Column: in a World that Keeps on Pushin’ Me Around

A few years ago, two Catholic priests, a humanist cleric, a Reformed cantor, a few others with various depths of Christian religious commitment, and a Witch got together on Cape Cod to spend one last summer together with an ill friend, who was an agnostic on a good day. Her house overlooked a salt marsh that gave way to a shallow cove with noticeable tides. It was a paragon to the idea conjured by the term “New England beach house,” down to the long piers over sand dunes and the classic smell of seashore and linens. We all arrived throughout an early August day, and by 4 p.m. we had each had agreed not tot discuss religion, and stay the entire weekend no matter what happened. Our host had insisted, and delivered the command with the flair of Truman Capote in Murder by Death avec chapeau, no less.