I thought that coming out was going to be the end of my religious life but actually it was the beginning. Because it only afterwards that I could be honest about who I was, what I wanted, how I understood spirituality.

[Bob] Dylan's many quotations from classic American roots music (that song is from an album aptly titled Love and Theft) join the aging poet to a tradition that preceded him and hopefully will outlive him as well.

The most recent incarnation of [Bob] Dylan has been the traveling journeyman/ charlatan who sings roots music, snarls dark lyrics that make "All Along the Watchtower" sound like a Disney tune, hosts an old-school radio show, and turns up in some unusual places, like ads for Chrysler and Victoria's Secret.

[Bob] Dylan is a contemporary Don Quixote, at once besotted by the promise of America and yet also undermining it.

More of the symbols are stock (does [Bob] Dylan really have hogs lying out in the mud somewhere? I doubt it), but that's the point.

I thought that coming out was going to be the end of my religious life but actually it was the beginning. Because it only afterwards that I could be honest about who I was, what I wanted, how I understood spirituality.

All relaxation does is allow the truth to be felt. The mind is cleared, like a dirty window wiped clean, and the magnitude of what we might ordinarily take for granted inspires tears.