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Barbara Falconer Newhall

Veteran journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall riffs on life as she knows it.

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The Somethingists — They Don’t Believe in God, but They Do Believe in . . . Something

October 10, 2012 By Barbara Falconer Newhall

Simeis 147, a faint supernova remnant with a tangle of filaments. NASA image.
The Somethingists believe Something is going on. NASA image.

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

Good news for those of us – count me in – who aren’t at all sure of what God is like.

God-Cima-da-Conegliano
God — A mighty and loving Being as per Cima da Conegliano? . . .

We wonder, is God a mighty and kindly Other who created the world and talks back to people who pray? Or is God some kind of diffuse and universal Spirit who inhabits rocks, trees, humans and houseflies?

I dunno.

Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn has given some thought to the matter.

She reported to a meeting of her Religion Newswriters Association colleagues over hors d’oeuvres in Bethesda last Friday night that there’s a brand-new religion rising up in Holland.

It’s called Somethingism. Or, Ietsisme in Dutch. (It’s pronounced ITS-is-meh.)

housefly-on-screen. photo by BF Newhall
A housefly? . . . Or Something else?

Somethingism is a religion for folks like Sally who believe in something – but who haven’t a clue what that Something might be.

Sally quotes a bumper sticker that sums things up for her: “I Don’t Know and You Don’t Know Either.”

I’m with Sally.

Don’t miss yesterday’s post on the rise of the “nones” — the religiously unaffiliated — in America.

 

Filed Under: My Rocky Spiritual Journey

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LET’S CONNECT

ON THE FUNNY SIDE

Anne Lamott on Getting Older — Drop That Rock

Ann Lamott at a book signing in Oakland, CA, spring 2012. photo by BF Newhall

It’s time to drop that rock we’ve been carrying around, says Anne Lamott. It’s time to surrender to the fact that we can’t do it all. We’re getting older and it’s time to have ourselves some peace.

MORE "ON THE FUNNY SIDE"

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