Ester's Feathers

I don't know about you and yours, but my cats double as The Help.

Here they are assisting me in setting the table for company. But I draw the line at letting them dust off the crystal.

Today feels better. It's a lovely Fall day and I'm happy not to be mad. I was reading an interview with Mary Karr, who wrote one of the few memoirs I found to be truly dazzling (The Liar's Club), and she was talking about her conversion to Catholicism. To paraphrase: 'It's about not wanting to kill the people on the subway, or want to kill myself for wanting to kill them'. I can relate to that sentiment, and believe me, I'm open to suggestions on how not to be a full time Tazmanian Devil, but I stop with a screech when it comes to organized religion. But the I Ching refers to our intellect as the 'great pretender', and I think I understand that whole non-thinking thing (I think y'all call it faith). Which comes back to one of the reasons I don't think I could ever embrace religion, at least in the conventional sense: I think religion encourages people NOT to think (with the exception of Buddism). And God knows (and weeps about it daily, I'm sure) we are overrun with the non-thinking variety, everywhere.