Tag Archives: religion

Religion is the warp on custom’s loom

Religion is the warp on custom’s loom
(And warped it sometimes is, for we are frail.
We fumble in the dark, and often fail
To see our own faults clearly in the gloom.)
And culture, common practice, makes the weft.
Our actions and our ethics jointly weave
Like tabby, twill, jaquard. What we believe
And what we do cannot be clearly cleft.
It goes against the grain to pick a thread
And say, “This doesn’t represent the whole.”
We live with strands that we cannot control,
And cut our garb to fit our cloth instead.
And so, in peaceful spirit, can we please
Discuss dupattas and salwar kameez?

Originally posted on Making Light.

Evolution for Theists

This world of wonders seems so very odd
And populated by things odder still,
That it feels easier to cling to God
As watchmaker as well as source of will.
Nor was creation made to calm your fears:
The heavens tell his glory with a light
Far older than the bare six thousand years
That Ussher counts. Yet still they shine as bright.
The fossils set in stone don’t teach of Eve,
But He created them. They are his work.
In what, precisely, do you then believe?
That He has lied to us? I think you shirk.
God gave (evolved) you brains to cross this rift:
You, wasting them, repudiate His gift.

Originally posted on Making Light, apropos of the “Darwin Fish”