DESCRIPTION
As a freshman at Harvard, David Johnson felt displaced, homesick, and overwhelmed by new intellectual challenges. So he began exchanging letters with his father, a Presbyterian pastor. Years later, David rediscovered those letters and realized how much candid, fatherly advice they contained -- and how their wisdom had shaped his life. Based on excerpts from these letters,
Learning from My Father reflects movingly on life and death, faith and doubt, as seen through the eyes of a father and a son.
Read David Lawther Johnson's reflections on the difference between corresponding with his father years ago and with his daughter today on
EerdWord.
REVIEWS
Walter Isaacson
-- Author of Steve Jobs
"This beautiful book provides a way to look at the most important questions in life. It is a guide to understanding faith and love, meaning and belief. . . . An inspiring work."
Mitch Daniels
-- Governor of Indiana
"In a nation with tragically too few fathers, David Johnson had a great one, whose wisdom and grace he now generously shares with us. There is a saying, 'When an old person dies, a library closes.' This book opens a rich library in which the reader will want to browse often."
E. J. Dionne Jr.
-- Author of Our Divided Political Heart
"Learning from My Father is, quite simply, a beautiful book -- eloquent, deeply moving, quietly passionate, and wise. At a moment when we seem eager to divide ourselves between an 'us' and a 'them,' Johnson speaks across the lines of ideology and faith traditions to a human and humane 'we.' Marrying his father's lessons to his own reflections, he reminds us that Christianity is not about ideological conflict or cultural mistrust. It calls us to attentiveness, responsibility, joy, and love. In offering this gift to his father, Johnson has gifted all of us."
Krista Tippett
-- Host and producer of On Being, American Public Media
"This book models a faith both devout and questioning, full-blooded and elegant. It is at once an affirmation of tradition and a call to trust the vitality of the tradition to meet all the complexity of unfolding life in this world."