Quote of the Day

For many of us, leaving religion is like leaving home.  For others, it feels like a divorce.  We experience depression and sadness.  When I express this sadness to non-religious people, they seldom understand.  They think my departure from religion a rational decision.  In this, they are wrong.  Leaving was an emotional disconnection.  Some accuse me of still harboring religious sympathies.  In this, they are correct.  I will never see the religious with their cold calculation.  What I see is my grandfather who preached in the lumberjack camps of Northern Michigan, or my mother who played hymns at the piano while I played at her feet, or the genuinely kind people I had the pleasure of meeting as a pastor.

-- Jim Mulholland, "Religious Grief"