When Irfan Aleem found out in 2003 that Farah, his wife of two decades, was filing for divorce in Maryland court, he tried to take matters into his own hands. The retired World Bank employee trotted down to the Pakistani Embassy and repeated "I divorce thee," three times, thereby performing talaq, the procedure by which men are allowed to divorce their wives under Islamic and secular Pakistani law.

No dice, said Maryland's state Court of Appeals said Tuesday, in ruling that Talaq is contrary to The Free State's constitutional guarantee of equal rights to men and women.

One of the main questions that seems to me to keep coming up as I wade through large quantities of national religious news is that of privacy and religious liberty. My Scientology post yesterday touched on this, and the talaq decision makes me think of the polygamists and the privacy issues raised in West Texas, as well.

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Whatever you think about Scientology, you have to wonder about the Church's treatment by the German state.

In December, Germany's interior ministers said they considered the religion to be "not compatible with the constitution." Yesterday, an AP story reported that the German Scientologists have dropped a legal battle to keep the country's intelligence services from monitoring its activities. What is Germany so afraid of?

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The story of the Wheaton professor who is quitting his job this month after two decades because his divorce doesn't pass muster with the evangelical Christian college's agreed upon biblical code for living is a lovely example of the challenges of attempting to institute heavenly laws (or legally binding contracts!) on earth.

Wheaton asks its professors and other employees to sign an agreement saying they will uphold biblical standards of behavior and transgressions, the Chicago Tribune reported last week.

Rather than be fired, or explain his divorce from his wife of 30 years, Ken Gramm is splitting, saying “I’m accepting the policy as it applies to me because I knew it was in place and I don’t expect anyone to make any exceptions....But in the long run I think the policy is not a good one, because in a sense it’s saying that Wheaton’s standards are higher than God’s. That’s an upside-down world.”

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On Tuesday the 102-year old Swiss chemist who discovered LSD died of a heart attack. Albert Hofmann was looking for medical uses of a certain fungus when he stumbled on the hallucinogenic chemical, and took his first 'trip' in 1943. He is said to have been saddened by the 'irresponsible' uses of LSD and the reputation it acquired.

It's worth pointing out, though, that LSD and other hallucinogens were once seen as shortcuts to spiritual enlightenment -- perhaps most famously by the writer Aldous Huxley in "The Doors of Perception." For many of a certain generation, Hofmann's drug discovery to a lifetime of trying to recreate the LSD experience through systems of religious and spiritual practice and pursuit.

At a Northern California meditation retreat I attended last week, the instructor said at one point that in his decade of teaching he had noticed that a large number of his students had had their first spiritual experience while taking LSD. In a room full of largely grey-haired self-identified "spiritual seekers," there were murmurs of happy agreement.

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This morning I was lucky enough to spend some time with Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University. I remember having some questions as I stepped into his office, maybe something about Obama or China, but those quickly evaporated. Taylor is one of those wild and brilliant thinkers whose conversations effortlessly cover time and space and everything in between. And once he gets going, it's hard to keep up and impossible to stop him. The following is a little morsel of the awesome urgency he brought to religion, just enough to whet the appetite.

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This week's episode of Oprah's A New Earth focused on one's awakening to life's purpose. Inappropriately, I couldn't help thinking of Steve Martin's awakening to his “special purpose” in The Jerk.

Billed as a global study group, packaged within the familiar rhythms of daytime television, episode eight of Oprah's newfangled spiritual enterprise/infomercial -- co-hosted with adviser/straight man Eckhard Tolle -- felt like a ritual intended to both create and enable spiritual narratives.

It is always surreal listening to celebrities, or anyone really, armed with newfound spiritual beliefs. What struck me about Oprah's New Age was her vocabulary, and how the newly appropriated language worked to re-frame her world and subsequently ours.

The strange flourishes of language – "abundance", "vibration", "presence", "thinking mind", "inner space" (also a great movie from the 80's), "object consciousness", "space consciousness" – pushed us into unfamiliar territory, a world fashioned through a language that reinforced its own ideology, but undermined our personal identities.

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Visitors to Berlin's Holocaust memorial. (Fabrizio Bensch - Reuters)

I want to start by thanking Claire both for trusting me with "Under God" while she's away and for letting our longstanding discussions of belief spill into the public realm. I've known Claire for just over 10 lovely years. We met while studying the anthropology of religion together at the University of California - Santa Cruz, and our shared interest in the topic soon led to weekend retreats at born again churches and lengthy conversations about the mechanics of religious awakening. Over the last decade of wandering and working and studying, we've continued our discussion of how brilliantly weird and complicated belief is, and how captivating it can be.

My professional expertise is in neither journalism nor religion: I am an architect. But I recognize that architecture has historically been both an agent and a subject of religious power, and I am particularly interested in how architecture can enrich our understanding of belief.

One of the greatest contemporary examples of architecture's ability to communicate the sacred is Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, by architect Peter Eisenman. The work is one of architecture's most deft mappings of belief and religion. It positions us in an atmosphere outside of belief where we can experience the incomprehensible.

I went to speak with Eisenman last week mostly because I wanted to hear from one of the brilliant architects of our time. But I also wanted to learn if and how he felt architecture could negotiate competing political, religious, and historical forces in a way that enriches our world rather than dividing us. Eisenman wrestled one of the great works of contemporary architecture from the Holocaust, so I assumed that perhaps he had ideas on how to transcend our current cultural and political dramas.

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This will be my last post for a week as I'm going off to Northern California to a six day meditation retreat where I won't talk, read, email, text message or any of the other ceaseless noise that creates the constant buzz of my life.

I know it doesn’t make any sense for someone who writes a blog about religion to say this, but I’ve always felt private about my own religious beliefs and practices (or lack of). Still, I feel compelled to briefly tell you what I'm doing and why.

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Six-year-old Trinity Duggan, of Bowie, MD, holds up a personal greeting as she waits with her family along Massachussetts avenue for the Pontiff to drive by. (Bill O'Leary - The Washington Post)

One way of observing powerful objects is to look at the little ones that are affected. This week in Signs and Wonders, I offer up this photo of a young fan of Pope Benedict XVI. She's crafted a devotional collage and is waiting to catch a glimpse of the Holy Father during his quick trip to America to reinvigorate his flock of 65 million American Catholics.

For those with whom I've spoken this week about the Pope's visit, the consensus reaction seems to be a bemusement over the ritualism and pomp of the visit. As Americans, we are so often independent and even casual in our religious observance. The Pope -- with his entourage, his vestments, his Popemobile -- is a reminder of a different tradition. This photo reflects a really beautiful adoration but, with the police line, it also highlights a certain remove that many former Catholics I know feel with their Church.

Maybe deep adoration and remove have a symbiotic relationship? Many a love song would support that theory, as would letter-writers to felons. Does it apply to our feelings about religious leaders? You tell me. Next week, more tough questions at signs and wonders!

As all you devoted readers of this blog know, we are on Oprah watch because the TV host has spent this year heralding the good news about Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth," Oprah's new favorite book/spiritual belief system for the future of mankind!

Oprah's web seminars on "A New Earth" continue on this week to the seventh chapter, and me and millions around the world are riveted. This week? Finding out who you are!

At first, I found watching Oprah meditate onscreen and then talk about losing her self sort of trippy -- but now think I get it.

Oprah represents the noisiest and most self-centered face of the American mainstream. Now she has taken on the project of espousing a system of belief that focuses entirely on losing ego and becoming present and aware of the shared nature of consciousness.

"It's a life-changing concept. You are not who you think you are. So, who are you really? This week, Oprah and Eckhart helped you get in touch with your true self," says the website. And on the show, amid a montage of soft images of flower smelling and ribbon dancing, I learn that "only by awakening can you know true meaning. A new year. A new you. A new earth."

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