When I was a kid, I pictured the part of the Christmas story about “no room at the inn” as a kind of neon no vacancy sign, blinking from the ancient motels of Biblical days. Read more »

Some days are special not because there is a birthday or a holiday—although those are very special days. Some days are special because if you are paying close attention, you get a sign. Read more »

When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me… Read more »

At home on a bookshelf we have a massive folio-style slipcover book titled Cabinet of Natural Curiosities by Albertus Seba, a pharmacist in eighteenth-century Amsterdam. Read more »

People go astray in their search for God because they do not take the right starting-point. We should never begin by asking, “Is there a God?”– as though God could be something outside of ordinary experience; or, to put it in the old-fashioned way, something outside of Nature. Read more »

“For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.” —Elie Wiesel

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”—Socrates

“God has no religion.” —Mahatma Gandhi

“All peoples are members of the same body, created from one essence. ” —Saadi

“The winds of grace are always blowing but you have to raise the sail.”—Ramakrishna

For many of us, it proves impossible to limit religious thought to a narrow creed. The more we learn, the more difficult it becomes to restrict ourselves to the definition of ultimate reality, or God, that we grew up with, or held when we were young. Read more »

I wrote this prayer sitting in a military chapel in Afghanistan. The prayer was inspired by my encounter with a service-member I met. Read more »

Well-meaning people explain that it doesn’t matter what religion I choose, but I must choose, and only one. Only then, they say, can I go truly deep into a religion. Read more »