THE WINTER NAME OF GOD

Like so many, Carroll emerged from the Vietnam years a shaken man. Anti-war activist, Boston University chaplain, poet, essayist, lecturer popular with liberal young Catholics--he found himself, when the pace slowed, trapped in the gulf between his abandoned Irish Catholic-American patriot past and a future promising only cynical disbelief. He grabbed the chance for a reflective summer in Israel to see if a new sense of God could emerge from his confusion. This chronicle charts his inner journey to mature faith, as his outer pilgrimage which serves as both metaphor and stimulus confronts him with the paradoxes of Christian origins. Taking as guide John's Gospel, itself a second-generation reinterpretation of Jesus' revelation, Carroll maps its story and motifs and so discovers God in his self-affirmation. God is the I AM at the heart of his own ""I AM!"" Love, despite alienation, embodies the meaning of resurrection. Sadly, later chapters fail to match the early ones, making these initial reflections rewarding.