Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Depression and Joy

Chapter 2: A Peculiar Kind of Pain

Chapter 3: Mystery

Chapter 4: Waiting for the Beauty of the Ruins

Chapter 5: A Ruin in the Woods

Chapter 6: The Practice of I AM

Chapter 7: Moving the Immovable

Chapter 8: Tormented

Chapter 9: Parochial Anorexia

Chapter 10: Opening the Mind

Epilogue: Living in the Realm of Nonetheless

Resources

Acknowledgments

About the Author

A. Robert Hirschfeld served as a parish priest in academic communities (Yale, University of Connecticut, the Five Colleges of the Amherst, Massachusetts region) until becoming the Tenth Bishop of New Hampshire. His studies in literature and existential philosophy have informed his interpretation of the scriptural themes of alienation from God and the restoration of human dignity in Jesus. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College (BA English, 1983) and Berkeley Divinity School at Yale (MDiv 1991, DD 2013). He lives in Concord, New Hampshire.