I had no experience with nuns, but my parents had taken me to see the Broadway show “The Sound of Music” last month so I knew they helped people figure things out.

When it comes to religion, I’m a believer that each of us is born with an innate spirituality, and religion might best be understood as the language we use to try to understand that experience. Different religions, to me, are like different languages—each carrying a unique cadence and poetry—circling around an ineffable spiritual experience without ever quite touching it.

“If I am in another universe, I’ll send a sign.”

I made the Thursday trek to a dark downstairs basement and sat in a semicircle of folding chairs. Open prayer. Introduce anyone new. Say whether we stayed clean that week. Recite the 12 steps.

This Christian text you’ve never heard of, The Shepherd of Hermas, barely mentions Jesus − but it was a favorite of early Christians far and wide for five centuries.

There was nothing inside but darkness. That’s it? This is the gift?

In the underworld of the soul, everything is reversed. The darkness becomes the place of seeing.

One way you can trace ancient culture’s astronomy knowledge is via mythology.

Hope for new life is real, because we have seen it grow from scarred earth.