Was there a spiritual awakening behind “Godtalk”?
One Sunday in 1995, I was in an Episcopal church, St. John’s in the Village, which I went to on and off. I was sitting there after communion and I had this feeling that I recognized. I’d had it just a couple times before, a kind of personal awakening. The first time I was about 13. I was pretty much brought up nothing, which was normal enough in secular suburban America. So I’m 13 and I go to a screening of “The Cross and the Switchblade” [about converting gang members to Christianity]. And at the end, they said to come forward, and I did. I started watching mass for shut-ins and on Saturdays I started waiting for my friend Bobby to get out of confession to ask what happened. I got myself baptized by a Presbyterian minister. So I had this little obsession, which was partly because I felt I wasn’t included. Not being brought up in it made me more fascinated. In my early 20s it happened again. I was living in Paris, reading Thomas Aquinas and going to cathedrals and having a medieval obs
