I was teaching in Cary then, living in Durham with Anne, and taking classes toward my theology degree in the summers. I was attending Southeastern Seminary, which is in Old Wake Forest just outside Raleigh. At first I thought it was sexual, this seemingly intense interest he had in me, which made me hesitant. It was anything but sexual. He made the suggestion we have lunch one day in late July. I thought it was about my last paper having something to do with Kierkegaard. He taught hermeneutics mainly, what most people there considered the hard course. But he also gave lectures in the philosophy of religion and early church history. He had written only one book, an interpretation of a very obscure movement in theology that occurred in eighteenth-century Spain. I checked it out from the library but never finished it. I found it far too specialized and dull. Particularly dull. As a lecturer he was an amazement, but he was far from a great writer.

We would sit outside at a group of picnic tables on the common beneath a pair of old sycamores . . . for some reason grass on the seminary campus always looked greener than grass usually does. Perhaps it’s holy. We both would bring our lunch.

“You,” he would say, picking pear from his teeth, “you, Greene, will make a great theologian. You know why?” He spoke in that special New York way that I find equally belligerent and charming, as brusque as it is disarming.

Before I could answer, he would say, “Cause you have a particular brand of curiosity. Curiosity with a capital C. Understand what I’m saying? This is a gift, now. Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of guys here who’ve got curiosity. But they don’t have it with a capital C. Understand? They’re bright, sure. Some maybe brighter than you—though you’re no dummy by a long shot. Still, they don’t have what Teilhard de Chardin or Niebuhr or Bonhöffer had. You know? They don’t have desire. A real desire. Few people nowadays do.”

He would finish the last of his pear. “I know I don’t.” Then he would haul out his handkerchief and begin to wipe his face and hands.

“They don’t want to know God, you know what I mean, in that Old Testament way. Like some of the prophets or David or Joseph.” He would pause, looking at me a little embarrassed. “I bet you realize this stuff yourself?”

It was a question, a question for which I had no answer. I wanted to ask what made him think this? . . . my questions in class? . . . my papers? . . . my face?