With Luther, Tourists, and God In Santa Fe

From the introduction:

My relationship with religion and “faith” has always been somewhat tense. I was raised by rationalists, kind and gentle people but devoted to what can be proved, and intensely distrustful of what might be nice to believe, but for which there is no evidence.

As time has gone on, though, I’ve found myself attracted to …well, not exactly religion, but to people who believe in something, and who then put that belief to work. I admire, for example, Christians who actually do something other than worrying about the magical, mystical, invisible souls they can neither see nor measure. Instead, they do what it seems Christ told his followers to do, i.e., to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and free the oppressed.

In 2019, my wife Martha and I went to something called “The Lutheran Advocacy Ministry Bishop’s Luncheon and Issues Briefing,” in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We’re not Lutherans ourselves, but our church sent us as representatives to see what our co-religionists were up to—which was a lot. They were involved in several social programs that impressed us no end.

Afterwards, I ended up writing about my experiences at the meeting and in the city of Santa Fe. The following is the resulting document.

The illustrations are my own.