A brick and glass building with autumn trees in front, beneath a dramatically lit mountain with rocky peaks

Are You Religious

The light on the mountains was so striking that many campus strollers stopped to look. I'd been visiting a professor and was on my way to Slate for sunset.

3 December 2025

BYU Campus and up near the mouth of Slate Canyon, Provo, UT

34mm, f/5.6, 1/200s, ISO 250

Sony a6400 with 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 lens

Fiery orange and red clouds illuminated at sunset above dark silhouetted mountain ranges, with a valley and lake below in twilight

A friend asked me the other day whether I am religious. I answered reflexively, no. It is a word I attach to people who seem to me inflexible in their belief systems—judgemental and closed. We all talked more, and with reconsideration, yes, I do believe in the divine, something greater, call it god if you like, and I find ways to connect with it. Sunrise and sunset, tea, star and cloud gazing, walks, sitting with a tree, watching birds or the water, giving other's expression my full attention, pondering religious texts, a hot bath.

Wooden utility pole with power lines against an overcast twilight sky, with houses and dry brush in the foreground

I'm religous.
As religious as the wind, or scissors.
...
Sometimes I think nettles stung me, but
they didn't. Sometimes I think I'm miserable, but
I'm not.
I'm religious.

~Tomaž Šalamun in "Ships" from The Voice (1983)