I was not expecting the question, since for months she had repeatedly instructed me to focus on the immediate, an instruction I found easy to obey. The protracted pain of a marriage that floundered and failed when I was in my twenties had excised the delusion that the most important elements of my future were under my control. But now Sister pressed me to think ahead: “It wasn’t time before, but now it’s time. What are you going to do with this education of yours?”
To my complete surprise, the answer was out of my mouth before I had time to consider: “I need to teach, preach, and exercise a pastoral ministry.”
The remarkable, costly life of a secular saint Mark Schierbecker, Creative Commons
What I knew about Jane Goodall: she was the woman who lived in Africa with apes. I could conjure an image of her from pictures I’d seen slender, attentive, crouched with binoculars, hair pulled into a ponytail. I didn’t remember, if I’d ever known, the seismic shift in primate biology occasioned by her discovery that chimpanzees use tools. Once, in a tense family Trivial Pursuit battle, my middle-aged brain took several minutes of silent concentration to locate the mental file with her name on it. “I know her name has a g,” I said.
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