It's at the moment when the plane begins to bump and roll, when it feels as if we're in nothing more than a tin can, lurching around 36,000 feet up in the sky, that the singing begins. The experts on anxiety teach that distraction works well, so I am religious...

For much of my life I gazed upon the world through the windshield of a suburban car. Zooming past Midwestern strip malls, parking lots and Taco Bells, I was no mystic. A one-inch pane of glass sealed me from the outside world, and in suburban St. Louis, where the streets...