Free healthcare and free and equal education and peace are about the only things I passionately believe in, and I think if you don't believe in those but you go to church on Sunday then that's hypocris.

I am really interested in who owns ideas of religion. What if I say I'm a libertarian, socialist, Occupy-supporting, anti-war, Christian? Is that a controversial idea? I don't see anything really in the original semiotics of Christianity, in the specific parable of the radical socialist Jew from Galilee who becomes the hero figure in the Homeric-word-of-mouth-gossip-novel that becomes the Bible that should make that a paradox.

A thunder-storm!—the eloquence of heaven, When every cloud is from its slumber riven, Who hath not paused beneath its hollow groan, And felt Omnipotence around him thrown? With what a gloom the ush’ring scene appears! The leaves all shiv’ring with instinctive fears, The waters curling with a fellow dread, A veiling fervour round creation spread, And, last, the heavy rain’s reluctant shower, With big drops patt’ring on the tree and bower, While wizard shapes the bowing sky deform,— All mark the coming of the thunder-storm!

Oh! none are so absorb'd, as not to feel Sweet thoughts like music coming o'er the mind: When prayer, the purest incense of a soul, Hath risen to the throne of heaven, the heart Is mellow'd, and the shadows that becloud Our state of darken'd being, glide away.

And now, Though haply mellow'd by correcting time, I thank thee, Heaven! that the bereaving world Hath not diminish'd the subliming hopes Of youth, in manhood's more imposing cares.

...but when The Spirit speaks,—or beauty from the sky Descends into my being,—when I hear The storm-hymns of the mighty ocean roll, Or thunder sound,—the champion of the storm!— Then I feel envy for immortal words, The rush of living thought; oh! then I long To dash my feelings into deathless verse, That may administer to unborn time, And tell some lofty soul how I have lived A worshipper of Nature and of Thee!

Are you really listening... or are you just waiting for your turn to talk?