god etc.

My cousin Titus proposed a reality that is inferior to a "super-reality" and that the biblical revelations  come from the intersection of these two planes. For me, reality is the super reality... We are using the same words to talk about differen things, but... Reality is everything that is real, it if is not part of reality, it does not exist; if something exists than it is part of reality. But, reality is much much much much bigger and more complex than our feeble minds and limited senses can compredend or detect.
There is the bigness, the sheer mind-blowingly hugeness of the universe. If such numbers can mean anything, these numbers ought to be repeated daily: our galaxay has at least 200 billion stars, and there are estimated to be more than 170 billion galaxies in the universe. Here's a gem from the wikipedia page:
 "Assuming the universe is isotropic, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is roughly the same in every direction—that is, the observable universe is a spherical volume (a ball) centered on the observer, regardless of the shape of the universe as a whole. Every location in the universe has its own observable universe which may or may not overlap with the one centered on the Earth."
While even the size of our own sun is difficult for our little brains to grasp.
And then there is the complexity. The higgs bozons, electrons, protons, atoms, molecules, cell structures, biochemical interactions, bacteria, slime molds, fungi, plants and animals, just on our little planet. The blood cells in the heart of the little bird on the roof of my neighbor's house. The bacteria in the goat chese in a village in Azerbaijan.
And those are just the things we know about. It goes without saying that there is so much more that modern science has not, cannot beign to sketch out.
For me, reality could be a huge dark underground cavern, but we have only a little torch to light our way with. A great work of art, or the systematic application of reason, or surrender to prayer may be able to enlighten us to a greater part of the reality which we cannot directly perceive by our torchlight.
I see spirituality, or monotheistic and daoist spirituality as a way of using the mind to sense all of reality at once. I like to think of it in a mathematical way: we can say "the set of all integers", or "the set of all real numbers". God is the set of all things that exist, or the set that includes everything in reality.  If art can reveal to us truth about the human experience, and science can reveal to us truth about nature, then religion could reveal to us truth about everything at once.
Then it gets a bit tricky if we start to talk about profecy and all. If God, that is, the entirety of reality, contrives to inspire someone at a certain time with a vision which reveals some truth about reality to fellow humans, who am I to dispute them?

economics.

It serves us well to remember that the fundamental fact of modern history is that everyone living in the developed world is vastly richer than all of their ancestors and all humans that came before the 20th century. Many of the cosmopolitan behaviors we consider normal are inherited from the tiny elite classes of europe. Meanwhile the vast majority of lived in ignorance, toil, filth, and exposure to the elements.

So, when I think of Beethoven or Newton or Marco Polo or Cook, and think, "oh, I'd like to do that" I should remember that my ancestors were very likely not riding around doing amazing or interesting things, but   were probably farming potatoes in a bog and dying of tuberculosis. If they weren't then they were extremely privileged compared to their fellow citizens, which is not much to be proud of either.

health care

The New York Times had an article about Rwanda's new universal health care system, which rapidly improved the quality of life in the country.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/rwandas-health-care-miracle/ (Partners in Health's work there is featured in the article. This is the organization founded by Paul Farmer in Haiti, and publicized in the book Mountains beyond Mountains)
The per-capita income in the country is just 550$ a year, though this is has risen much even in the last decade. The system is successful in improving health, but is mostly funded by international aid.
What reading about this reminded me is that health-care does not have to be such a terrible nightmare. We are not re-inventing the wheel. On the contrary we are far behind the curve on healthcare, compared to the developed countries of the world, and we ought to be able to use this to our advantage. It just shouldn't be this hard to reform and improve health care in America.