I did not understand the differences between Catholic and Protestant until I was an adult.

Zen is influenced by Daoism, which is not so much a nature-religion in the animistic sense as a nature-philosophy in a cosmic sense.

I'm not an expert here. I'm talking about an experience I had rather than something I intellectually worked out. From what I can gather, the original mystery religions are still, largely, as the name suggests, mysterious. But they are associated with intoxication, fertility and resurrection.

I've drifted in and out of vegetarianism for years.

[My muse] feels nostalgic for Japan, and, perhaps strangely, for the pioneer days of America.

I do not think that my spiritual apprehensions are as dogmatically cultural as those of many people who have been brought up strictly in a particular tradition.

The imagination is fertile. From seeds of the imagination, much is made manifest.