Lisa Belkin: David, there is nothing I like more. I once wrote an entire book about this issue. I was one of two Times editorial members who published books that year in which Grover Cleveland played a prominent part. My colleague’s was about the history of national monetary policy and mine was about Grover’s sex life.

Bruce Feiler: First and less spectacularly, the case of Newt Gingrich is being debated on the right, by people like Pete Wehner over at Contentions, among other places. By the way, there is a photo of me running away from Newt floating around the intertubes.

Lisa Belkin: It’s a wonderful picture, summarizing everything the world feels when the words “Newt Gingrich” are uttered.

Bruce Feiler: My official story is that I was minding my own business walking down the stairs at the Russell Senate Office building when suddenly I felt the force of a great world historical brain coming up behind me. The force of cerebral activity was so massive that its reverberations were blotting out lesser brain activity for miles around. Naturally I dove for cover.should disqualify him from higher office. I notice that this charge generally falls entirely along partisan lines. Many Republicans who thought Bill Clinton’s behavior was repulsive are willing to look the other way with Newt, pointing to particular differences between the two cases, and vice-versa.

Lisa Belkin: David, there is nothing I like more. I once wrote an entire book about this issue. I was one of two Times editorial members who published books that year in which Grover Cleveland played a prominent part. My colleague’s was about the history of national monetary policy and mine was about Grover’s sex life.

Bruce Feiler: First and less spectacularly, the case of Newt Gingrich is being debated on the right, by people like Pete Wehner over at Contentions, among other places. By the way, there is a photo of me running away from Newt floating around the intertubes. Naturally I dove for cover; should disqualify him from higher office. I notice that this charge generally falls entirely along partisan lines. Many Republicans who thought Bill Clinton’s behavior was repulsive are willing to look the other way with Newt, pointing to particular differences between the two cases, and vice-versa.

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Beyond their political implications, the religious dimensions of the Middle East uprisings have always been central, particularly to the West. Ever since 9/11, the West and Islam have been locked in a chilly standoff. The relationship was captured by Harvard professor Samuel Huntington’s lightning-rod phrase “the Clash of Civilizations.” Huntington’s thesis, which was roundly trashed when it was published as an article in 1993 but became a best seller in book form following Sept. 11, was that Islam taught Muslims to be hostile to freedom, pluralism and individualism.

At first blush, the Arab Spring seemed to render Huntington’s idea deader than ever. In up to 20 Islamic countries, Muslims marched in the face of bullets, tanks and water cannons, demanding the exact human dignities that parades of commentators had assured the American public Muslims didn’t want. If anything, the uprisings of 2011, coupled with the death of Osama bin Laden, raised the tantalizing possibility that the West and Islam, which came to the brink of a Holy War in the past decade, might finally be able to build a Holy Peace. Could the Clash of Civilizations be giving way at last to the Convergence of Civilizations?

As long as humans have worshiped gods, they have walked to get closer to them. In the Bible, the greatest spiritual breakthroughs occur when the heroes are on journeys: Abraham going forth to the Promised Land; the Israelites crossing the Red Sea; Israel exiled to Babylon. From the Hajj to the Stations of the Cross, the greatest pilgrimages involve walking. And many pilgrims purposefully make their gait more arduous in order to slow their pace even more. Now I understand why.