It was not an easy thing to turn my back on Christianity at nearly 60 years of age. Since my childhood, church had been the hub of social life for me. Prayer had started every meal, and Christian ritual had solemnized the sacred moments and transition points of life. …

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things …

A comment on one of my recent articles caught my attention. A young man expressed appreciation for my advice about letting friendship grow before deciding whether to explore a sexual connection.

The problem was, he said, sometimes women he went out with were ready for sex before he was.

Now…

SHE WHO HAD THE FIRST LAUGH

Lilith, Adam’s first wife, was a late arrival to the mythic party, an artifact of Biblical literalism. She is nowhere named, and she doesn’t have so much as a walk-on role in either of the “Where did we all come from?” stories in the book of Genesis. But ever since…

First, let’s get this one thing straight: no one owes anybody sex. Even married people (in most countries) have the right to say no to their partners when not in the mood. And to anyone who missed the memo: “blue balls” aren’t a thing. No one dies of sexual neglect.

…

The problem usually begins in high school. Sometimes even earlier.

Your English teacher announces a page number and calls on someone to read a poem aloud. So you listen, following along, or maybe everyone just reads in silence. …

I recently took another writer here to task for attacking modern poetry and everyone who writes it. Her disparagement was nothing to be taken seriously, just opinionated ignorance. But later, it occurred to me, her complaints about contemporary poetry sounded awfully familiar. In fact, they were the same tired old…