My new expletive is Mary Mother of God. I’m not Catholic or Jewish. When someone asks Are you religious? I say I’m spiritual. That just means I’m conscientious and reliable. It means I don’t want people who do believe in God to think I’m evil or – worse – to witness me. God forbid.

I cannot imagine this being, this entity, this overseer could be both kind and giving AND watch from a place of omnipotent authority without sending another comet our way.

I read of religious zealots killing in the name of their deity, of using women and children as shields against drone strikes – drones manned by faceless soldiers thousands of miles away. I hear of illegal-status women and children detained  – mother separated from son, shackled and cuffed – in squalid facilities like one located just outside Philadelphia.

Mary Mother of God.