Toward the last in the morning she could not
get up, even when I rattled her pan.
I helped her into the yard, but she stumbled
and fell. I knew it was time.
The last night a mist drifted over the fields.
In the morning she would not raise her head–
the far, clear mountains we had walked
surged back to mind.
We looked a slow bargain: our days together
were the ones we had already had.
I gave her something the vet had given,
and patted her still, a good last friend.
– William Stafford, from Someday, Maybe

Roxanne Josephine Hayes
February 2005 —October 4th 2017

My constant companion for 12 years and 7 months. Years ago I used to joke about how I would ever live without her. Now I guess I’ll figure that out.

The post Roxanne Josephine Hayes appeared first on Rationally Thinking Out Loud.

The first few sentences are oh so true for this atheist too…

“Recently, I’ve been wrestling with the perplexing realization that since leaving the Christian faith, I see the planet around me and the vast universe in which it moves with a far greater sense of awe and majesty than I ever perceived it as a believer. I took an informal poll of friends whose life-trajectories matched my own, and found that every one of them felt exactly the same way. For myself, and for many of the deconverted, the awe we feel now, having left the faith, is far greater, far more wondrous, far more intoxicating and euphoric than anything we ever felt as believers. But why?….”

I don’t think I ever became an Atheist. It was more like one day I just discovered I was an Atheist. What a sublime wondrous beautiful feeling.

The post The Sublime Wondrous Beauty of the Atheist Experience appeared first on Rationally Thinking Out Loud.