Goals Too Clearly Defined Can Become Blinkers.

Human Beings Do Not Eat Nutrients, They Eat Food.

Every Loss Recapitulates Earlier Losses, But Every Affirmation Of Identity Echoes Earlier Moments Of Clarity.

The Human Species Thinks In Metaphors And Learns Through Stories.

... As We Age We Have Not Only To Readdress Earlier Developmental Crises But Also Somehow To Find The Way To Three Affirmations That May Seem To Conflict. ... We Have To Affirm Our Own Life. We Have To Affirm Our Own Death. And We Have To Affirm Love, Both Given And Received.

Orthodox Judaism Is A Thicket Of Detailed Injunctions, Biblical Commandments Elaborated During Centuries Of Prohibited Proselytizing, Functioning To Limit Interaction With Outsiders. At The Opposite Extreme, Islam, Still The Most Rapidly Expanding Of Faiths, Demands Little Immediate Knowledge From Those Who Would Convert. The Convert Is Permitted To Enter And Then To Learn By Participation, Although There Are Plenty Of Detailed Regulations And Abstruse Theological Ideas To Be Pursued Later, And The Regulations Do Effectively Separate Believers From Nonbelievers.