Making life sufferable
The reading discussion group is on a hiatus. In the interim a few thoughts from me. In my first year of graduate school, one of the required readings in my religious studies core class was a book by anthropologist Clifford Geertz. I don’t remember much about what I learned in that class (it was about 18 years ago, after all), but one concept of Geertz’s really stuck with me. Geertz observes that the goal of religion in the realm of suffering is not to reduce suffering, but to