A Solid Cube of Meaning

Tarsila do Amaral — Self-Portrait or Le Manteau Rouge, 1923. Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Fundamentalism and Its “Cure” — Polytheism

The infinite inner space of a story, whether from religion or from daily life, is its soul. If we deprive sacred stories of their mystery, we are left with the brittle shell of fact, the literalism of a single meaning. But when we allow a story its soul, we can discover our own depths through it. Fundamentalism tends to idealize and romanticize a story, winnowing out the darker…