Goines On: Heaven on earth

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As Goines approached Walmart’s pharmacy entrance, he saw a couple of policemen talking to entering shoppers. As he got closer, he thought he recognized one of the officers: Officer Shell had been assigned eight or ten years ago to the housing development Goines lived in, under the town’s Community Oriented Policing (COP) program.

Interview: Martha Sink on making pots

Inspire • Create • Serve

Interviewed by Moristotle

I became acquainted with Martha Sink in her role as a librarian with Alamance County Libraries. Questions would arise when I tried to use the libraries’ website, and I was directed to Martha as the person who could answer them for me. Indeed she could, and she was also quick to act on suggestions I made for improving the website. My wife and I even made a special trip to the libraries’ main location so we could meet her.
    When I emailed her recently just to say hi, she told me that her 37 years as an employee of the Alamance County Libraries system had been “a long time” and she had “a new career lined up and underway.” She said that she “figured that when [she] was more interested in throwing pots than coming to work, [she]’d know it was time to retire!”
    I told her I thought my readers would like to hear about her plans, and she agreed to do an interview. My questions are in italics.
    Photographs of some of her creations are interspersed throughout the questions and answers.

Faith-based support groups

In my Monday's post on "The miracle," I wrote that I think:

there's less of a possibility of Tom [Sheepandgoat]'s becoming an atheist than of my again becoming a theist. He has his Jehovah's Witness support group, people he sees (I think he indicated) three days a week down at Kingdom Hall, whereas I can't be said to have such a support group—unless a few authors I read can be counted as such.

And Tom supportively commented:

Many atheists find support groups within the blogging community. You could do that...I hope you don’t go that way, and I don’t foresee that you will. So far, you are a blogger who happens to be atheist rather than an atheist blogger. Even as I try to be a blogger who is one of Jehovah’s Witnesses rather than a JW blogger.

Right on, my friend!

No, as I commented back to Tom:

I don't feel the need for such a support group. I have the necessary life support of my wife, my dog, and my many friends (including yourself in your non-religious-affiliated moments).

In thinking about the concept of a support group, I realized that one of the practical uses of a church (or a temple or a mosque or a synagogue or a Kingdom Hall or, for Wiccans, I guess a wattle hut?) is to serve as a support group for its members. Perhaps that's the main reason for many of them. A place to go to have their faith and their faithful practice reinforced and perhaps reinvigorated.

But what about those "atheist...support groups within the blogging community"? What are they doing? They don't have any faith to enforce or invigorate. Maybe they're getting together to celebrate communally what I too celebrate (individually) of our constitutional freedom from religion? Or maybe they're political groups banding together to fight further encroachments on that freedom? After all, we only have it "while we still have it." And if we can take Harris and Hitchens and Dawkins at their words that religion is lethal and needs to be overcome, then I suppose some atheist groups might be plotting ways to achieve that....

And the religious houses of course serve other purposes than that of a support group. Some congregations have political agendas too. Support Bush! Don't pull the plug on Terry Schiavo! Down with gays and lesbians! Keep your women covered! Death to infidels! Some support charitable causes. Money for the starving people of Africa! Money for good Jack Abramoff's projects! Money for Jihad!

And of course they proselytize, which I guess is what the "plotting atheists" referred to above might be doing—in reverse!

By the way, by "life support" I was not referring to extraordinary measures' being taken should I become vegetative. No, my living will states that I'm strictly DNR. (And that might as well stand for Do Not Resurrect.)