Have been reading The "God" Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God by Matthew Alper. It's about how universal human behaviors must be rooted in neurophysiology. Instead of Jungian archetypes, he talks about archetypal spiritual behaviors, shows how they are genetic and brain-based, and ponders what their evolutionary survival value is for humans. That we are hard-wired for religion means it must always be accomodated as this Michael Gerson article reminds us. Nor does the fact that religion is based in biology mean that it's necessarily a dangerous delusion. Watch out for that reductionist error. Just because you've seen the wiring diagram of spirituality doesn't mean it's not real. Maybe the hard-wiring is there waiting for our concept of god to evolve into something in line with our true creation story, into something less socially exclusionary, into something with survival value for the earth itself.

The May Mix is mostly mementos of our JazzFest music experiences with a smattering of new folk stuff just out. I'm working on a way to distribute differently to the iTunes-enabled folk while still trying to keep my old friends paying attention who are still tied to their CD players.