<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[NeilPerryGordon.com ]]></title><description><![CDATA[Neil Perry Gordon]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/author-blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 05 Sep 2026 23:59:10 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.neilperrygordon.com/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[What Remains When Titles Fall Away?]]></title><description><![CDATA[A reflection on identity, consciousness, and what the soul becomes through a human life. When we meet someone for the first time, we usually ask: What do you do? It is a reasonable question. We need somewhere to begin, and one’s occupation gives us an easy point of entry. It tells us how a person spends their days, what they know, and something about the world they move through. I say that I’m in the drapery and upholstery business. I have spent much of my adult life measuring windows,...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/what-remains-when-titles-fall-away</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a9ca9415add6c9bce59954f</guid><pubDate>Sat, 05 Sep 2026 23:46:15 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_28ab93172ba84076b3660da66f805930~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_818,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[When You See 444, Remember Sam]]></title><description><![CDATA[A father’s journey through grief, consciousness, and the mystery of what continues. There is a moment that occasionally arrives in conversation when I tell someone that I lost my son, Sam. It is rarely something I plan to say. The conversation simply reaches a place where leaving him out would feel less honest than speaking his name. So I say it. “My son passed.” And almost immediately, my attention shifts to the person hearing those words. I watch their expression change. I recognize the...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/when-you-see-444-remember-sam</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a905033bb9b5df7951648ef</guid><pubDate>Thu, 27 Aug 2026 14:58:37 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_b5747e71cf9e4916a514ebd84957d84d~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Born a Thread, Die a Fabric]]></title><description><![CDATA[The identities we weave—and what aging may ask us to loosen Penelope at the loom Saturday morning, I ran into a wise friend at the pâtisserie who shared a quote from a book he was reading. In The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric, John Scheid and Jesper Svenbro describe the individual as one “who is born a thread and dies a fabric.” We are born a thread. Then life begins weaving. We are given a name and placed within a family. Before we understand who we are, others are already...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/born-a-thread-die-a-fabric</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a65cab435380d3132b4219b</guid><pubDate>Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:55:02 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_0278c76a34ce4dfbb9bdc54851b2708e~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Are We Having a Waldorf Moment?]]></title><description><![CDATA[Cultivating Curiosity in the Age of AI The future will not belong to the child who can memorize the most. AI has already won that contest. Machines can summarize, calculate, organize, compare, draft, and explain. They are becoming very good at the tasks schools have traditionally rewarded. So the more urgent question is this: What remains human? Aravind Srinivas, CEO and co-founder of Perplexity, has argued that success in the AI age will depend not only on technical skill but on curiosity,...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/are-we-having-a-waldorf-moment</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a5eb2cb3357dd2c7433e0c3</guid><pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:45:41 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_4291baac532b499b81f3814bb646e33a~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_970,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Long Way Home]]></title><description><![CDATA[What The Odyssey Taught Me About Aging, Identity, and the Journey Back to Ourselves I first encountered The Odyssey as a teenager. What held me then were the fabulous adventures: strange islands, angry gods, temptresses, impossible creatures, violent seas, and a hero who survived whatever the world placed before him. It was the kind of story a young mind could enter completely. Odysseus sailed beyond the edge of the known world. Each new shore promised another danger, another wonder, another...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/the-long-way-home</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a5c8f685e7d848635e39a26</guid><pubDate>Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:50:22 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_de6033d09f9d46e582bf582cf29e4b94~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[I Was 18 When America Turned 200]]></title><description><![CDATA[Fifty years later, the country and I are still becoming. In 1976, America turned 200 years old. I turned 18. That has always felt like more than a coincidence. It was the year I graduated from high school. The year the country was wrapped in Bicentennial colors. Flags were everywhere. Fireworks felt larger than usual. History was suddenly not something trapped in textbooks. It was in the streets, on television, in parades, in speeches, in storefront windows, in the air. America was...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/i-was-18-when-america-turned-200</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a54148c1f3b88f8a4ed37ed</guid><pubDate>Sun, 12 Jul 2026 22:28:07 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_063d41e58be2413586facea212018c22~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_712,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Spiritual Infomercial]]></title><description><![CDATA[My Problem with the Transcendental Meditation Pitch I went to the TM information session open-minded. I believe in meditation. I believe in silence. I believe the mind can settle, the nervous system can soften, and a person can become more available to the deeper currents of life. But what I heard did not feel like wisdom. It felt like a sales pitch wrapped in incense. What shocked me was not that they believed in meditation. I believe in meditation. What shocked me was the size of the...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/the-spiritual-infomercial</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a4a29e6fa58f0a255d3f2d0</guid><pubDate>Sun, 05 Jul 2026 09:58:27 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_a5bc226885734239aa4e8392cf902251~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_833,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Stones Like Offerings, Trees Like Prayers]]></title><description><![CDATA[What Joshua Tree Reveals About Survival, Wonder, and the Soul There are places that impress you. And then there are places that enter you. Places that rearrange something quiet and hidden inside the body. Joshua Tree National Park is one of those places. You arrive thinking you are going to see a desert. A park. Some famous trees. Some unusual rocks. You arrive with the innocent arrogance of someone who still believes the world can be sorted into simple names. Desert. Boulder. Tree. Sky. But...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/stones-like-offerings-trees-like-prayers</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a3fbf10f69fbd60c76c05c7</guid><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 12:21:45 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_6e53bebc9912484389fec1f183ba8c51~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_822,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Day New York Softened]]></title><description><![CDATA[On the Knicks, the Canyon of Heroes, and the rare grace of being happy together. Last week, I wrote about the Knicks winning the championship before I knew they had actually won. I admit, it was a strange thing to do. But I post every Sunday morning at 4:44, and I wanted to be ready. Just in case. Just in case the impossible happened. Just in case fifty-three years of waiting finally ended. Just in case the boy I had been in 1973 was allowed, for one more moment, to come running back into my...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/the-day-new-york-softened</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a37ac63bfacb36e3544667e</guid><pubDate>Sun, 21 Jun 2026 09:21:38 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_c399ae183e034a27b69f6709fe314a0f~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Knicks Win, and I Am Fifteen Again]]></title><description><![CDATA[On boyhood, basketball, grief, and the spiritual weight of a championship. I have yet to write about sports. Not because sports haven’t mattered to me. Quite the opposite. Professional sports in New York have been woven through my life in ways I probably understand more now than I did when I was younger. The teams, the voices on the radio, the heartbreak, the rituals, the arguments, the hope that returns every season, even after it has been humiliated the season before — all of it has been...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/the-knicks-win-and-i-am-fifteen-again</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a2e765c00dbe48b1c790026</guid><pubDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 09:39:47 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_2e4948e06a544b988f6a4c8e1cc8bea5~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Discussion About Consciousness, Steiner, and the Mystery of Human Life]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Lemurians: A New Testament for the Soul Laurence O’Bryan: Neil, I finished The Lemurians last night, and I’ll be honest—I closed the book and thought, I’m not sure if I just read a novel, a spiritual warning, or the beginning of a new religion. Neil Perry Gordon: That’s probably the most dangerous compliment you could give me. Laurence: Dangerous how? Neil: Because I don’t want the book to feel like a religion. That’s actually one of the tensions inside the story. Nathan Adler, the main...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/a-discussion-about-consciousness-steiner-and-the-mystery-of-human-life</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a254360723e0825bac916f9</guid><pubDate>Sun, 07 Jun 2026 10:13:18 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_69361d68e3e74cf4a8b91890653550ce~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Artificial Consciousness and the Soul]]></title><description><![CDATA[No machine can duplicate the breath of the Creator Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical is titled Magnifica Humanitas. The title “Magnificent Humanity” gives us the heart of his warning. This is not merely a Church document about technology. It is a defense of humanity in an age when machines are beginning to imitate thought, language, judgment, creativity, companionship, and perhaps one day, even consciousness. That is why Pope Leo’s warning matters so deeply. The embodied soul is not obsolete...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/artificial-consciousness-and-the-soul</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a1ee256ae0d73d1087e0232</guid><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:08:27 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_7df9d6ad728d4bbb98dd6a2d14fd2222~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_868,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[When Moral Vision Goes Blind]]></title><description><![CDATA[How false accusations become sacred truth inside a trusted community Antisemitism rarely introduces itself honestly. It does not always arrive with torches. Or broken glass. Or slogans shouted in the street. Sometimes it arrives softly. With a flyer. A respected room. A trusted institution. And words that sound noble. Justice. Liberation. Healing. Growth. Truth. Because the words are beautiful, people often fail to notice what has entered beneath them. But spiritual language does not make...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/when-moral-vision-goes-blind</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a12c5c1b883334b04e740be</guid><pubDate>Sun, 24 May 2026 09:36:26 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_c6c4f719d5514ede86d10ae96413fecc~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Are We the Only Children of God?]]></title><description><![CDATA[Project Hail Mary, extraterrestrial life, and a new way of thinking about our origin story. What happens to our idea of God if we discover that we are not alone? For centuries, our origin stories have placed humanity at the center. We were the chosen ones. The final form. The creature made in the image of the Creator. Even when modern science challenged the timeline, the deeper assumption remained:Earth was the stage, humanity was the drama, and the rest of the cosmos was scenery. But what if...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/are-we-the-only-children-of-god</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a09843cdf43effc8ce19d25</guid><pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2026 09:06:17 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_ee20a48b669d4d7cb4d8453b03d5d953~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_675,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Her Currency Is Love]]></title><description><![CDATA[A Mother’s Day Meditation on Strength, Loss, and the Abundance That Remains Some people move through life with such quiet devotion that the world almost misses the miracle. They do not arrive with thunder. They do not stand before crowds. They do not ask to be seen as prophets, warriors, or visionaries. They remain. And sometimes, remaining is the greatest spiritual act of all. This Mother’s Day, I find myself thinking about my mother not only as my mother but as the matriarch of our family....]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/her-currency-is-love</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a0049010cf45a42cca76387</guid><pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 09:04:59 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_a615b3d484c74634b2aeaab9fb0b442a~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[When Loss Becomes Art]]></title><description><![CDATA[Hamnet, Hamlet, and the loss of my son After watching Hamnet, I found myself thinking about Shakespeare, my son Sam, and the unbearable work of turning loss into art. Not the romantic version of that idea. Not the comforting notion that suffering somehow becomes beautiful if one is gifted enough to transform it. I do not believe that. The death of a child is not redeemed by art. It is not balanced by art. It is not justified because something meaningful may later come from it. There is no...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/when-loss-becomes-art</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f70fe5384eb6d61abadcb7</guid><pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2026 09:10:08 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_aac8050fe65b432facb4cc1582479c6b~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_965,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Six Shocking Truths About the Battle of Attu]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Brutal Reality Behind America’s Most Overlooked WWII Conflict There are places in the world that don’t feel like they belong to us. Not because they’re distant. Because they resist memory. Attu is one of those places. Far out in the Aleutian chain—past where most maps stop being useful—there is an island of black rock, wind, and silence. In 1943, American soldiers stepped into freezing surf there and climbed into something far more dangerous than an enemy. They climbed into terrain that...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/six-shocking-truths-about-the-battle-of-attu</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69ee492dcf2afc83b04edfe8</guid><pubDate>Sun, 26 Apr 2026 17:24:14 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_5871452a4b0b46c2a77967549f0743c3~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_906,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[What If the Brain Is Just the Receiver?]]></title><description><![CDATA[WHY THAT QUESTION CHANGES EVERYTHING There is a point—if you follow a thought far enough—where it stops feeling like speculation and starts feeling like recognition. Not belief.Not theory. Recognition. That’s where this began. Not as a spiritual exercise. Not as a rejection of science. Not as an attempt to rewrite anything sacred. But as a simple, uncomfortable question: What if consciousness doesn’t come from the body… but enters it? Sit with that for a second. Because if that’s true—even...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/what-if-the-brain-is-just-the-receiver</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69e498ae8b434ed4ac306f52</guid><pubDate>Sun, 19 Apr 2026 09:09:46 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_5678b2aa96f549cf986bd2e42a53b53b~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_898,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[It's My Birthday, and I'll Write If I Want To ]]></title><description><![CDATA[68 Revolutions Around the Sun—and the Question of Legacy Yes, that’s me with my sister June, brother Craig, cousin Candy, and others. This past Friday, I turned 68—and with it came a question that feels more present now than ever: What, if anything, of a life endures? A friend of mine, Jaimen,  says it in a way I’ve come to love: this marks my 68th revolution around the sun. There is something about that image that feels far more meaningful to me than simply stating my age. It places a human...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/it-s-my-birthday-and-i-ll-write-if-i-want-to</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69da5671f955c1c966262612</guid><pubDate>Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:15:58 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_40d25358ef614e889d88ce0409d6fc6d~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_605,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Seder Is Not a Meal]]></title><description><![CDATA[It’s a Survival Guide The Seder is not a meal. It is a rehearsal. It is a guide. It is the ancient, deliberate act of remembering how a people survived what should have erased them—and how they continue to survive still. We gather around the table not to commemorate a distant past, but to step into a pattern. A pattern forged in bondage, carried through wilderness, and written into the soul of a people who refused to disappear. Because the story of Passover is not simply that we were freed...]]></description><link>https://www.neilperrygordon.com/post/the-seder-is-not-a-meal</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69d2321ec53e2b8fe12159b4</guid><pubDate>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 10:05:02 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a7e6b_46621266a1c241399c6ccb678cc42ab8~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Neil Gordon</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>