David Depape has a blog he cleverly calls “God is Love“. I’m sure he intends those words’ various echoes of meaning, from completely ironic to absolutely and literally true.

His voice is as subtle and complex as the title. He is neither religious nor atheist. The hypocrisies of organized religion get no mercy from him, but nor do rabid atheists. Somehow he finds inspiration in the ambiguous truth of neither/nor.

Take his post, The Religion of Science.

Religion is a form of stagnant science. Christianity is based on science. The priests were the scholars and scientists or their day. They observed the world and came up with a theory of existence based upon what they could observe. They didn’t know about atoms, cells and the quantum level. They came up with the best theory they could with what little they knew. Religion is science that got stuck on proving old theories. Now atheism is doing the same. Atheism is stuck on proving a point and it’s clinging to theories that are becoming antiquated in the face of new discoveries.
Instead of admitting what we know and admitting what we don’t know and moving forward from there.

I think you’ll find his views as refreshing as I did.

I’ll be away for a few weeks until the end of August. My trip will take me camping in an old growth forest in Clear Creek State Park in Western Pennsylvania. Then I’ll attend two concerts at the Marlboro Music Festival, an elite chamber music gathering in Vermont. I may head North from there to hike in the Adirondacks, perhaps tackling one of the 46 Peaks called Giant Mountain. After that, 5 days on Cape Cod with will relieve my ocean cravings. Heading down to DC, I’ll stop in Philadelphia for a night to see a friend. After a week at “home” with Mom I’ll be fattened up and ready to come back to good ‘ole Ohio.

I don’t think I’ll return this year to the area in the Adirondacks I found last year called Thirteenth Lake Siamese Ponds Wilderness Conservation Area. I just had a funny feeling about trying to repeat last Summer’s experience. Right behind Thirteenth Lake I did a solo climb past beaver swamps and up a slippery slope to the top of Peaked Mountain, where I was greeted by friendly dragon flies, one of whom landed on my solar plexus just as I was about to leave. Something about the experience made me feel at home, as if I was meant to be in that area. The quiet lake is stocked for fishing; there’s a nearby river for trout fishing and kayaking or rafting, and there’s lots of good hiking within a few hours away. There are several remote primitive camping sites around the lake. A few days ago I was doing some searches for that area and found a nice little 3 acre piece of land for sale right next to the Wildlife Conserve and Thirteenth Lake. I’ll wait a year and see if I still yearn to return there.

See you in September.

I’ll be checking in with the blog regularly.