20210618 013118

I started Strange Rites by Tara Isabella Burton last night over ice cream.

She writes like a sociologist by exploring the history of religious affiliation and syncretism in the United States. Her sweeping review of a US which began pluralistic and intuitional, became more uniform and institutional after two world wars, then is shifting back to pluralistic intuition was novel and insightful.

Spirituality remixed is a fitting description of our day, both what I see in the world and my own inclinations, but a threat beyond our collective power, like a world war, will draw us back into the security and necessity of compromised individuality for the sake of peace and community.