Spots are still available in the July 17-19 mini-version of our popular Write Together sessions, in which we gather on Zoom for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and write quietly together from a guided prompt. Cost: $100. Please click here for all the details. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room.

A few years ago I was deep in conversation about various religions and the dangers of religious extremism with my Somali-born Uber driver.

Me: “What I don’t get is how does the longing for purpose and passion that most of us feel turn into a belief, for some, that their god is the only god, and their god justifies murder and mayhem and terror?”

Him (31 years old, handsome, laughing, who along with his Somali-born wife works full-time on different shifts so that they can trade off taking care of their four little kids): “I will tell you something. I almost became one of them.”

“. . . You did?”

“Yes. After we fled the civil war in Somalia we lived in Nairobi for three years and I went to a new mosque. I was 18. And the leader taught hate. I began to be filled with hate and to think that others should suffer and die. I felt my heart turning hateful. And I decided to bring a notebook to the mosque with me for one week. I had one column Hate and another column Love and I kept track of what he was teaching. At the end of the week it was all hate. And I stopped going to the mosque.”

“And now? Did you find a mosque in Minneapolis that feels right to you?”

“I don’t go to any mosque anymore. If I want to pray, I pray inside my own head. My religion is two words only. You want to know what they are? Don’t hate.”

 Solution, by Franz Wright

What is the meaning of kindness?
Speak and listen to others, from now on,
as if they had recently died.
At the core the seen and unseen worlds are one.

Click here for more information on Franz Wright, the poet son of poet James Wright, both of whom won Pulitzer Prizes for their poetry. 
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter