OK, here’s the deal. A crow finds himself a choice spot, caging discarded scraps from a homeless guy who’s hustling handouts at Seattle’s Montlake Bridge. When the homeless guy discards a can of Vienna sausages, the crow, gluttonous as always, gets its beak caught in the half open can. Desperate to free itself, it bangs the can against the concrete. The frenzied blows to its head cause seizure-like elements and just before it passes out, the crow has the shocking revelation that it has lived before. Henry considers himself a man of deep faith, but his faith does not allow much room for this unanticipated metempsychosis. Both bemused and enchanted by his new avian identity, Henry discovers that his life is now filled with experiences and pleasures that are totally foreign to his prior human existence. Henry resolves to live his new life by being the best crow he can be, but a series of darkly comic events lead him irrevocably back to his last day as a human being and the violent event that led to this confounding slip of the cog that drives karma’s great wheel. Borrowing its title from the seminal work of William James but told as an exciting tail of avian and human misadventures: murder, redemption, and forgiveness, The Varieties of a Religious Experience is a deep meditation on how we define our place in the world and the mysteries at the heart of all our religious experiences.