Text 3When I was a child in Sunday school, I would ask searching questions like "Angels can fly up in heaven, but how do clouds hold up pianos" and get the same puzzling response about how that was not important, what was important was that Jesus died for our sins and if we accepted him as our savior, when we died, we would go to heaven, where we’d get everything we wanted. Some children in my class wondered why anyone would hang on a cross with nails stuck through his hands to help anyone else; I wondered how Santa Claus knew what I wanted for Christmas, even though I never wrote him a letter. Maybe he had a tape recorder hidden in every chimney in the world.This literal-mindedness has stuck with me; one result of it is that I am unable to believe in God. Most of the other atheists I know seem to feel freed or proud of their unbelief, as if they’ve cleverly refused to be sold snake oil. My husband, who was reared in a devout Catholic family and served as an altar boy, is also firmly grounded on this earth. He doesn’t even have the desire to believe. So other than baptizing our son to reassure our families, we’ve skated over the issue of faith.Some people believe faith is a gift; for others, it’s a choice, a matter of spiritual discipline. I have a friend who was reared to believe, and he does. But his faith has wavered. He has struggled to hang onto it and to pass it along to his children. Another friend of mine never goes to church because she’s a single mother who doesn’t have the gas money. But she once told me about a day when she was washing oranges as the sun streamed onto them. As she peeled one, the smell rose to her face, and she felt she received the Holy Spirit. "He sank into my bones," she recounted. "I lifted my palms upward, feeling filled with love."Being no theologian, and not even a believer, I am not in a position to offer up theories, but mine is this: people who receive faith directly, as a spontaneous combustion of the soul, have fewer questions. They have been sparked with a faith that is more unshakable than that of those who have been taught. The word "his" in "a cross with nails stuck through his hands" (Line 6, Paragraph 1) refers to()
A. Jesus'.
B. a child's.
C. anyone's.
D. Santa Claus'.
Text 2If you are what you eat, then you are also what you buy to eat. And mostly what people buy is scrawled onto a grocery list, those ethereal scraps of paper that record the shorthand of where we shop and how we feed ourselves. Most grocery lists end up in the garbage. But if you live in St. Louis, they might have a half-life you never imagined: as a cultural document, posted on the Internet.For the past decade, Biil Keaggy, 33, the features photo editor at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has been collecting grocery lists and since 1999 has been posting them online at www. Grocery lists, org. The collection, which now numbers more than 500 lists, is strangely addictive. The lists elicit two-fold curiosity--about the kind of meal the person was planning and the kind of person who would make such a meal. What was the shopper with vodka, lighters, milk and ice cream on his list planning to do with them In what order would they be consumed Was it a he or a she Who had written "Tootie food, kitten chow, bird food stick, toaster scrambles, coffee drinks" Some shoppers organize their lists by aisle; others start with dairy, go to cleaning supplies and then back to dairy before veering off to Home Depot. A few meticulous ones note the price of every item. One shopper had written in large letters on an envelope, simply, "Milk".The thin lines of ink and pencil jutting and looping across crinkled and torn pieces of paper have a purely graphic beauty. One of life’s most banal duties, viewed through the curatorial lens, can somehow seem pregnant with possibility. It can even appear poetic, as in the list that reads "meat, cigs, buns, treats".One thing Keaggy discovered is that Dan Quayle is not alone--few people can spell bananas and bagels, let alone potato. One list calls for "suchi" and "strimp". "Some people pass judgment on the things they buy," Keaggy says. At the end of one list, the shopper wrote "Bud Light" and then "good beer". Another scribbled "good loaf of white bread". Some pass judgment on themselves, like the shopper who wrote "read, stay home or go somewhere, I act like my mom, go to Kentucky, underwear, lemon". People send messages to one another, too. Buried in one list is this statement: "If you buy more rice, I’ll punch you." And plenty of shoppers, like the one with both ice cream and diet pills on the list, reveal their vices. Bill Keaggy collects grocery lists because()
A. he wants to post them online.
B. he is curious about the list writers.
C. he tries to find out something behind them.
D. he does it for amusement.