On John McCain, Ann Coulter, Karl Rove, Bettie Page, and WWJRD (What Would Jesus Really Do?)

A sure sign of the coming GOP apocalypse: the party faithful are starting to play the God card.

Yes, when all else fails -- with Iraq a debacle, your domestic agenda a nonstarter, and your lame-duck leader pronouncing the catching of a big fish the high point of his presidency -- it's time to look heavenward for political redemption.

The Republicans have had their Come to Jesus Moment and, as usual, decided... well, to come to Jesus. Again.

It's Page One of the Karl Rove electoral playbook: Go with God. Make him your Election Day chauffeur, driving the holy-rolling, gay-marriage-fearing, family-values crowd to the polls.

It's not by accident that Republican Party pinup girl Ann Coulter (a Bettie Page for those into intellectual B & D) has a new, timed-for-2006 book that accuses liberals and Democrats of being... that's right: "Godless."

Even John McCain has hopped on board the Straight-to-Heaven Talk Express, granting absolution to Jerry Falwell and preparing hit the political pulpit at Liberty U. this coming Saturday.

We've seen this movie before -- and the ending has all too frequently resulted in Democrats being Left Behind on Election Day.

For some reason, they just haven't figured out how to talk about God, and faith, and WWJRD (What Jesus Would Really Do?) in a way that feels real and authentic.

Here's a helpful hint: take a page from Bradley Whitford, who was absolutely spot on during his appearance on the latest Real Time with Bill Maher. Whitford went toe-to-toe with former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore on issues of faith and won hands-down.

The Democrats should follow Whitford's lead and refuse to give an inch when Republicans trot out the holier than thou routine.

For a deeper look at God and the role of spirituality in our lives, here is an excerpt from the chapter in my new book dealing with fearlessness in the face of God and death. (As always, please send me any stories you have about fear and fearlessness.)

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Our conventional way of thinking about the world remains profoundly dualistic. The physical and the rational in a supposedly eternal and inexorable battle against the spiritual. In fact, the barriers between the two -- built by the narrow rationalism of the Enlightenment -- are now being dismantled by modern science and a growing chorus of personal experiences. What we're seeing - at least those of us willing to look - is that we are not alone in an indifferent universe. As Goethe put it, "this life, gentlemen, is much too short for our souls." If this life were sufficient for our souls we would not go through it consumed with fear and fanatical denial.

Reintegrating the two worlds of the spiritual and the everyday is the key to fearlessness. But ending this division is not easy when we've stopped even acknowledging that we live caught between these two worlds. When we're consumed with climbing the career ladder or just making a living, the spiritual seems very unreal and far away. So we either keep it conveniently penciled in one day a week, we seek it out only in moments of crisis, or we deny spirit altogether while trying to convince ourselves that we can overcome all fears and obstacles on our own.

Which is not to say we're not religious. Seventy percent of Americans belong to a religious organization and 40 percent of adults attend services once a week. "The downside to all this," wrote Jeffrey Kluger in his Time article 'Is God in Our Genes?' "is that often religious groups gather not into congregations but into camps -- and sometimes they're armed camps...Why then do we so often let the sweetness of religion curdle into combat? The simple answer might be that just because we're given a gift, we don't necessarily always use it wisely."

Here's the bottom line: If you believe in a God who only judges and punishes others (or you) or if you believe that there is nothing but an accidental, indifferent universe, it's going to be incredibly hard - perhaps impossible - to move from fear to fearlessness, because, after all, the essential characteristic of fearlessness is trust. The trust that there is purpose and meaning in our lives and in the universe, even when our limited minds are unable to see it. It's the trust that's captured in one of my favorite verses in the Bible: "Not a sparrow falls but that God is behind it."

The alternative is a pessimism and an impatience which despairs of life and seeks man's hope either in the end of the world or in worldly panaceas.

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When we tap into the truth that we are spiritual as well as material beings, then we are able to distinguish between our transient concerns and never-ending problems, and what is eternal and immutable. Understanding which is which will help us overcome our fears, not just our fears of God and dying but our fears of loss.

What form this takes is up to you. Though I was raised Greek Orthodox, it was the distaff spirit of the Virgin Mary that moved and comforted me when I was a girl. Whenever I felt alone and afraid, I prayed to Mary. When schoolyard squabbles broke out, when my sister grew quiet and sick, when my father moved away and didn't come home, I prayed to Mary.

She went with me to England and into adulthood. From the tumult of the debating chamber at Cambridge to the quiet of my first apartment in London, she was there. When I moved to a new homeland in New York, when I miscarried, when I divorced, at every fearful, difficult moment in my life I have looked to Mary as a spiritual guide. As Will Durant put it, "the worship of Mary transformed Catholicism from a religion of terror - perhaps necessary in the Dark Ages - into a religion of mercy and love."

But I also looked to the powerful archetypes in my beloved Greek mythology for guidance in my life, especially to the goddess Hestia, as their symbolism is full of wisdom and universal insights.

Hestia is the goddess of hearth and spiritis, which is an eternal center to which life returns to be replenished -- a gathering point that's always there providing security in a chaotic world. She embodies the place where the soul that's gone astray can reconnect. Her name means "the essence of things," and since she is the essence of everything that moves and flows and has life, she was worshipped in ancient Greece as the center -- of the city, of the house, of the world.

But even more than comfort and centeredness, Hestia represents the bedrock of our being. She is not about striving and straining, competing and succeeding; she is all about "being." As Carl Jung put it, Hestia manifests "the almost irresistible compulsion and urge to become what one is, just as every organism is driven to assume the form that is characteristic of its nature." With gods like this, how did Greek mythology lose out? (At least our invention of democracy took off.)

Then there is my favorite god: Hermes. Winged messenger in perpetual motion, as an old man, or a fixed stone, Hermes embodies both action and serendipity, and that which never changes. He is the guide of our voyage and the guardian-spirit of our adventure.

Whenever things seem fixed, rigid, "stuck," Hermes introduces fluidity, motion, new beginnings. He is the primordial divine child -- the child who, if we're lucky, we never outgrow. Hermes' world is a magical world full of signs and significance. He was the god who first gave me, as a child, a sense of the miraculous all around me. His spirit is fluid, trusting, open. Introducing the element of the unexpected into our lives is one of the means he uses to spur us out of our complacency, to break through the inertia and confinement of habit and convention.

Hermes clearly represents a very important key to fearlessness: the freedom of not having to be in control all the time, of not always being the one who has to make things happen. His dual nature also helps us accept life's paradoxes - that the only constant is change. Which is why he is the god of connections, bridging realms and dissolving frontiers between earth and the Underworld, men and gods, life and death.

You don't have to be Greek to enjoy the benefits of the Greek gods. Nor do you have to wait until you get to the other side to experience Hestia's essence. Bridging the gap between ourselves and that something greater than ourselves is available to us all the time. It's the bridge between what we know and what we dimly perceive, between what we are and what we are not, between what we are now and what we can become.

As we make that connection, we gain perspective on our lives. When I studies comparative religion at Shantaniketan University outside Calcutta (founded by Rabidianath Tagore) I learned a lot from my study of the Shinto form of Buddhism centered on mindfulness. Through the simple act of paying careful attention -- whether to what we eat, how we move, or where our thoughts wander -- we become aware of the significance our minds attach to things. And in that awareness, we recognize how interconnected everything is. All religions have similar practices that can free us from the fear that results from not feeling in control. As Hermes teaches us, it is so freeing to let go and trust.