Monotony And Repetition Are Characteristic Of Many

Learning To Savor The Vertigo Of Doing Without Answers Or Making Do With Fragmentary Ones Opens Up The Pleasures Of Recognizing And Playing With Patterns, Finding Coherence Within Complexity, Sharing Within Multiplicity.

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.

The Christian Tradition Was Passed On To Me As A Great Rich Mixture, A Bouillabaisse Of Human Imagination And Wonder Brewed From The Richness Of Individual Lives.

Fluidity And Discontinuity Are Central To The Reality In Which We Live.

A Suprising Number Of Physicians Manage To Continue To Care About Persons Even After The Rigors Of Medical Training.