, watching from the back. There is always something new to be learned.

I suppose that when you were little you did not have the time to learn about the world, well sorry that you miss out on that, and yes there is a God, all you get to do is look into your heart, then you will see the great power of the Lord our God.

...you never know where it might lead you.

I spent 15 years in Ontario's Catholic schools, bombarded with every kind of religious proselytization you can imagine.

It only took one afternoon of critical inquiry to make an agnostic out of me (and make the last few years of high school a rough ride). Maybe that means I never had real faith. Maybe it means faith is built on much more fragile ground than most of the religious want to admit.

It's good to see you're willing to join the doubters, if only for a while. That doesn't make you a weasel - it makes you honest, and if there's one thing modern religion could desperately use, it's a bit more honesty. I think you'd be surprised how many of your fellow churchgoers feel the same way you do about their faith, but feel pressured by their peers into showing more credulity. They'll know how you feel now, at any rate.

Best of luck, and Happy Easter.

My mother used to go to church and enjoy the music, and the stained glass, and the neighbors. Made a bit of an occasion on a Sunday morning for an old woman.

But, she didn't believe a 'word' of it. Not after her husband died. And that had been years earlier.

Garrison, after all his dreadful singing in the choir, and hosannas to his puritan upbringing, is only stating the obvious. Good for him, for a change.

Too bad church is the only socialization offered in some neighborhoods. I imagine if society had a richer social life, and churchs were not tax emempt, we'd be seeing them slowly turned into art museums, music halls, union halls and lecture halls, like they should be.

I go to a church much like Mr. Keillor's. I sang the same bass line last weekend.

At this point I would say that I believe in the Gospel's in a literary sense more than a literal one. I believe that Christ healed the sick in the same way I believe that Mr. Darcy married Elizabeth Bennet. I believe it for a moment as I say it or read it or sing it.

What is especially inspiring to me is the profound effect through history of Jesus' strategy of Love and Sacrifice.

Of course, the success of the Christian movement was accomplished by people other than Jesus, but the story that carried them was his and the tactics they used derived from his example.

The religious leaders and local politicians of the time were disturbed by strange ramblings of this low-life radical, so they executed him in the most degrading way they could think of. Paradoxically his message spread through the Mediterranean world. The symbol of his humiliation, the cross, was turned into the symbol of his victory.

As his message spread, these followers were often met with the same violent response, but by their non-violent tactics and acceptance of sacrifice their message spread through the whole of Europe.

Then, with their power ascendant, the Christians turned their tactics to the traditional ones of compulsion through violence, and that was the end of that.

I saw a banner last spring on a porch in a little town on the road people drove before the highway was built. It was much as Garrison described the marketed image of Jesus: beams of light, Jesus in a white robe, a child on his knee, baby animals--a fawn, rabbits, little birds, some squirrels--all approaching him with big eyes.

I wondered what Jesus would think about the pastel banner. I thought he might say, "I was a REVOLUTIONARY! You've turned me into freakin' Snow White!"

That led me to wonder about Jesus and his marketing/PR team and what commercials they might be led to create. Who answers your prayer at 3 a.m.?