chapter10What’s an Inner Life and Who Needs It?

Ellen Schwartz

trading fear for trust andplanting seeds of loving-kindness

Renew thyself completely each day;do it again, and again,and forever again.

—H. D. Thoreau

My religion is kindness.

—Dalai Lama

 

RELIGION AND DOGMA DOMINATED MY CHILDHOOD AND EARLY ADULTHOOD. We were Catholics, the “one, true faith.” The other Christian sects were unfortunately misguided, and as for those poor savages in the underdeveloped world, we saved our candy money during Lent to pay for missionaries who would “save the pagan babies.”

In my late teens and early twenties, when I would come home from college for the summer, I took to driving to the cemetery and parking beneath the old sprawling trees during the hour ...

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