In preparing for a speech I have to do in a couple months, I have been reading a short novel by the German writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Hermann Hesse. I had not read Hesse for quite some time. I first encountered him in the 60s, when I was in graduate school. Although he died in 1962, his writings were very popular in the 60s with all the chaos and searching that characterized that tumultuous period. Hesse grew up religiously in a Pietist family. Pietism is a German version of Puritanism. It is a Reformation movement that focused on feelings (and not just thoughts) and on experience. Hesse also developed an interest in Buddhism and other Eastern religions. His life seemed to be a life-long search for religious meaning. It was for these reasons he appealed so much to the spirit of the 60s and later. It is during this period we see the seeds of an interest in spirituality, rather than religion, be...