That kind of “power” is often despised in a world that can only imagine power as domination, in a patriarchal world—let’s be honest—where power is confused with testosterone-laden bravado. But Augustine is reminding us of that uniquely maternal power of God, echoed in the sacrifices that mothers make every day—the “weakness of God” that is stronger

“To desire the aid of grace is the beginning of grace.”

I’m not who I used to be; I’m on the way to being who I’m called to be; but I’m not there yet, Augustine counsels.

The goal isn’t returning home but being welcomed home in a place you weren’t born, arriving in a strange land and being told, “You belong here.”

The range of our exterior wandering is mirrored by the interior expanse of the soul. “A human being as such is a huge abyss,” he would later muse to his God. “You know the number of hairs on his head, Master, and in you there’s no subtraction from that number; but it’s easier to count his hairs than his moods or the workings of his heart.”

“In your gift we find our rest,” Augustine concludes. “There are you our joy. Our rest is our peace.”

“The Big Book of AA,” Jamison notes, “was initially called The Way Out. Out of what? Not just drinking, but the claustrophobic crawl space of the self.”

Gabriel Marcel, a Christian among the existentialists, appreciated our road-hunger. Marcel described humanity as homo viator, “itinerate man.” But he was staunchly critical of Sartre’s view of freedom. Freedom isn’t digging a tunnel to escape, he counseled; it’s digging down into yourself.

The disordered love of learning makes you a mere technician of information for some end other than wisdom, and the irony is that philosophy could devolve into just another way of idolizing.