“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it.”

John describes not only the relationship between fathers and sons but of every human to one another: no matter how much you love or are loyal to your family, or how well you think you know someone, everyone is uniquely unknowable.

“There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. I have felt it pass through me, so to speak. The sensation is of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time.”

To John, the act of conferring baptism is a great privilege. Baptism enables him to sense the divine spark within the mortal being.

“I do try to write the way I think.” 

Describing his style of writing to his son, John explains that he doesn’t write the way the talks or the way he writes for the pulpit. Instead, his style is nonlinear, episodic, and associative, like thought.