Here is this week’s list of blog posts, novellas, videos and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.
Fear. This isn’t an emotion that most people talk about freely. It’s eye-opening to see what others fear and how they determine whether those feelings are legitimate warnings or a reflex from past experiences.
Birth & Death. How beauty can sprout from terribly sad events. Stories like these convince me I could never be a rancher!
When Should We Come Out to Our Relatives? In my experience so much depends on what kind of relationship you have with them and how they’ve reacted to other non-theists in the past. Some would be fine with an out-of-the-blue conversation, others would do better with a series of gradual hints. Non/ex-theists, what advice would you give on this topic?
My Faith After My Mosque was Torched. How friendships between Muslims and Christians in a small town strengthened the faith of both groups. It makes me wonder how many other examples of the positive effects of friendships between people who don’t share the same religious beliefs are out there.
118 Years in 20 Seconds. One of my favourite things about the drive to my maternal grandparents’ home as a child and teenager was an old, red brick house in a field that we’d pass on the way there. At one time it must have been a beautiful home. I always wondered who had originally lived there, why the building was abandoned and what I’d find if we stopped the car and I climbed over the fence to explore.
What I’ve been reading: The Symbiot. Seph told me about his novella a few months ago and I’ve been slowly reading
through it since. An excerpt:
When man first shone light through a prism he discovered the visual spectrum. But he didn’t stop there did he? No. He looked further, beyond the seven colours and their infinite shades in between. He searched and discovered gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet rays, infrared rays, and even radio waves. What if man was simply content with the visual spectrum? Where would we be now? Imagine a world without radio waves. Man would have been an idiot to have called it quits at the visual light spectrum.
But enough said about the “visual sciences.” What about the “audio sciences”? Mankind discovers rhythm and pitch and calls it music. He analyses it. Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do; He calls this an octave and says it repeats itself attaining one octave higher that the last. He learns to write sounds and music and rhythm on paper and… what? Calls it quits!
What have you been reading?
even better, though, is when one or two people pick up on something that you didn’t realize was so deeply appreciated.