We Are Not What We Know But

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

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.

... 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.

In Many Ways, Constancy Is An Illusion. After All, Our Ancestors Were Immigrants, Many Of Them Moving On Every Few Years; Today We Are Migrants In Time. Unless Teachers Can Hold Up A Model Of Lifelong Learning And Adaptation, Graduates Are Likely To Find Themselves Trapped Into Obsolescence As The World Changes Around Them. Of Any Stopping Place In Life, It Is Good To Ask Whether It Will Be A Good Place From Which To Go On As Well As A Good Place To Remain.

The Caretaking Has To Be Done. "somebody's Got To Be The Mommy." Individually, We Underestimate This Need, And As A Society We Make Inadequate Provision For It. Women Take Up The Slack, Making The Need Invisible As We Step In To Fill It.