[...] I think this is because the stuff that's truly interesting about religion is inarticulable.** Plus the truth is that there's nothing about I really know, and nothing about it that anybody, I don't think, really knows; and so when I hear some person try to articulate or persuade me of some specific point about religious stuff I find myself looking at my watch or shifting my feet, immediately and deeply bored. But--each time--this boredom always lasts exactly as long as it takes me to realize that what this person who's trying to talk about religion is really talking about is herself. This happens each time. I'm glazed and scanning for the exit until I get the real gist: though these heartfelt utterances present themselves as assuasive or argumentative, what they really are are--truly, deeply--expressive--expressive of a self's heart's special tangle, of a knowing and verbal self's particular tortured relation to what is unknow- and -sayable. Then it gets interesting again.

**(Which of course paradoxically is a big part of what makes it so interesting, so it all gets really tangled.)