Being alone in our present society raises an important question about identity and well-being.

Art forms render ideas accessible to readers who could not receive those insights in any other format.

We think we are unique, special and deserving of happiness, but we are terrified of being alone.

Art is an artificial organization of experience.

Of course we also live in a world of great beauty, sacrificial and passionate love, tenderness, prosperity, courage and joy. But quite a lot of all that seems to happen regardless of the paradigm and the high thoughts of philosophy. It has always happened. It is precisely because it has always happened that we go on wrestling with these issues in the hope that it can happen more often and for more people.

Being alone in our present society raises an important question about identity and well-being.

Natural history is not taught in seminary. This is curious, as most people in pastoral ministry are about 567 times more likely to be asked about cosmology or sub-nuclear physics or human biology or evolution than they are to be asked about irregular Greek verbs or the danger of the patripassionist heresy. If we monotheists are going to go around claiming that our "God made the heaven and the earth," it is not unreasonable to expect us to know something about what that heaven and earth actually are.