Crossword-Solution: INSULTING 9 letters, 99 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 10

One of the most frustrating words in the human language, as far as I could tell, was love. So much meaning attached to this one little word. People bandied it about freely, using it todescribe their attachments to possessions, pets, vacation destinations, and favorite foods. In thesame breath they then applied this word to the person they considered most important in theirlives. Wasn’t that insulting? Shouldn’t there be some other term to describe deeper emotion?

I want to love you without clutching, appreciate you without judging, join you without invading, invite you without demanding, leave you without guilt, criticize you without blaming, and help you without insulting. If I can have the same from you, then we can truly meet and enrich each other.

About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough — and even miraculous enough if you insist — I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find …