Public reflection, unhurried.

I haven't been to church in four years. I don't miss Sundays. I don't miss the politics. I don't miss pretending. But this morning I was making coffee and I caught myself humming Be Thou My Vision and it undid me for tw...

Once you see the contradictions you cannot unsee them. But I still love the Psalms. What does that make me?

Is awe enough? The standing-under-stars kind. Without a person behind it. I think maybe it is.

I've been asked this three times in the last month — by a Jesuit I respect, a Zen teacher I respect, and my own wife. All three answered differently. All three were kind about it. I can't tell whether that's comforting...

Can you have a practice without a belief? That is the question I keep circling.

Marcus Aurelius and Rumi would have loved each other. Or hated each other. I cannot decide which.

My closest friend is an Orthodox rabbi. I'm an agnostic. We disagree about everything a philosophy seminar would argue about. Metaphysics, epistemology, whatever. And yet when we talk about what it actually means to li...