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>In America, just about everyone is some sort of hyphenated hybrid of race, religion and ethnicity/nationality. Irish-Catholic-American, African-American Pentecostal, Jewish-American secular Humanist, and so on. As Walt Whitman said, "I am large / I contain multitudes." > When interfaith cooperation is done well, it not only helps people from different faith and philosophical backgrounds get along, it creates space for the diverse identities within each of us to become mutually enriching rather than mutually exclusive.

'Some atheists have even gone public with their own prayer-for-health's-sake practice. Sigfried Gold, (recent subject in Washington Post) is a thoughtful, articulate 50-y.o. man who lives in Takoma Park, Md., He long ago decided that there was no stuff in the universe that was not physical - no supernatural, no divine. So he joined a 12-step program to control his food addiction. One of the steps is to turn your problem over to a higher power. So Mr. Gold created a god he doesn't believe exists: a large African-American lesbian. Every day Mr. Gold dropped to his knees to pray, and every day he spent 30 minutes in meditative quiet time. These days Mr. Gold, who calls himself a "born-again atheist," doesn't smoke. He doesn't drink. And, at 5 feet 7 inches, he weighs 150 pounds. So is there a downside? There were times when people got so engrossed with prayer that they seemed almost addicted - so compelled to pray that they could not stop. Some called this "puking" prayer. Whom does this intense imaginative immersion put at risk, and when? A study of the popular Internet game World of Warcraft suggests an intriguing answer. The anthropologist Jeffrey G. Snodgrass and his colleagues set out to study this complex social world. They found people who were relaxed and soothed by their play: "Sometimes I just log on late at night and go out by myself and listen to the soothing music." Others felt addicted: "Once I start playing it's hard to tell whether or not I'll have the willpower to stop." What made the difference was whether people found their primary sense of self inside the game or in the world. When play seemed more important than the real world did, they felt addicted; when it enhanced their experience of reality outside the game, they felt soothed. Prayer works in similar ways. When people use prayer to enhance their real-word selves, they feel good. When it disconnects them from the everyday, as it did for the

Despite obstacles, Obama has made blacks more optimistic