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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Losing track of our "____," according to the author, means being impoverished humanly and spiritually.

2. How many years had the author been married by the mid 1970's?

3. In the Introduction, how many books does the author mention that dealt with the headlines of his life?

4. When the author's sick daughter had to be hospitalized, how many miles away was she?

5. What place did the author see as an act of God in his life that he paralleled to the entry into the Promised Land?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did the daughter being sick affect the author?

2. What is the most sacred function of memory?

3. Why did the author's mother have so few friends as she got older?

4. Why does the author write "The Wizard's Tide" and what differs in the book from his childhood memory of his father's death?

5. Why did the author feel like a dwarf as depicted in C. S. Lewis' "The Last Battle?"

6. What was on the stained glass pieces in the author's office?

7. How does the author describe God loving us, and loving his daughter?

8. According to the author, how does memory help us finish with the past?

9. How do ministers lose touch with God?

10. How is the author's story, our story?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The author's mother is quoted in Part One of the book as saying, "If I didn't have something to look for, I would be lost." Answer either A or B.

A. Why does she make this statement? Discuss the significance of the mother losing her beauty and trying to find it daily with her make-up and other enhancements, in relation to her state of mind, her health, and her relationship with her sons and her caregivers/friends.

B. Why does the author describe the statement as one of his mother's "most shimmering utterances?" How does this theme of "lost and found" play out throughout the details of the author's life described in the book - his family (mom and brother, wife and kids), friends, students?

Essay Topic 2

In the Introduction, the author writes that 1) telling secrets makes it easier to see where we have been and where we are going; 2) it makes it easier for others to share their secrets; and 3) that exchanges like this is what being a family, and being human is all about. Using details from Part One, Part Two and Part Three of the book, provide details from the authors life experiences that support each of the three statements (1,2 3) above?

Essay Topic 3

Why does the author attend St. Barnabas Episcopal Church? How is this place more at home for him than another Church? Why does the author enjoy the chanting so much? Who is Robert MacFarlane, and how does he impact the author's connection with this church?

(see the answer keys)

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