In this book a long-time academician recalls his life and the shaping influence of his mother, a woman of plain origins who gave him insight, by her example, into the timeless wisdom of the world's great spiritual traditions.

This story, in part, is a memoir of Kelly Nicholson's youth and subsequent adventures. Beneath its surface lies the enduring question of how we might decide, amid all we see and hear, what life means and where we are ultimately headed. Its thesis is that we gain insight not merely from analytical scholarship, but from our daily flesh and blood encounters with those around us.