Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour of reflection.
A federal appeals court has ruled that Maine may require private Christian schools to follow the state's LGBT nondiscrimination policies as a condition of receiving public tuition assistance. It is a ruling that draws a long, unresolved tension between religious identity and civic participation into sharper relief, asking what it means to belong to a shared public life.
From questions of belonging, we turn to questions of loyalty across time. A new poll reveals a generational divide forming within the Republican Party over Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. Younger Republicans are drifting from positions long held as settled, suggesting that inherited certainties have shorter lives than we sometimes imagine.
And from a cave in southern Turkey, something quieter and more ancient. Archaeologists now believe that modern humans and Neanderthals may have shared not only space but cultural practice, dwelling together in ways that blur the boundary we once drew so firmly between us and them. Perhaps kinship runs deeper, and stranger, than our categories allow.
That is this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
