Under the Banyan Tree

I love receiving packages, especially unexpected ones (which generally means I just forgot about having ordered something). Last week I got a book in the mail. A good, old fashioned book in the good, old fashioned mail. A rectangular cardboard box with my name in Courier type on the addressee label. A surprise on top of the sycamore leaves at my doorstep. I placed the box on the kitchen island and sliced through the tape with the knife I most commonly use for vegetables, not knowing this book would be as healthy for me as grated carrots or steamed broccoli. I hadn't remembered ordering a book and certainly not one that would cause me to think this much. Call it my subconscious understanding what I needed or simply my immediate, and ostensibly insignificant, response to yet another invitation to peruse a possible creative writing textbook, but something knew I would find this book inspiring. The book is a collection of essays by acclaimed writers reflecting on lines from...

I'm not a religious person but I do spend ample time ruminating on the spiritual, the unseen. I read books on everything from Viking myths to Buddhism to quantum physics. My husband thinks if our marriage were a high school, I'd be the one voted most likely to join a cult. But he's wrong. I might be most likely to be disillusioned or to search longer than most, but I wouldn't join an actual cult. I'm not great at blindly following. And I don't even like Kool Aid. I do like to question things. I'm not sure what I’m searching for, really, or why I continue but I just can't stop. I attribute much of this to residual religious teachings from my childhood. Or maybe it's more than that -- a sense that 21 st century humans  can't possibly comprehend more than a sliver of the universe. Modern science theorizes, discovers, alters postulations and theorizes again. But the enormity of what we're theorizing about is unfathomable. And the infinite p...