The problem is, when we get too attached to one particular story—a story about who we are… and what kind of world we’re living in… what kind of people are around us… we lose perspective. Our perception gets narrow. In short, we suffer, and we cause suffering to those around us. 

A talk given on June 8, 2025, for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola.

What if, despite all the evidence to the contrary, people are inherently good and empathetic? What if we are in a truer and more beautiful than we usually let ourselves believe?

I don’t really care whether reincarnation is real in an afterlife sense, but I know that some of the most beautiful stories I’ve encountered have been reincarnation stories. Over the years, I’ve become an evangelist for these stories. I haven’t taken to standing on street corners yet, but I’m close.

Sometimes I panic about our ecological situation. I’ve gotten better at coping, but still. Sometimes a rogue fact will fly across my field of vision—some well-meaning statistic or off-hand comment—and bang, there it is. “That funny feeling,” as Bo Burnham calls it. The dropping sensation. The O God. It’s going to end. How did I forget? It’s like the anxiety waits until my guard is down and then, when I least expect it, it pounces.

What if, paradoxically, the best way to help others change is to accept them, just as they are?

Epiphany is an incredibly underrated holiday. Traveling wizards. Space magic. Espionage. Could a plastic Nativity scene ever really do justice to the fantasy sci-fi political drama that is Epiphany?