You want to hear something funny? I’ve only rarely had to seriously moderate comments on this blog; y’all are the best community in the world, and I have every reason to think that way. A year into blogging and there’s been not one single physical threat, and only a few Read more
As I look back at my experience living abroad, brief as it was, one thing that really springs out at me is how secular Japan was. It might have Shinto shrines in its shopping arcades and monasteries sprinkled around its urban residential neighborhoods, its television might have the occasional spiritual Read more
Jazz played on the stereo, the notes mingling with nickel-sized snowflakes blowing in through the open windows. I was at a party, one of the first I’d ever attended. I knelt at the coffee table, an unexpected orange in my hands, while a Japanese girl I didn’t know knelt beside Read more
Today we’re going to talk about that startling moment when I realized that I applied very different standards of critical evaluation to my own religion compared to other religions–a moment that, ironically, could only happen for me when plunked down in a culture that totally didn’t care about Christianity. John Read more
Today, on Mother’s Day, let me show you what real love feels like to experience. And let me show you how it differs from what toxic Christians have redefined as love.
When I was younger, I always had a very complicated relationship with food, and moving to a very foreign country brought that relationship into sharp focus. It’s very true that the last place in an immigrant’s house to assimilate is the pantry, and this old saying applies equally to an Read more
Happy One-Year Anniversary! Dang, where did all the time go? I still remember how nervous I was when I minted this blog and how wild-eyed I got the first time someone linked me to RationalWiki–and how overwhelmed I felt by all the supportive and kind notes and comments. I’m still Read more
I’ve been noticing some folks around the internet talking about their looming or newly-discovered deconversions and I wanted to direct a post to them as we approach the one-year anniversary of this blog. I’m super-bad at dates, or I’d have done this post earlier–sorry, I’ll set an alarm next time! Read more
You know, I wasn’t very old when I moved to Japan with my preacher husband Biff–24. I was in the middle of deconverting from Christianity, and I know that being part of the right-wingiest of far right wings of that religion had sheltered me to a large extent. And one Read more
I was finally in Sapporo, Japan, and in the earliest days of the trip. It had been a really long, hellish, topsy-turvy day. But now we were approaching the tail end of it; as my mom would have put it, we were “getting on toward.” Now I lay almost entirely Read more