God Is Not 3 Guys

On public radio I called myself a Catholic atheist, or did I say I’m an atheist Catholic? I can’t remember. In any case, people ask me, “How does that work?” Culturally I am Catholic. Every school I graduated from—grade school to grad school—was Catholic. From the beginning of my life to the present, Catholicism informs me, shapes me, inspires me, piques my interest, and suffuses the air I breathe. I am an a-theist or a non-theist because I do not have belief in a god or gods, which is theism. If you’re a religious person, you may protest, I don’t believe in idols; I believe in God! But I think you believe in a being outside of yourself, external and superior to nature. I don’t. I believe in a Source not superior to nature, but in nature, enlivening nature—“God” in all and all in “God.” I imagine you protesting, That’s what we believe in! If you agree with me that “God” is not outside of us but within us (the Catholic hierarchy doesn’t like this), I may accept that you don’t be...

Father's Word Waning, August 2, 2013 Host of the Internet radio show, Voices of the Sacred Feminine, Karen Tate indignantly addresses those safely insulated in that cocoon of media-sanctioned callousness. Don’t learn how your religion has devalued women and decimated cultures. Don’t explore how history has been re-written. Those things don’t touch you. You’re comfortable. Why should you care? That suffering is the plight of The Other, those people not like you. The ones that don’t really count, at the margins of society. Their suffering is their punishment for not being like you and playing by your rules and worshiping your God, or more accurately your version of religious dogma written by men. . . . Will you care when it’s your daughter’s life in danger but she cannot have an abortion because white Christian men have obliterated the separation between church and state with their ideology? Next time you go shopping do you know, or care, that the cashier standing there...

In the name of the Mother and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In the name of the Father, and of the Daughter, and of the Holy Spirit. In the name of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. [creator, preserver, dissolver/restorer] In the name of Isis, Osiris, and Horus. In the name of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. In the name of Juno, Artemis, and Hecate. Religions are full of trinities. Our speech is full of trinities. Ever notice it? I do because I’m a writer and notice the tendency to group in threes. Reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again. Ours is a three-dimensional universe with height, width, and depth in space; past, present and future in time; and three states of matter—solid, liquid, and gas. Scientists now think there are universes with different sets of dimensions that we can’t fathom because our minds are shaped and limited by certain constraints of our minds (thus Immanuel Kant ). Because th...