Life without.

I gave up faith a long time ago. It happened really fast, someone said something that flipped on the "This is bullshit" switch.
It left a void, a hole that used to be "belief" is now "lies". My anger at the continued acts of violence perpetrated by religions gets shoved into that hole.

Life without a god is big and full of love and there's nothing missing from it. Prayers or sermons or worship ceremonies wouldn't add anything to my experience of life. It would just be empty gestures. 

If you're really headed this way, get here at your own pace. But know that the faithless are many. They're good people, and they welcome you.

Litter and Policing

Lately, I've been thinking about how to continue to teach my children to trust police in the face of so many police shootings. It feels like a once a week headline:

POLICE SHOOT UNARMED BLACK MAN

This week is no exception.

FBI LOOKING FOR WITNESSES IN SHOOTING OF UNARMED BLACK MAN BY POLICE TRAINEE

It's constant. I know these are the minority of police, and the minority of police encounters, but they have come to represent the public/media face of policing.

For my children, we don't watch TV news. They are fortunate to have a friend who's dad is an officer and often comes out in uniform. So in that way they're both sheltered and exposed to the better side of law enforcement. But they still will hear about the violence, and it's my duty to prepare them.

My 5 year old thinker helped me yesterday to start the conversation.

"Mom? Do policemen ever litter?"

"I think there are probably policemen who do litter. They're people, and some people are jerks. So some cops are jerks too. Most of them are good guys, but some are jerks."

And with that, our first simple lesson in police corruption is done. Enough to spark a longer future conversation.