David Lynch is now evangelizing for Transcendental Meditation.

…in counter-terror circles claims Al Qaeda has specific goals behind its terrors. The extremist group doesn’t “hate our freedom;” it hates the governmental policies of the US, Russia, Britain, and even many or most Muslim states. It wants the US out of the Middle East, and it wants the corrupt monarchies of that region replaced by Iran-esque religious states. Oh yeah, and it’d like Israel to go away…

…in a longwinded way, that the problem with right-wing America isn’t too much religion but too little. He also claims that’s the same problem with left-wing America.

…from a once-vocal, lately-obscure faction, the antiwar evangelicals.

…news items about the right-wing preacher whose threats persuaded Microsoft to wimp out on supporting gay rights weren’t enough, now there’s a right-wing preacher in North Carolina who’s kicked all Democrats out of his church.

SO, DO YOU THINK I’ve got what it takes to become a church calendar photographer?

What to do with the sign from an abandoned used-book store.

Some of the Metro bus-shelter artists are quite elaborate. Case in point: “Migratory Habits,” at 85th and Aurora.

…by yrs. truly in the Seattle Times concerns two memoirs with one plot-point in common—that high-flyiin’ enlightenment salesman Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

…harps that self-proclaimed “born again Christians” today are often just as non-monogamous, money-obsessed, and otherwise un-pious as everybody else.

What this guy sees as a scandal, I see as a sign of hope and faith. We’re all just plain ol’ humans on this planet. Nobody’s all that superior to anybody else. It’s not doctrine or ideology that’s gonna “save” us; it’s how we take care of ourselves and one another.

Which is what I should’ve told the guy who stalked me across Belltown on Sunday morning.

I was wandering the sidewalks, snapping pix of the rapidly disappearing snow. Suddenly, outside the Crocodile, a clean cut young man with steely eyes and a rigid smile stood in front of me. “Good morning. Have you heard about Jesus?”

I could have told him the line by the guy in the original Swept Away, who, upon finding a crucifix on the desert island, grumbles that Jesus is everywhere, just like Coca-Cola. But instead I smiled and said, “Of course,” and walked away.

“I hope he sees you in heaven.”

“I’m sure I will.” (I declined the temptation to add, “I’ll tell him ‘hi’ for you.”)

He followed me east on Blanchard. He yelled, “You have an evil spirit. A rebellious spirit. It must be made right.”

I ignored him, forgetting the painful lesson I’d learned on childhood playgrounds: Ignoring bullies doesn’t stop them. It just makes them harrangue you worse.

I sprinted onto Third Avenue. He followed.

I darted into Dan’s Belltown Grocery. He followed. He confronted me by the frozen pizzas. “Would you like to go to church today?”

“I do sometimes. But it’s to a church of my choice.”

“What would that church be?”

“Either the University Friends Center or the Church of New Thought in Laurelhurst.”

He mumbled something about the need to beware of false churches (presumably meaning all other than his own).

I strode out of the store and back onto Third. I darted across the street, hoping to snag myself a table for one at Ralph’s or Top Pot. He finally walked in a different direction.

I now know I shouldn’t have been as obsessed as I was with my own selfish, egoic privacy. I should have talked nicer to him. I should have asked him to consider the benefits of trading his narrow-minded sense of mistaken certainty for the universe-expanding adventure of doubt, a world (and a God) bigger than any of our own finite minds can imagine.

…”the Christian values [on which] the Bush religious right claims a monopoly are antithetical to the teachings of Christ himself.”

…the biggest cause of global instability’s poverty, not religion.

I’ve found a place where I can take my concerns to a greater power—the “John Kerry Prayer Circle.”

…asks us to view the election not as a referendum on Bush but as a referendum on Bush’s ace political strategist Karl Rove, whom Gabler calls “America’s Mullah”:

“Rovism is not simply a function of Rove the political conniver sitting in the counsels of power and making decisions, though he does. No recent presidency has put policy in the service of politics as has Bush’s. Because tactics can change institutions, Rovism is much more. It is a philosophy and practice of governing that pervades the administration and even extends to the Republican-controlled Congress. As Robert Berdahl, chancellor of UC Berkeley, has said of Bush’s foreign policy, a subset of Rovism, it constitutes a fundamental change in ‘the fabric of constitutional government as we have known it in this country….’Rovism is government by jihadis in the grip of unshakable self-righteousness — ironically the force the administration says it is fighting. It imposes rather than proposes.

Rovism surreptitiously and profoundly changes our form of government, a government that has been, since its founding by children of the Enlightenment, open, accommodating, moderate and generally reasonable.

All administrations try to work the system to their advantage, and some, like Nixon’s, attempt to circumvent the system altogether. Rove and Bush neither use nor circumvent, which would require keeping the system intact. They instead are reconfiguring the system in extra-constitutional, theocratic terms.

The idea of the United States as an ironfisted theocracy is terrifying, and it should give everyone pause. This time, it’s not about policy. This time, for the first time, it’s about the nature of American government.”

…Sojourners, is running an ad in big papers with the headline “God is Not a Republican. Or a Democrat.”

…it’s about time, no matter what happens on 11/2, for a “new confession of Christ” in the U.S. His proposed affirmations include:

“1. Christ knows no national boundaries nor national preferences. The body of Christ in an international one, and the allegiance of Christians to the church must always supercede their national identities. Christianity has always been uneasy with empire, and American empire is no exception.2. Christ pronounces, at least, a presumption against war. The words of Jesus stand as a virtual roadblock to any nation’s pretension to easily rationalize and religiously sanctify the preference for war. Jesus’ instruction to be ‘peacemakers’ leads either to nonviolent alternatives to war or, at least, a rigorous application of the church principles of ‘just war.’ The threat of terrorism does not overturn Christian ethics.

3. Christ commands us to not only see the splinter in our adversary’s eye but also the beams in our own. To name the face of evil in the brutality of terrorist attacks is good theology, but to say ‘they are evil and we are good’ is bad theology which can lead to dangerous foreign policy. Self-reflection should provide no excuses for terrorist violence, but it is crucial to defeating the terrorists’ agenda.

4. Christ instructs us to love our enemies, which does not mean a submission to their hostile agendas or domination, but does mean treating them as human beings also created in the image of God and respecting their human rights as adversaries and even as prisoners.

5. Christ calls us to confession and humility, which does not allow us to say that if persons and nations are not in support of all of our policies, they must be ‘with the evil-doers.’

The words of Jesus are either authoritative for us, or they are not. They are not set aside by the very real threats of terrorism. They do not easily lend themselves to the missions of nation states that would usurp the prerogatives of God.”

…the Orlando Weekly has a handy list of “94 Reasons Not to Vote for Bush.” They’re compiled from different sources. Some have contradictory opinions to my own. #18 cites an Evangelical website that claims Bush hasn’t done enough, beyond rhetoric, to stop abortion and “the homosexual agenda.”