The near universal human struggle to understand spirituality is, as with nearly all great things, the source of both rapture and rupture. My own such experience is almost omnipresent, sometimes so intensely I have difficulty breathing as this invisible band originating in my diaphragm stretches out into the cosmos far beyond sight. That band is elastic, manifesting varying degrees of tension. Why I have to deal with this I don't know. I don't ask for these feelings. I suspect that they are intimately related to the streak of melancholy permeating my nature.

My dear now-dead friend was baptized a few days ago. A lifetime of agnostic doubt ended with baptism. There is something richly significant in that act. The rapture of religion is the hope for salvation.

This is also the source of my astonished bewilderment at the peculiarities of religion. As the teachings of any one religion become more exclusive, so does that religion rupture its believers from other believers. This is most notably true of two of the great world religions: Christianity and Islam. Each teaches that only through its god is salvation; all others are eternally doomed. Prayer brings some followers of one to their knees; it prostrates followers of the other. Five times a day. Power that great is evidence of the hope they offer. This also brings me to my utter confusion: I cannot understand the concept of a captive god, wholly owned by one religion or another. How so many people can think such things is beyond my comprehension.

I understand and feel the desire to comprehend and to manage the ravages of spirituality. I understand and feel the desire for community in these efforts. I cannot understand the hubris of exclusion in the process of satisfying those desires. Too much pain is added to the pain and joy and sorrow and boredom and ecstasy and monotony and engagement that is living.

Giving eulogies turns my thoughts to eternity.