First to speak was the school’s chaplain, who defined spirituality as the divinity within each and every living creature, no person’s （or animal’s!） greater than any other person’s （or animal’s!）。 “In my yoga class,” she said, “my favorite part is always the namaste, which comes at the end.” And there, she laughed at herself. “As those of us who do yoga know, we love namaste because it comes at the end!” （Much nodding and grinned approval in the congregation of affluent Brooklynites.） “But what does namaste actually mean? It means: I bow to the divine light within you and you bow to the divine light within me. Now I know yoga is not a religion, though we’ve all met practitioners we might describe as fanatics. But this little insight contains a great profundity: all of us, bringing our little lights together to form what the apostles of Jesus might have called ‘the light of the world.’ This is the spiritual, and it’s within and around us all, at all times. We may find our way to it through a text on a page. We may find it through love or our family and friends or in service to others. We may call this ‘God.’ It makes absolutely no difference what we call it: it is our divinity that makes each one of us deeply special.”
Then, after the expected applause, Dr. Vernon Loring walked to the podium, every inch the white cis-gendered male he was, and dressed in a gray tweed three-piece suit and a scowl for the occasion. Before he’d said a word, he was already an object of general disapprobation. Within minutes he’d sent the entire Walden community shuddering into hysteria.
According to Vernon Loring, PhD, the absurd and inadequate interpretation of “spirituality” they had all just been treated to ought to send each and every student home to Papa and Mama to demand they withhold tuition until the school ponied up some capable instructors. The divine light inside of me bowing to the divine light inside of you? Was he—were any of them—supposed to listen to this garbage with a straight face? Because he had been under the impression that an established school like Walden, with an impressive price tag and a frankly surprising （under the circumstances） 14 percent admit rate, ought to be capable of recognizing the anti-intellectual drivel they had all just been treated to, by a school official—its chaplain, no less!—and banish it to its natural habitat: a student club, for example, alongside the tai chi enthusiasts or the tiddlywinks-curious.
“Fucking hell,” someone said, behind Harrison. But he didn’t want to turn his head, not even long enough to see who it was. A few rows ahead of Harrison, a woman got to her feet and began moving to the back of the room, her face a rictus of horror.
“The narcissism I will not even engage with,” Vernon Loring scolded. “We all are narcissists, myself included, you will doubtless be stunned to learn, but this is an inextricable part of our success as a species. No, what I object to is the fact that you young students are in a position of privilege, with all human knowledge at your fingertips, and yet you are paralyzed by guilt over the moral failings of people who died centuries before you were born.” A popular teacher of pottery darted up the center aisle to crouch beside Aaron and whisper furiously into his ear. “Can even one of you explain to me why you are content to wade around in this kind of anti-intellectual muck, apparently without complaint?”
Harrison heard himself make a sound, something primal, deep in his own throat. At the same moment, an entire row of Walden seniors near the front of the community room stood in unison and turned their backs, showing their stricken expressions to the rest of the school. The speaker, blithely ignoring this and every other iteration of audience disapproval, had now begun his prepared remarks by batting aside the very notion of “spirituality” with a rather gleeful reference to Madame Blavatsky （a person Harrison felt certain few of his schoolmates could identify）， then compressed into twenty minutes the most cogent yet comprehensive history of Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheism Harrison had ever encountered, complete with political context and a spattering of references to William James. “Brother of Henry,” he informed his audience helpfully.
Harrison observed that this was not, in fact, helpful to his fellow students.
“I will now withstand your criticisms,” Dr. Loring announced, with clear delight, when he came to the end of his speech.