For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World

But as I grew, I realized the puzzle had no edges, no borders. It went on forever in all directions. Every new piece just revealed how many more pieces were still missing. I came to understand that I could never get to the complete picture.

which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. —ALEXANDER POPE

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” It applies to nations, religions, philosophies, and cultures, too.

By convention there is color, by convention sweetness, by convention bitterness; in reality there are atoms and space. —DEMOCRITUS

How astonishing that being bathed in rays of light from a 4.6-billion-year-old mass of hydrogen and helium located 93 million miles away can make us feel happy?

In this plate of food, I see clearly the presence of the entire universe supporting my existence.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly t

As long as I get to spend it with you, one blink of an eye in the vastness is enough for me.

From the Maya to the Shawnee, from the indigenous people of the Philippines to the indigenous people of Finland, the moon has been considered both overtly womanly and worthy of worship. Perhaps the connection comes from the parallel natural cycle of our bodies. Or maybe it’s because, for so much of human history, women have been allowed so few role