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

So much of ritual is the retelling of stories. A philosophy requires more than just a list of things to believe in. These tenets must be illustrated in a way that moves you, draws you in. My mother’s vivid, careful telling and retelling of the family sagas, origins, heartbreaks, and triumphs were part of an ancient tradition, older than the written

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

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.

My parents taught me that the provable, tangible, verifiable things were sacred, that sometimes the most astonishing ideas are clearly profound, but that when they get labeled as “facts,” we lose sight of their beauty. It doesn’t have to be this way. Science is the source of so much insight worthy of ecstatic celebration.

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

He saw rite, or ritual, as a kind of three-step path from a state of separation to a state of togetherness. Things are one way: separate, apart. Then there is a transformation, a transition, a change. When that is complete, everything is together, united or reunited.

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

Whatever your ancestry, the list of wars, raids, plagues, famines, and droughts your genetic material had to overcome is stunning.

“Science demands a tolerance for ambiguity. Where we are ignorant, we withhold belief. Whatever annoyance the uncertainty engenders serves a higher purpose. It drives us to accumulate better data.”