Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour of reflection.
There is a question threading through public life that refuses to stay quiet: can a society be truly neutral about the deepest things? One essayist reminds us that the public square is never empty of belief. Someone's vision of justice always governs it, whether we name that vision or not.
And yet, when we ask what vision should govern us, we find ourselves in contested territory. As democratic socialism finds wider audiences in America, the question being raised is not simply political but philosophical: do we understand the ideas we are being asked to embrace, and are we thinking carefully enough before we do?
From politics, we turn to something more intimate. Richard Feynman, one of the great minds of modern physics, wrote a letter to his wife after her death, a letter he knew she could never read. In it, the man who spent his life measuring the universe confessed that love had no equation, no solution, only an ache that outlasted everything he could explain.
That is this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
