It’s a pilgrimage, like a trek around Mount Kailash, or perhaps Bodh Gaya, but it’s life itself, the whole thing, every moment. On the high passes of Mount Kailash, pilgrims hope for a kind of death, a rebirth of spirit, and it’s not a bad thing to go there, do that, if time and money allow.

In 1927 a Roman Catholic priest and scientist Georges Lemaitre proposed what later became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, based on work by Edwin Hubble who theorized and then proved that the Universe was getting bigger and bigger. Many scientists have discovered other...

A retelling of a Hawaiian legend. The god Maui was the smallest but smartest of his brothers, who often made fun of him because he couldn’t fish very well. Sometimes Maui would go out on a boat with his brothers, distract them when they had a fish on the line, and steal it from them, claiming it...

When my youngest daughter was about two years old she came across a tattered paperback on our bookshelves, Ten Thousand Baby Names, and for a little while this was her favorite book. Drawn by the shining face of the baby on the cover, she brought it to me over and over and demanded that I read...

Children widen the circle of our being in ways that are limitless. Every baby that’s born connects us to our history, our own parents, grandparents and unknown forbears who brought new life to the world in each successive generation. Every baby that’s born links us to the future, to a world yet...