I was twenty-seven, a fellow at Harvard, and had just published my first book of poems. He and I had become close again, affectionate, especially since the birth of my son Andrew (Donald Andrew Hall III), even though there wasn’t much to talk about. I was glad for our late closeness, but I deplored his failure to thrive, which was and remains unfair of me. What chance did he have? Surely his early death, and the life that led up to it, made all the diference to me, for good and for ill. I would not let it happen to me; I would do what I wanted to do; I would work at the work I wanted to work at.

To read what I have written, you would not know that I am Christian. When I began Life Work I was reading the Old Testament again, loving Genesis (all the best stories) and hating Exodus with the Egyptians and the Jews wreaking usual havoc on each other. When I came home from the hospital it was Corinthians and then John, an understandable change of emphasis. Meister Eckhart is my favorite heretic and now I read him again—who says that the soul desires only repose; it is the soul’s nature to desire repose, as it is the stone’s nature to press downwards. Yet I note that Meister Eckhart’s writings are voluminous and give off energy like a radioactive pile. (The Inquisition considered him radioactive; it is astonishing how Hindu he becomes.) Meister Eckhart’s energy centers on God not on Jesus—I cherish the figure of Jesus as Jack Jensen did—and he reminds me of my inability to love God as much as I love his intercessor. The cloud of unknowing remains thick over my head.

But why, when I write about my work and my day, do I not speak of the spirit? Maybe for several reasons, most of them discreditable: (1) I am afraid of ridicule; most of my friends are embarrassed by my Christianity, my Deaconhood at the South Danbury Church, and explain it away. (2) I am skeptical, always looking for material explanations; then at times my skepticism is overwhelmed by a spiritual light, strobe more than nightlight. (3) What I hope: Like the juggler of Our Lady, my work is my devotion. Thus, to write Life Work as I walk (temporarily) from the tomb is my devotion.

Jack Jensen discovered the figure of Jesus for me. Subsequently, I have read everything I could about the historical Jesus, loving Jack’s history almost as much as his theology. For me, the Palestinian figure, small through the reversed telescope, continues in the present to walk two thousand years ago wearing sandals through the marketplace doing astonishing things. When he raises the dead he raises my materialist skepticism at the same time. When he withers a fig tree with an impulsive petulance, I take the story as scribal interpolation. But when Jesus feeds multitudes; when he routs the money-changers; when he despairs and when he thirsts; when he tells parables and explains them; when he tells the crowd, about to stone a woman to death, that the man without sin should throw the first stone; when he eats with his friends the tax collectors; when he dies crucified—then I believe that he rises again …