The greatest plague on the
land is not COVID-19 as hor-
rendous as it is. It is the
plague of certitude. Viruses

come and go but certitude
has raped and pillaged for
generation after generation.
It gives birth to opinions of

absoluteness to absolute
differences of opinions, to
skirmishes, to fights, to wars,
to annihilation, to ethnic clean-

sing (if ever there was lying
language), to genocide and
on and on. The antidote to
certitude with its attending

calamities is mystery and
mystery births wonder, open-
ness, questioning and dis-
covering and more question-

ing and more discovering and
realizing that the wonder,
openness, questioning are
much better playmates than

the answers, which lead to
certitude, which leads not to
playgrounds but death marches
and concentration camps

(there’s another false euphem-
istic term; better just call it
death) and, well, you get the
picture and we have the choice…

at least for a while.