— <\/p>\n
\n<br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nI finished <i>Under the Banner of Heaven<\/i> this morning. A chilling and very interesting book. Much bigger than just the investigation of a crime. It becomes an investigation of the nature of faith itself. No wonder the Mormon Church had a freak-out about it. Kraukauer interviews one Mormon man who had been a polygamist fundamentalist and eventually became an <i>atheist <\/i>because of <i>one geology class <\/i>he took. His story stunned me. He’s a very likable man, very interested in finding the truth – not something handed down to him, but his own truth. Some people can reconcile easily their faith and the unhelpful facts of reality. I can do so. It’s faith. I don’t need proof. Proof seems like a stupid thing to ask for, anyway, in my humble opinion. I’m all about the mystery, and I don’t have a <i>literal <\/i>faith. My faith has nothing to do with a literal interpretations of things. But I wasn’t raised in a fundamentalist right-or-wrong black-and-white atmosphere. The Mormon man who had to leave his faith because he realized he had been lied to by his church about the age of the earth made an enormous impression on me.<\/p>\n<p>— Tonight, the Empire State Building will dim its lights for 15 minutes, in honor of the passing of Ms. Fay Wray. Pretty cool, huh?<\/p>\n<p>— I’ve been very busy. Crossing things off a To-Do list, things I have procrastinated. It’s a good feeling.<\/p>\n<p>— Overheard on the street. A grumpy guy said to his girlfriend, “You can’t even get a decent hangover with that girlie rose.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>— I finished Under the Banner of Heaven this morning. A chilling and very interesting book. Much bigger than just the investigation of a crime. It becomes an investigation of the nature of faith itself. No wonder the Mormon Church … <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1563\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[1367],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101812,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions\/101812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}