For the last 250 years or so, secularists have waited patiently for the fulfilment of their prediction that religion would die out in the next generation or two. But religious people have been singularly uncooperative, and new strategies have developed for controlling this blight on human progress. If religion won't "wither away" as philosopher Richard Rorty has wished, then perhaps it can be privatized and thereby removed from influence on public life‚ - sort of like localizing an outbreak of the plague.

A community, a family, is a group of people who share common stories. The health of any community depends directly on the health of the stories the community embraces.

Reflection on the infinite seems to call, almost by definition, for infinite reflection.

The least livable life is the one without coherence-nothing connects, nothing means anything. Stories make connections. They allow us to see our past, our present, and our future as interrelated and purposeful.... The stories we value most reassure us that life is worth the pain, that meaning is not an illusion, and that others share our experience with us.

We do not choose between a life of difficulty and a life of ease. We simply choose for what purpose we will work, sometimes suffer, and hopefully endure.

Broken stories can be healed. Diseased stories can be replaced by healthy ones. We are free to change the stories by which we live.

We're not in people's faces, but I guess we're kind of in people's ears.