I made the Thursday trek to a dark downstairs basement and sat in a semicircle of folding chairs. Open prayer. Introduce anyone new. Say whether we stayed clean that week. Recite the 12 steps.

This Christian text you’ve never heard of, The Shepherd of Hermas, barely mentions Jesus − but it was a favorite of early Christians far and wide for five centuries.

There was nothing inside but darkness. That’s it? This is the gift?

In the underworld of the soul, everything is reversed. The darkness becomes the place of seeing.

One way you can trace ancient culture’s astronomy knowledge is via mythology.

Hope for new life is real, because we have seen it grow from scarred earth.

Every candle, every dance, repairs the cracks of the world.

The Met was my first house of worship. It’s where I did more than fall in love with art of all kinds. I fell in love with something I couldn’t express as a seven-year-old