TGF SHOUT OUTS FROM JAMAICA (PT. 1),

KANSAS (AGAIN!), AND MORE BLOGGY LOVE …

We’ve been remiss, we realize, in updating The Dude for a few days, whilst busy making arrangements for the upcoming New York trip. Please forgive us…

Last weekend, Mark Dawes, religion reporter for the Jamaica Gleaner, published the first of a two-part interview he did with our God Girl after her reading at the Calabash Festival in Treasure Beach a few weeks back. You can find Mark’s entire piece HERE. Mark tells us Part II of his interview with Cathleen should be published in the Gleaner in a few weeks.

Also last weekend, Wichita Eagle columnist Tom Schaefer published the follow-up to a column inspired by The God Factor. Tom asked readers to write in with what they believed and why. The answers were fascinating. You can find the entire column HERE.

Among the more intriguing bits:

Bill DeArmond of Winfield, who was once a Methodist, said he no longer has any need to affiliate with a denomination “filled with dogma, rituals and a harsh set of rules meant to ‘guarantee’ an afterlife.

“I am content with making this life the best it can be for all living things and standing to be judged in ‘deed’ rather than how well I followed someone else’s ‘word.’ Christianity seems easy on the tongue but not in practice.”

Donald Cuddihee of Greer, S.C., was raised a Catholic but was upset by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the strong reactions of “my church, country and neighbors, all calling themselves Christians.”

Since then, he has questioned his beliefs in organized religion and has come to the conclusion that “we can understand God in a small way by what we see in all of nature. Nature responds in harmony with God.

“I believe we need to be partners with nature… and that God wants us to live in peace with our neighbors and with them build true community in harmony with nature.”

Keep an eye out for Angela Pancella’s long interview with Cathleen to be posted any day now at Steve Beard’s Thunderstruck.org . . . AND (this is a personal coup) coming soon to an edition of THE WITTENBURG DOOR, a tell-all, no-holds-barrred Q & A with God Girl conducted last week in Chicago by the wily and talented periodista Tamara Jaffe-Notier.