Goodman on Religion

Posted on June 5, 2008
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Great quote from Allegra Goodman on religion – especially ritual. (HT: The Frontal Cortex)

And yet, inexorably, some of my own religion rubbed off on me. Might that be the way belief works for some people? Not a sudden epiphany but a long, slow accumulation of Sabbaths. No road-to-Damascus conversion but a kind of coin rubbing, in which ritual and repetition begin to reveal the credo underneath. As I grew older, I was drawn to poetry, and I began to study the haftarah–the weekly selection from the prophets. As I grew busier, I began to appreciate time away from the world. Services became a refuge. I did not need to rest when I was a child, because I did not work. I did not want to come inside, because the outside world was still entirely beautiful to me.