During Lent, those with Christian faith enter a 40-day period of spiritual reflection that recalls Jesus’s supposed period of desert reclusion. In our own triumphantly secular society – although sometimes I think this triumph a purely Pyrrhic one – a similar undertaking might be appropriate. Those of us who are without religious faith are, arguably, more in need than the believers of answers to the big questions that – try as we might to divert ourselves – continue to exercise us. Why are we here? What meaning does life have? What constitutes the Good? And what – if anything – will happen to us after we die?
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