faulker012

One of my favorite Beatles songs is Penny Lane , that song about nostalgia, about a small town, about missing what once was. The working class family and the row houses. The firehouse, the bank, and the barber. The gazebo in the town square.  This afternoon I was visiting my mom. After dinner we decided to take a little drive around town, my hometown. It was our version of Penny Lane. So many things had changed in our little Midwestern town, one small thing at a time, and we felt so nostalgic. In a good way.   We drove past our old family home, admiring the new fountain on the front lawn under that tree I planted one Arbor Day in the early 1970s, wondering how we had ever lived with six people in such a tiny little house. I enjoyed remembering playing in the school yard behind our house, how that school felt like home to me , how that school yard belongs to my family as much as it belongs to anyone. I could almost almost smell the chlorine and honeysuckle as we sat there...

It was a hundred years ago, back in my twenties, I was in a class where we were talking about guilt. Everyone in the class was talking about their various experiences of guilt, telling their stories, talking about the times they felt deep senses of guilt and shame. I remember sitting there in that moment racking my brain for times when I felt guilt. But I couldn't come up with one. Weird, right? When I was asked for a response I essentially reported that, that I couldn't think of any significant guilt. The response I got from the class really stuck with me. My peers in the class reacted with doubt, essentially saying Of course you feel guilt, that's bullshit . One guy even looked right at me and said, Maybe you're a sociopath. Sociopaths don't feel guilt .  Well, I heard that, sat, and waited for the class to be over. A hundred years later, and something sparked that moment for me today. Of course   I'm not a sociopath. And I still don't experience guilt muc...

WHY, Karen? Why do you focus so much of your blog on atheism? Is it really so important to you?  You have a fixation, I think. What is your fascination with GOD? If you don't believe in God then why are you so fixated on Him?  It's all your problem, Karen! Well, guess what, People, I focus so much of my blog on atheism because its antithesis is EVERYWHERE. I can't walk out of my house without seeing the presence of religion everywhere in this culture. I walk along shaking my head at the absolute nonsense and massive anti-intellectualism that this beloved country of mine is swimming in. At the grocery, at the pool, in the library, on the news from the radio in my car, billboards, advertising, in politics... Don't you see? It is everywhere. I am a microscopic voice in the din. You may think that I am fixated or obsessed on religion. I assure you, I am merely responding to the continual force feeding of religious messages in this country. And I, in my temerity, have the ne...

During the 2016-2017 school year, while Elizabeth was busy on campus of her community college and while I took a class myself, the two of us became involved with a group on campus that was originally called the Freethinker's Club. I mentioned it here on my blog one time (just once because I was on my blogging hiatus at the time) . The club soon became a member club of the Student Secular Alliance, SSA, a national group that, according to their website, empowers secular students to proudly express their identity, build welcoming communities, promote secular values, and set a course for lifelong activism. Because of our involvement with the SSA on our campus, my daughter Elizabeth and I were recently asked to be interviewed by a young journalist named Scott Jacobson who likes to write for an international online publication called the Humanist Voices .  Here are links to our interviews if you are interested.   Elizabeth . Karen Part 1 Karen Part 2  You didn't think I ...

Have you ever heard of Virginia Satir? She is often referred to as a pioneer of family therapy. In my social work training back in the 1980s I was always looking for something, someone to feel attached to. I was always looking for something that felt truly meaningful to me. I found that centering when I was introduced to Virginia Satir late in my undergraduate work. It wasn't until I was in grad school that I was able to read significant amounts of Satir and to figure out the way I wanted to move forward. One of Virginia Satir's most novel idea of the time was the idea that the presenting problem of an individual or of a family system is seldom the real problem, but was, rather, unhealthy coping attempts by the members of the family. Satir, further, offered insight into the problems that low self-esteem could cause problems in the relationship. We in the biz consider much of her work as Neo-Freudian. Individual and family therapies were all undergoing major changes and better u...

I was talking to Mom on the phone a few minutes about what's going on in the world and whatnot. There's a reason I don't watch the news, it is just awful. AWFUL. But Mom watched the news. She told me about a dude, boyfriend to a women with three kids: one year old twins and a two year old. This dude...you will truly never guess this. He tazed the toddlers for misbehavior. TAZED. Now, I have not gone out and looked for the news story to verify the facts or anything, okay. But here's my problem. Yes, this is   my problem. I like to think that people are good, you know. I like believing in the goodness of people, their good intentions, their good hearts. But every single day the news has stories about human beings who behave in reprehensible ways, people who screw up my life philosophy. So, I avoid the news in order to preserve my delusion.

  GATEWAY to Gateway to Reason Have you ever been to an atheist convention? My husband and I and the kids have been to several of them here in the States and we have always, without fail, loved every single one of them. The community of atheists at these conventions is always so interesting and...well, the opposite of homogeneous. Every convention has been unique and has had its own flavor and vibe. This month in St. Louis we are holding Gateway to Reason , a fabulous opportunity for all atheist, freethinkers, humanists, and questioners to spend some time listening to intelligent and fun talk, to be entertained by some new, innovative performers, and to walk the halls to visit the tables with merch and information of all kinds. NOT to mention the evening events and the general hanging out and the meeting of like-minded people! Spend an hour, spend three days with us. You won't be sorry! I've mentioned that I will be speaking at Gateway to Reason convention this year about being...

Just passing along a little mother's pride. My daughter was recently interviewed for an online publication called Humanist Voice for her work with the SSA, the Student Secular Alliance in her community college campus. If you go over to read it, I hope you leave a comment.   😉   An Interview with Elizabeth Loethen -  Executive Member, SSA at St. Louis Community College (Meramec Campus)  

The other day I was at a local public swimming pool sitting in the sun, worrying about getting a sunburn, realizing that wearing my sunglasses made it possible to people watch without people feeling watched . Most importantly my son was having a wonderful time and meeting new friends. The day was lovely and coolish. But something happened that has stuck with me all week. There was a young girl walking toward me on the tarmac, walking past the Lazy River. I saw this older guy with grey chest hair and an inner tube around his waste looking at this girl. Not just looking at her but raking his eyes over her. In fact, the word raking is an absolutely perfect word to describe what his eyes did to this very young girl. My body went stone cold. John is the super white kid next to the girl's classmate... to give you an idea of his age. A little bit later my son told me that the girl in question is twelve years old, he'd met her in the climbing wall like with a young pool friend; John...

Am I raging and wounded? Have I seen too much pain and unfairness that I have entered a period of anger at God? Am I in despair and feeling hopeless? Am I afraid that God has abandoned me in my desperation? Am I feeling that Life Isn't Fair ?! Am I unable to locate any gratitude towards God? In my time I have been accused several times of being angry at God? The Christian god, presumably. People making this suggestion to me never ever  take my reply as honest. They simply cannot accept the reality that No, I am surely not angry at your god. The truth is, I have no anger whatsoever at any so-called deity. I do have anger at religion, tons of it. The organizational, structured  shame and guilt and abuse and prejudice and hatred and misogyny.  I have anger at cover ups, abuse of power and religious political power, tens of billions of dollars of financial abuses, overt lies and manipulation, all religious wars, massive sexual abuse scandals that are forgiven by church aut...