Being human cannot be borne alone. We need other presences. We need soft night noises—a mother speaking downstairs, a grandfather rumbling in response, cars swishing past on Philadelphia Avenue and their headlights wheeling around the room. We need the little clicks and signs of a sustaining otherness. We need the Gods.

–John Updike

This is the epigraph to Dani Shapiro’s new memoir, Devotion, to which I am devoting myself at night; I love these configurations of God as relationship, God as connection, God as sound and pulse and joy.  Especially today. An awful hard day at school–fraught with misunderstandings. I miss my joy today.