Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God's blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will...

Bless us with tears - for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger - at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort - at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience - and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility - open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance - replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity - remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand - that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN

Here is why I'm asking grown-ups to vote for Barack Obama. I am 7 years old so I can't vote......

My mom told me that I shouldn't base my election analysis on "feelings" (I like him/her) or "beliefs" (I share his/her beliefs) but on logical arguments. She asked me to create my own rational explanations for my support of Obama. Here is one of my arguments:

McCain and Palin are not be qualified to be President / Vice President of the U.S. The President's job is to do good for the country and the world. To do good for the country, the President must make smart decisions on important situations.

Governor Palin believes the world is 6000 years old. This is absurd. This is not a rational belief. This is a mistake. Scientists, experiments and evidence have shown this to be completely false. Therefore, she is not rational. If she is not rational, she should not be allowed to be President or Vice President.

Please vote for Barack Obama.

I'm currently reading the (Christian) Bible (following the One Year Bible curriculum--it's the only way I would ever finish it) and I'm also reading a bit of Jung here and there (currently working through his Answer to Job) and trying to put myself in the mind of someone who really believes this stuff. I gave up on Christianity when I was about 10, so it's hard for me to relate in that way. But I only abandoned supernaturalism a couple years ago, so in that sense, the mythical world view is not so distant from me. For my entire adult life, I looked at religion using the lens of Eliade, Jung and Campbell, so far as I was able to understand them, anyway. And all of them distinguish a sort of sacred/psychological/mythic reality from a profane/historical/literal reality. And while they take pains to emphasize that the one should not be confused for the other (i.e. none of them would say that the historical Jesus was literally born of a physical virgin) at the same time the believed that the sacred-psycho-mythic reality was the more important. As for Jung, he was a clinician of the mind, so he was motivated by very practical concerns of what would bring a state of mental health to the patient. From that angle, he may well have had a point. Understanding the subtleties of evolution may not help much with troubling dreams of angry parental figures. Contemplating the psychology of Yahweh might.

The problem, as I see it, is when supernaturalists try to drag the rest of the world into their dream (or nightmare, as the case may be). It's all fine and good to live in a world of salvation and rapture, but when that effects your policy decisions on foreign policy and environmental concerns, then we have a real problem. The mythical reality is personal, but the material world, no matter how profane, is the ground reality in which we all must live and get along. And to force your myth on others is narcissistic at best, paranoid-schizophrenic at worst.

I was about to say that I don't think most people are at the level of sophistication to understand this dichotomy, but on second thought, I think most do get it on some level, even if not consciously. The New Atheists seem to think that the literal interpretation (conflating the psychological with the historical) is the only coherent one and that the people who maintain both world views are entertaining a cognitive dissonance that must eventually break down. But I think the opposite might be the case. The literal interpretation seems to be the psychologically unstable one. People who believe in a young Earth are in the minority and the only way to maintain such a view requires the kind of logical acrobatics normally seen in conspiracy theorists. For the people who maintain both views, a belief in an interventionist God as well as a belief in the validity of science, reality is much more coherent because experience typically fits into one or the other. It is only the professional priest or the professional scientist that must bring one world view to the fore and either suppress, deny, or some how account for the other. So most priests don't spend too much time thinking about science, and most scientists don't spend too much time thinking about religion. Those that do either become rabid atheists or naturalist pantheists. Of course, I'm oversimplifying here. I'm generating this as I write it, so I'm probably making all kinds of horrible generalizations.

A man who is almost certainly innocent needs your help, and fast.

On Friday, the Georgia Department of Pardons and Paroles is going to meet and decide if he should be executed.

They will either take into account compelling evidence challenging his guilt, or they will choose to ignore that evidence and allow his sentence to stand. They have to power to stop this indefensible execution and we must implore them to make the right decision.

Troy Anthony Davis was convicted of the murder of off-duty Savannah Police Officer Mark MacPhail in 1991. No physical evidence links him to the crime, and he has steadfastly maintained his innocence. His conviction was based solely on the testimony of witnesses. There was no other evidence against him. Since his trial, seven people who had previously testified against Troy changed the story they had told in court.

Some witnesses say they were coerced by police. Others have even signed affidavits implicating one of the remaining two witnesses as the actual killer. But due to an increasingly restrictive appeals process, none of this new evidence has ever been heard in court.

Can you take 30 seconds and help save the life of a man who is almost certainly innocent? You can learn more and take action here:

Your result for The Imaginary-Job Employment Test...

The Rugged Adventurer!

21 Humor, 25 Skill and 22 Morality!

Take The Imaginary-Job Employment Test at HelloQuizzy

Unimpeded will, which simultaneously achieves its end, and infinitely possesses its object, we call not will but love (amor) and then as the will suffers no frustration we feel as if we are not exerting it at all but rather were instruments of the beloved object or 'modes' of its activity.

This Land Is Your Land

words and music by Woody Guthrie

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.