I couldn’t help, scrolling through this morning’s lessons, but circle back to that Atlantic article of a week ago, the one that begins with the vivid description of a man slumped over in an airplane, “It’s not true that no one needs you anymore.” These words came from an elderly woman sitting behind me on a late-night flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The plane was dark and quiet. A man I assumed to be her husband murmured almost… Read more

‘We have religion,’ the old saying goes, ‘you have magic.’ Or superstition, if you prefer. We are pure in our religious devotion, high-minded, spiritual, adjusting the self into the proper worshipful posture towards the Divine whatchamacallit. You are just trying to manipulate whatever means you can to get something to make you feel better. No one says this anymore. It wouldn’t be very nice. No one looks at another culture and judges their religious or whatever kind of expression as… Read more