Religious Scholar

http://www.sacredspace.ie/ provides a quiet place for reflection and meditation every day in the Christian tradition. Whatever your belief system, you may find a moment of peace and reflection in this virtual retreat center run by Irish Jesuits.

Please light a candle at http://www.gratefulness.org/candles/candles.cfm?l=eng in honor of those slain and wounded. Religiousscholar.com has lighted a candle at this healing site.

We do not know why there is evil in the world, such as the terror attack on theater-goers in Colorado. But our humanity unites us. We pray, we meditate, we mourn, and think, "What can I do to make the world a more peaceful place? What attitudes can I cultivate, what actions can I take and inspire in others?" We may take these moments of indescribable grief and incomprehension and turn them into prompts for a better, deeper life for ourselves and all people and creatures, throughout the world.

As a government Web site puts it, Presbyopia is a condition in which the lens of the eye loses its ability to focus, making it difficult to see objects up close.

This certainly seems to be the case with the slim but powerful majority of the mainstream Presbyterian Church USA. At its General Assembly in Pittsburgh today, the Church denounced gay marriage by a 338-308 vote, according to the Huffington Post, defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Once a leader in social ethics and equality, such as the ordination of women ministers, the Presbyterian church is backsliding into provincialism and the most constricting interpretation of tradition. Let's wish the considerable minority of civil-rights-minded members of this major Protestant denomination the courage, energy, and divine wisdom to not let this issue die. When it comes to civil rights, Christians should not look "through a glass darkly," to use a phrase by St. Paul, but to focus clearly on the rights and needs of people, who, we are told, were made in God's image. What a sorry state, when prejudice is hardwired into the bylaws of a once great religious tradition.

Congratulations to the CERN team for validating the work of Peter Higgs of Edinburgh. And why not start a new religion, Bosonianism (or perhaps Higgish)? Everything had to come from something, and the Higgs Boson is at least as credible as other creation stories. What it lacks in imagination, it makes up for in respectability.

Perhaps, to drop a "t" from a title by Henry James (whose brother William was a religious scholar of sorts), The Bosonians will help narrow the gap between those who believe in a higher power and those who have a purely mechanical/mathematical concept of the universe and its beginnings.

A traditional believer may now imagine that God invented the Higgs Boson, and aren't we clever to finally figure it out. A liberal believer has no problem incorporating science into a view of the cosmos, while agnostics and atheists have long been on the side of reason and discovering the subatomic answer to all questions was just a matter of time. Everyone should be happy.

Of course, that won't be the case. But at least we are witness to the birth of a new tradition, yet another--and perhaps even more important--reason to remember the Fourth of July.