I emerged somewhat bloody but unbowed from Bible study this week after badmouthing Billy Graham, not among my favorite Christian exemplars (actually, the assertion was only that he had not ascended bodily into heaven), and suggesting to a group of Episcopalians and Lutherans that atheists actually exist.
One of the oddities of life is that believers tend to insist that nonbelievers couldn't possibly not believe --- that they just believe the wrong thing or that their faith is just not fully developed. I beg to differ.
There were no hard feelings here --- we bat issues of orthodoxy, faith and interpretation back and forth all the time.
But it did bring to mind Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar whose quote was incorporated into a meme I shared earlier in the week on Facebook.
Rohr, founder of the New Mexico-based Center for Action and Contemplation, is an advocate of what sometimes is called "orthopraxy" --- a philosophy that holds right conduct is at least as important as right belief (orthodoxy) as we make our ways through life together.
I've been chasing my tail through the newspaper archives this morning on the trail of an obscure footnote to Lucas County history and have run out of time --- so here's the Rohr meme again.
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