Deep Thoughts and Shallow Rantings

I decided to collect some ideas I have had recently. I wanted to think about my thinking, to examine what is making me who I am this year:

1.  In God, we trust, resides the source of our dreams, desires, and salvation. Nothing less. Do we name this place God because we cannot believe that these things are the products of each individual?

2.  It is the profundity of our connections with others that makes life's travels worth the journey. Nurture them, and keep them sacred.

3.  I am shaken and disappointed to see the evil in men's hearts and deeds. But I am no longer surprised.

4.  There is nothing special about any particular church. Except, maybe, the ones in which folks hold deadly snakes. Oh yeah, and that Catholic bling.

5.  Why do I get the feeling that there is no one looking out for me except me? Because it's true. That feeling I believe!

6.  There can never be any explanation for randomness. There is no meaning behind good or bad luck.

7.  Bad things happen to good people in the same way good things happen to bad people. The question is, what will you do when your chips are down?

8.  Religion is not about God. Religion is about collectively fearing and ameliorating our loneliness. 

9.  A gene pool is only as clean as the decision to add a little Chlorine to it once in a while. We are the only animals that preserve the most violent, other-destructive members of our group. Do you really want to preserve the life of a hardened, murderous, unrepentant, chaotically violent person? But what happens to us when we end lives like these?

10. There remains a group of people that is not a minority who is still universally mistreated, with all the accompanying marginalization and disservice: women.

11. Question everything you think and don't believe everything you feel.

12. My students ask, "Why should I buy that textbook if he isn't going to ask questions from it on the tests?" I answer, "Because the only question that matters is: have you learned all you could learn about this subject? Only you can ask, and answer that question."

13. It is fundamentally irresponsible to not have spoken with comfort and truth, beginning when a child is young, about sex and love and relationships, or to not provide them with immediate access to multiple methods of birth control. Don't be a coward!

13. As I age, there is more often too much week left at the end of my energy.

(and sometimes I repeat myself)

14. Is there a way to die well? Is there a better way to live? Does living well allow death to be more, or will it be less, tolerable?

15. As I lecture, I see my students' eyes. They glow, they widen, they stare. Unfortunately, the recipient of their attention is usually their phones.