My colleague the physician Will Cooke, who in his work with addicted people in the Appalachian-adjacent region of Southern Indiana has seen his share of spiritual openings, described to me “this spark inside of everyone, that shimmering self waiting to be revealed, that’s just cluttered and stacked with all this stuff that life has stuck to them, and they can’t shine. But if we pull that away a little bit at a time and reveal who they are, it’s always something beautiful.”
