The essays and short pieces in this collection were written over a
period of eleven years while the author and his partner Carol Motuz ran
Second Thoughts Bookstore on Sunnyside Avenue, in Old Ottawa South. The
Gods at Play offers a provocative approach that rejects the notion of
revelation, but takes religion seriously as myth. It features a partly
(but only partly) tongue-in-cheek defense of polytheism. The Idea of the
Self and At the Limits of Agency use perspectives from Zen and recent
neuro-psychology to re-consider what it means to be a human person
acting in the world. The last essay, Shalom Father, is a letter from the
author to his deceased father, discussing their troubled relationship
and attempting to make a posthumous peace. The short pieces (70 of them)
are selected columns that Richard wrote for OSCAR, the neighborhood's
community newspaper.