I can traverse dog yards -- I once walked down the Champs Elysee AND through the streets of Toulouse without ONCE stepping in it! Of course, I once also ground-guided a truck out of a mine field.

LH, I have most of the books from the Jesus Seminar, including the Gospel of the Magdalen. Long ago I read Lao Tzu, the Hindu texts, the writings of The Buddha, and I "studied" Zen in Korea. I am the proud(?) possessor of enough semester hours in Theology to qualify as a minister, more in fact than the Catholic pastor here (he has the excuse that he's both a National Guard chaplain and that he's nicely nuts). And yes, before you ask, I have also delved into the religions of the "First Nations" and the Arctic Peoples. I am fairly well grounded in Norse, Roman, Celtic, and Greek religions ("One man's myth is anothers religions"), and have done more than skim Wicca (had a Wiccan friend once; we'd discuss it over beer). For the last few years I've been involved in a personal study of the effect of war and violence on the human psyche and "soul." I own a copy of the works of St. John of the Cross and the "Necronomicon" (which is fiction). "The Book of Mormon", "Doctrines and Covenants," and "The Pearl of Great Price" are not unknown to me; so are the works of philosphers from Socrates to Sartre. Really. This is all true.