Pain Is Something That's Common To Human

Every Fundamentalist Movement I've Studied In Judaism, Christianity And Islam Is Convinced At Some Gut, Visceral Level That Secular Liberal Society Wants To Wipe Out Religion.

I Think I Get From My Books What Other People Get From Family Or A Relationship Or From Prayer.

But Human Beings Fall Easily Into Despair, And From The Very Beginning We Invented Stories That Enabled Us To Place Our Lives In A Larger Setting, That Revealed An Underlying Pattern, And Gave Us A Sense That, Against All The Depressing And Chaotic Evidence To The Contrary, Life Had Meaning And Value.

We Constantly Have Ideas And Experiences That Go Beyond What We Can Say Or Know. Most Often These Are Expressed In Art, In Painting, In Music. Music, Everyday Confronts Us With A Form Of Knowing That Doesn't Depend On Words.

Zionism Was Originally A Rebellion Against Religious Judaism And The Plo Charter Was Essentially Secularist. But Because The Conflict Was Allowed To Fester Without A Resolution, Religion Got Sucked Into The Escalating Cycle Of Violence And Became Part Of The Problem.