It has been some time since I lasted posted a video here. The past year and a half has been a physical challenge.

This is the record of what for me was an altogether delightful encounter. It was, I suppose, an interview, with me in the place of the interviewee. Bryn Morris is a reader of my works who lives in Sunshine Coast, Australia: A husband, father to a nine month old baby, a musician, and a friend of humpback whales and their young. He has taken assorted masters degrees in education and theology, even studying for a time under John Behr. He also studied geology at some juncture, being a lover of the sciences. And he writes a Substack publication of his own called A Leisurely Stroll.

The occasion of the conversation was that he thought I should have discussed my book Prisms, Veils in public a bit more than I have been able to do to this point, and offered to play the part of an interviewer on the topic. It was not hard to convince me, since the book is especially close to my heart. I expected a short conversation, but that was not to be, principally because Bryn turned out to be just about the most perceptive reader of the text I could have hoped for. In the course of the interview, we talked about any number of topics in the arts, philosophy, theology, the natural sciences, and so forth, all of which was rich and illuminating for me. More to the point, though, when Bryn questioned me directly about both the book as a whole and various of the stories in particular, his insights were to my mind extraordinarily penetrating. It made me think that the book actually succeeds at what I wanted it to do. I am extremely grateful to him.

One incidental note: At the end of the recording, the conversation turned to baseball (which is a game actually played by some Australians) and we paused to rhapsodize on the talents of Shohei Ohtani. As soon as the recording was finished, I went to watch the final NLCS game between LA and Milwaukee—a game in which Ohtani had possibly the single greatest performance on the field in the history of the sport. Six shut-out innings with ten strikeouts from the mound, his fastball reaching triple digits, his other pitches darting like dragonflies over a marsh, and three home runs at the plate. In fact, he started the first inning with three Ks in the top of the frame and then led off the bottom with the first of his homers. The second he hit left the stadium, so it is hard to say whether the estimate of 469 feet was accurate or not; it seemed to go that high before descending beyond the pavilions of Chavez Ravine. Anyway, what a remarkable moment of synchronicity. And can anyone doubt that Ohtani is not only the greatest baseball player of our time, but possibly the greatest there has ever been?