I was in fourth grade in 1963 during the Cuban Missile Crisis when there was apparently a real possibility of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Somewhere in that timeframe I became aware of this possibility, probably as a result of TV news coverage and a couple “Duck & Cover” exercises led by my teacher in my elementary school classroom. For those of you too young to remember these exercises, you were spared a fearful experience of powerlessness and contemplation of the abyss. For me, it was my first confrontation with my own mortality, possibilities for an afterlife and the existence of god. Continue reading →