TRUTH IN FICTION

FOR THIRTY YEARS now, I’ve been going on retreat several times a year, often for weeks at a time. From my small room in a Benedictine hermitage high up above the California coastline, the sea scintillates all around, a still blue plate impossible to refute. The hills behind me are golden with poppies in the spring, and the monks wave sheaves of gilded Pampas grass on their Palm Sunday processions across the parking lot. All binaries dissolve in the ringing silence, and when I step into the light-filled chapel, I know that the essential, foundational reality of the world is perfection.

Then two days later I’m back on the freeway. Emails from my bosses are pouring in, and