Five actresses dressed as nuns casually entered the audience area, in full character, to greet their evening patrons. Three of them were energetic and a little obnoxious, and the other two were more pious and proper as you’d expect from a nunnery.

I skeptically watched for the actresses’ ability to impress me during their ‘pre-show’, to determine how well my night was going to go. As one of the arts, live theater has probably had the least impact on me. My criteria for a good show: confidence, musical skill, and a range of emotion. Any surprises to how they impacted me would be extra credit. So far, it was going to be a mid-to-long evening.

A couple clumsy jokes in and I was thinking, this isn’t quite my thing, but that’s some pretty damn good singing. Plus, that chick with the facial expressions called Amnesia had me curious. Fascinated, actually. She had a goofy but adorable way of contorting her eyes and lips, in a way that matched the words she sang, and in harmony with her absent-minded and a little erratic character.

They each scored high in confidence, as I continually noted their vulnerability and thought to myself, I could never do that. Especially Amnesia. She had just taken the stage for about five minutes, singing in character as her usual absent self, then surprised the audience by pulling out a puppet of a crotchety Mother Superior. She abruptly switched back and forth between two very different characters as she interacted with the doll. I’m sure my eyebrows raised, as I began realizing my laughing was no longer forced.

A few minutes later, Amnesia took the spotlight again, this time, alone. She energetically but almost inadvertently began sharing what she was doing the day she lost her memory. But then her cadence slowed. What felt like random events in her story smoothed into coherent detail, as she recalled her true identity. For a moment I forgot this was theater, as I felt submerged in her story. Then I realized her performance in that moment had me choked up.

But, it’s just a silly play, I thought, as I wiped my eye and shook myself out of it.

For the remaining 20 minutes of the production my mind meandered between the play, and that unexpected reaction I had. There was a time I would have explained that feeling as The Spirit. But other social circles might explain it as a psychological experience rather than something caused by supernatural forces. And yet, somehow the latter explanation doesn’t diminish what still feels sacred.

I still can’t explain what happened during my reaction in the theater. But several days later I still recall the moment silliness melted into somber remembrance. And something about that transformation still gets me.

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Years ago, I wrote about religion to influence others while trying to understand what I believed.

Eventually, I stopped.

Some of my beliefs changed. Others collapsed entirely. And for a while, it was easier to define myself by what I no longer believed than by whatever might take its place.

I’m less interested in doing that now.

I’m interested in what survives certainty.

I still find myself moved by things I can only describe as sacred: a marriage. A human life. The natural world. Music and art. Birth and death. Beauty. The people I love. The strange experience of being conscious and alive in a universe I understand only slightly better than I did before.

I don’t know exactly what God is. I don’t know what happens after we die. I don’t know whether the language we have inherited for these things comes anywhere close to describing things as they really are.

I’m increasingly comfortable saying I don’t know.

But uncertainty hasn’t made the world feel less sacred to me.

Quite the opposite.

What Remained Sacred is a place to write from there.

Not to defend religion. Not to dismantle it. Not to convince anyone to believe what I believe.

Just essays about belief and doubt, family and relationships, nature and science, beauty and mortality—and the things that remain worthy of reverence after certainty is gone.

I’m curious to see where it leads.

— Eric