religion
I put my faith in therapy as others do in religion, or philosophy.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 175.
You get on this simple machine, you hold the handlebars, you press down on the pedals with your feet, and you go. That’s what you do, and to a boy of eight or nine, going is the thing, going is living. It is experience, art, observation. It is even religion, even if you are an atheist or think you are. As for myself, I have never had any impulse to confine myself to any such theory of disbelief. I am a believer, and my faith is enlarged by the awesome reality of the bicycle, and by the meaning of ownership and usage of the contraption, or marvel.
Foreword, The Noiseless Tenor: The Bicycle in Literature, ed. by James E. Starrs (New Jersey: Cornwall Books, 1982), 12.
Chapter books were my salvation, in the same way as Jesus was for other kids. Our family was always broke, but my parents always shelled out our version of a monthly bar bill for Scholastic paperbacks. Thank you, Astrid Lindgren; when you gave us Pippi Longstocking, you gave me life. I read the book like I read the first issue of Ms. magazine ten years later. The experience was like Helen Keller breaking the code for the word ‘water.’ I wanted to race around spreading the good news. I could breathe again, forever. There was going to be a spot for me in this joint, the earth, after all. It was never going to be a great match for someone as bright and strange as me, but books were going to make it survivable.
“The Prayer of an Unconventional Family,” Opinionator, New York Times, November 17, 2012.
Nothing is sacred anymore, even the sacred. And even that most secret ritual of the Roman Catholic faith, the veiled black confessional box.
Once funeral homes began live-streaming funerals, it was probably inevitable. But now confessions are not only about touching the soul, but touching the screen.
“Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Linked,” The New York Times, February 8, 2011.