The Unclad Soul

In Mario Puzo’s brilliant novel, “The Godfather,” the mafia leaders meet for a critical negotiation to stop the fighting between families and to end the senseless bloodshed. In a room full of the men who wielded the most power a truce was established. Puzo writes, “The other Dons in the room applauded and rose to shake hands with everybody in sight and to congratulate Don Corleone and Don Tattaglia on their new friendship. It was not perhaps the warmest friendship in the world, they would not send each other Christmas gift greetings, but they would not murder each other. That was friendship enough in this world, all that was needed.” This is in a strange way what international political diplomacy is about. It is sitting down with your enemies and trying to find a way to keep from killing each other. It is setting up rules and codes of conduct and lines that can’t be crossed, as well as giving one another something in return, in order to establish an atmosphere of peaceful toleranc...

If your religion, your faith, helps you handle your addictions, brings you emotional balance and enables you to deal intelligently with life in healthy ways, then wonderful. I applaud you. If your religion/faith helps you live with a terminal illness or a lifelong disability with grace and courage and dignity, then you are an inspiration and someone I truly admire. If your religion/faith enables you to be understanding and compassionate of all people everywhere, if it creates a welcome in your heart for the oppressed and the forgotten and the different, if it makes you genuinely tolerant of other religions, if it moves you to social action, to deeds of kindness and generosity, then I respect you and will appreciate your commitment to your beliefs. But if what you believe in a religious context makes you feel you are more than others, if it leaves you arrogant and removed from the rest of struggling humanity, if it gives you a sense of superiority, the idea that you have some speci...