Stories about things that did happen.

Holyism

Ren keeps stretching the limits of my thinking. Her questions and comments make me think beyond my own experience and sometimes beyond the limits of my own intellectual habits. There is almost a half a century between us, so when I think about something for her, I try not to look at it only through the life I have already lived. I also try to imagine the world through the eyes of a child who may have another hundred years ahead of her.

Today I was thinking about which books I could ever tell her are “wrong” for her.

And I realized that perhaps the wrong book is not a particular book.

I started thinking about all the books humanity has treated as unquestionable truth—books about God, communism, capitalism, nationalism, and all the other “isms.” Religious or political, they can become dangerous in the same way: when we stop questioning them.

That thought gave me a new word: Holyism.

I use the word Holyism for the human tendency to make ideas sacred.

A holy book does not have to be a religious book. Any book, theory, or ideology can become “holy” when we give it the authority of final truth. The moment we decide that a doctrine contains all the answers, we begin to judge real life through the book instead of judging the book through real life.

Every book is written by people, in a particular time, from a particular perspective. It carries the limits, hopes, fears, knowledge, and biases of its authors and its age. But humanity is larger than any doctrine. Real people are more complicated than any system created to explain them.

Maybe this is what I would like Ren to learn—not which books are right and which books are wrong, but that she has the right to question all of them.

And Holyism itself should not become another “ism” with a ready-made truth. If my idea asks us to question every doctrine, then it must also allow itself to be questioned. Otherwise, Holyism would become exactly what it is trying to describe.

Perhaps the wrong book is not one particular book.

Perhaps the wrong book is any book we stop questioning.

Chicago, USA, 2026

Stories that sound nice to hear.

I Was Made in Ukraine

I was made in Ukraine.

I was made from sun and wind,

from scarlet poppies, pure white daisies,

from fields of heavy soil.

I was made from clay and rain,

from golden, timeless grains

covered in linden honey.

I was made from childish laughter,

from a silly goose who lost his worm

and tried to catch it in the water.

I was made in woods and hollows,

from fresh pine resin—tomorrow’s amber,

polished softly by the moss.

I was made from fireflies and crickets,

who spark eternal life with their song

and paint the darkness in bright colors.

I was made in Ukraine.

I was made of freedom.

I was made for love and peace.

09.28.2025