I am so sorry about your father, Tessa. But we enjoy having discussions about faith on this site. Thank you for bringing it up! -Elisa

Every now and again, it occurs to me that I miss having faith.

Tonight, I was in the hospital, giving my wrung-out mother a break from sitting with my father who is recovering from a stroke.  While the nurses were in his room helping him with something a little more...delicate...than he wanted his daughter helping him with, I stood out in the middle of the stroke unit to wait.  I got overwhelmed, and started to cry a little.

There is this 81 year old man that was admitted to the stroke unit today.  He is very religious, and has been talking about God all day.  He saw me out there, and smiled at me, and said "Little lady, you look very concerned.  Give it up to God, and he'll carry you."

This man was admitted today with a stroke, and he has been the chipperest person on the ward.  And it's all because he has faith in his God.  That faith gives him a peace I haven't known for years.  I do truly envy that.  He's not depressed, or stressed, or sad.  He's accepting.  He's cheery.  He can reach out and comfort someone else when she's crying.  I think that is a gift.

tonight on PBS, NOVA will be presenting a program called Intelligent Design on Trial.

In 2004 the quiet town of Dover, Pennsylvania, was catapulted into the spotlight of national attention and scrutiny. That year, Dover Area School District board member Bill Buckingham requested that a textbook teaching intelligent design—the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore must have been designed by an intelligent agent—be added to the science program.

The school board decided against adopting the book, but Buckingham and his curriculum committee soon after drafted a policy mandating that before every biology unit that involved evolution, students be read a statement telling them that "gaps [and] problems" with Darwin's theory exist. This time, the board voted in Buckingham's favor. They announced on November 19 of that year that the town's science teachers would be required to read the statement to students, and that copies of the intelligent-design textbook would be made available in the school library.

Years ago I was involved with a man who was a guru-phile. He was always looking for God in human form, someone to worship and stand in the presence of. Someone to set up little altars for. I didn't share his psychology; my cynicism is like a mothball around the neck, keeping me guru-free. For awhile my boyfriend glommed onto Sai Baba, a goofy orange-robed guru with a 'fro who performed miracles. His miracles--like making great quantities of ash billow out of an empty urn--didn't seem useful to me. If God were to manifest as a human, surely he wouldn't waste his time performing lame magic tricks. Like, who needs ash?

Later, my boyfriend moved on to Amma, a superstar Indian guru who gives power hugs. People wait in line for hours to get hugged by this roly poly smiling woman who sits on a stage. An Amma camp was set up in the hills outside of Santa Fe, NM. We sat with hundreds of other people who were singing kirtan, a religious tradition of repetitively singing the same line from a Sikh hymn over and over and over again. I figured that it was supposed to be transcendant, but I was restless and bored, a tag-along non-believer who didn't know the words. I went wandering in the woods while the people formed a giant queue to get huggy with Amma. Strangely, I don't remember whether I got a hug. I only remember the white tents, the circular music, and the crowd of weeping or beaming mostly middle-aged white people. She definitely had something they needed. Or thought they needed.

Today I came across an article about Amma at Salon. The author was granted a brief interview with the guru and she explained her work, the heavy work of doling out over 26 million hugs and counting:

"I'm trying to awaken true motherhood in people, in men and women, because that is lacking in today's world. Today there are two types of poverty. The first is a lack of basic necessities. The second is a lack of love and compassion. As far as I am concerned, the second is more important because if there is love and compassion then the first kind can be taken care of."