My Weekend: Hillsborough, DC, and Silver Spring

[dcseain]

Saturday, i woke up late, and passed the late morning through afternoon with happypete and prettypammie at their new house. It was nice becoming reacquantied with Happy, and it was wonderful to finally meet prettypammie.

It was a wonderful time, including a romp through the woods in search of property markers with happypete and Quinn. No property markers were found, but it was really nice being in properly wild woods again. The house is beautiful, as are its vistas.

Leaving there, i'd planned to go to the nookery for gaming. I called J to see what he was up for, and he wasn't up for going out, so i went to his place instead. Had a lovely evening with him, crashed there after staying up half the night.

Sunday, awoke much later than planned, dressed, ate (J kindly cooked breakfast for me, which makes him the first person since my mother to do so), went to see nosebeepbear, and got to see supremherptile, sagesaria, and blackfeather, too. Took sagesaria to retrieve her friend D, a charming punky boy, and brought them back to the nookery. Upon our return, there were found to be froggies! :D


Left there to attend a small-group meeting at my church.

We discussed How atheists, rationalists, and agnostics comfort themselves in times of sorrow or death, and how we have coped with difficult times or a death of a loved one, as well as how our beliefs (or non belief) helped us during times of sorrow or death.

It was a most interesting chat among the 3 of us who showed up.

I will be leading the group at our 2nd meeting in September on the topic of Unitarian Universalist: within our faith tradition, do you identify more with Unitarian, or Universalist, if either, and why? We will explore how Unitarianism differed from Universalism, which each differ somewhat from what UUism is today. My congregation began as Universalist, and we've people in my group who've been members for 25 years, and several of us know one or more of the founding members. It should be most interesting.

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

How do atheists, agnostics, and rationalists tend to comfort themselves? I tend towards "this is how being alive feels at the moment" and "this is the sort of world where people die" with the corollary that we are tremendously dependent on death, not just in terms of food but also because we wouldn't exist if it weren't for death-driven evolution. I suppose I'm trying to defuse a sense of outrage.

The first couple of times, I also found grief to be a really interesting altered state, but the novelty has worn off.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

Your reply is basically where the 3 of us present for the conversation are; all three of us have rationalist tendencies and/or beliefs.

The question was initially raised by the one member of our group who was raised Southern Baptist, and though she has rejected much Christiian theology, she still has a strong belief in Ghod.

For someone with such a deep-seated belief in deity, i can understand why that question would occur to one. One would tend to perceive those without belief in deity to be lacking in something which one takse for granted.

[nosebeepbear.livejournal.com]

I was *really* tempted to ask if I could tag along, since that sounded like an interesting conversation. If I'd looked into my crystal ball and seen that the group was so small, I might have done.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, i kind of gathered that you might have been interested. I need to find out what the protocol for visitors in our group is. Though it's a topic that is happily, and easily, discussed in whatever context. We could do a panel even. :D

[sagesaria.livejournal.com]

charming punky boy

Can I quote you on that? ;-D

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

Totally. :D