Winter, going on for night, in Pitt Meadows. Cold. Damp cold, not cold cold. Coyotes off beyond these trees singing at the moon. Yip yip, yap and those thin howls that carry none of the hair rising up on the nape of the neck that the wolves could raise when I lived on the shore of Marsh Lake in the Yukon.

Darkness carries so many meanings in the human story. Dark bad. Dark evil. Dark scary...Then there is the peace of a dark and quiet place. The warmth that flows inside when darkness falls on a summer night. Wasn't it Kurt Vonnegut who wrote that wonderful book, Mother Night?

There was an interesting shade of darkness in Newsweek online today. One of their stories was centered around whether the bible was opposed to gay marriage. Neither a light or dark story, that, just pretty silly. Why would the Jewish scripture speak to gay marriage when the culture apparently abhorred the homosexual act?

The darkness ran through most of the comments that had been posted about the story. Idiot, ignorant, heretic, were just a few of the tone setting labels thrown out by many of the correspondents. Why so much fear over this condition that many men and women live in? I hardly ever see such vitriol over adultery or any of the other common, "sins," that are strewn across the paths of the faithful.

That may not sound very dark to most folks, but to me the fear that those labels and the context in which they were used carries in them is that which is truly dark.

Why is it that many conservative Christians don't hear echos of the crowd shouting, crucify him! crucify him! in their own pronouncements. Why is it that so many of the faithful don't remember that those who did crucify Jesus were the most conservative and fundamentalist believers in Jewish society. Some pretty strong parallels in this.

I guess I'll close this with a thought about one of the most judgemental things that we Christian's put out: hate the sin, love the sinner. Where on earth, or in heaven for that matter, does this hackneyed phrase come from. It puffs the say er up with a sense of superiority in that they can identify a sin, something that I always thought God could take care of as one of his or her prerogatives and it extends a saccharin, cloying superiority out to that supposed sinner with the false and fatuous, I love you even though your actions aren't worthy of love.

We are a strange group...