Francine Thompson

I decided to finally interview Adam in 2015, when I read the foreword he wrote to a book called The Good Book , in which an array of intellectual and literary figures reflect on the Bible. Adam Gopnik sums up a core irony of our secular age in this way: “Our ancestors acknowledged doubt while practicing faith. We moderns are drawn to faith while pr... See more

that's why I think of myself as a person of faith and why my mantra is, I don't know. Because to presume to know, to presume that I can order the universe or understand all of the powers at play, or that I understand or know or can predict with absolute accuracy, everything that's going to happen or that we live in some sort of mechanic, materialis... See more

what religion brings us is not a dogma but a practice. That’s the rich thing it brings us. That’s the significant thing that it brings us, and that the idea of having a spiritual practice is one that’s completely compatible with the idea of being extremely skeptical of dogma; that those two things are not at war. They may be in tension, the way so ... See more

I have this odd sense that what was outside has become very inside. And that whatever I mean by “God” is, as my Muslim friends say, as close to me as the heartbeat in my neck.

But I recognize why that level of order and certainty is very reassuring, as is this idea that you do a certain amount of things and you end up getting your reward, your just reward at the. But as we all know, that is not life. Life is not a simple math problem. It's not algebra. It's far, far more complex. And I think staying because we don't need... See more

I don't know, it's just a place to rest really, honestly. It's a place to rest outside of certainty. Try it. You might find it deeply, deeply comforting, even though it promises to resolve absolutely nothing.

every spiritual practice begins with the body.

ut then we have to remember like it's never out there that we're gonna find the answers that we need. It is only in here and we have to sort of deprogram or de-train ourselves from thinking from that type of thinking: If I just do all of these things, I'll be, well, if I d just do all of these things, I'll be good. If I just do all of these things,... See more