I used to think people on spiritual paths were world-withdrawers, lurking about in melancholy woodland places. They were the incense burners, the chanters, the shavers of heads, the meditators. But what if the spiritual path leads one not away from but right back into the world, with a renewed sense of vigor for amending it? Amending the world, fixing it up, saving it from itself: these are the ideas that were at home in my mother's house. It never occurred to me (it would have been a forbidden, heretical idea) that spiritual people might be comrades in this endeavor.
— Kim Chernin, In My Father's Garden