God, Prayer, Suicide, and Philosophy: Reflections on Some of the Issues of Life

Most of the time in our daily lives we just toss our words at one another, using them to have our own say, and never really listening to them and what they may have to say to us. We just toss them at one another like rice at a wedding--utterly unmindful of what rice symbolizes: fertility, fecundity, and felicity. As we usually use them, we just toss around that way such ancient words as 'God,' 'prayer,' 'suicide,' and 'philosophy,' with no more thought than we use such expressions as 'good morning' or good night.' We may occupy such words, as invading troops might occupy a conquered country, but we never really dwell in them. At most they are houses, and never become homes. The reflections in this book by a retired professor of philosophy are attempts to re-inhabit such words, to come to dwell in them again as addresses of some of the issues of life, so that life might again issue forth from them.