I work at serious and sustained conversation with religious people. This way of exploring the pathways of meaning has resulted in teaching, writing and museum exhibitions—all born of story, and the deep desire we have as human beings for a meaningful life.
Inspired by the interviews in the Paris Review and Bomb magazine, "The Questions" in Sports Illustrated, and the regular interviews on the blogs of Tom Peters and Guy Kawasaki, Comment has asked a diverse group of mentors for their stories.
Comment: How would you explain what you do to an interested nine-year-old child?
David J. Goa: I have a granddaughter who is now your age. Shortly after she learned to talk, she spent a hot summer afternoon playing inside. Her father came home, found her in the living room, knelt down, and asked her if she would like to go outside and play in the balmy sunshine. She said, "Yes."
"Well, you will have to put your clothes on, then," her father said. (She had spent the day playing in her diaper, as little children sometimes do.)
She looked at him in the most peculiar way and said as she pointed to various parts of her body, "I have the Emperor's new shirt on. I have the Emperor's new pants on." She grabbed hold of her diaper and pulled it off saying, "And, now, I have the Emperor's new diaper on."
I have spent my life seeking to understand how we who are the faithful learn to see and understand, through religious tradition, what is being asked of us by the ideas that "clothe" each cultural epoch. I work at serious and sustained conversation with religious people—women and men and children—thinking with them about how we understand the stories of religious tradition. How do these treasured stories speak about the meaning life has, or ought to have? How do they speak about the human struggles that form so much of modern culture? How do we come to live faithful and grace-filled lives? The result of this way of exploring the pathways of meaning has been my teaching, writing and museum exhibitions. All of them are born of story and the deep desire we have as human beings for a meaningful life.
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Comment: What first drew you to this work?
DJG: We don't know who said it first, but a number of scholars many times over the last four decades have said, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." I was raised in the narrative landscape of the Bible. These narratives provided us with everyday ways of engaging meaning and shedding light on our experience of struggle and joy—both that which gave life and that which threatened to deal death.
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