As Dennis Patrick Slattery’s writing shows, the very stuff of the great traditions is life itself, and the hurly-burly of current culture is the ground in which tradition thrives. Slattery’s analyses are keen and thoughtful, often scholarly, and always deeply spiritual. But they are better for being a bit pugnacious and intimate and virile. They give evidence of a life lived in earnest, one in which nothing is walled off into a category but all enters into the whole that is the mysterious grounding of the person. Foreword by Louise Cowan, Author of The Fugitive Group Series Editor: The Terrain of Comedy, The Epic Cosmos, and The Tragic Abyss. Founder: Institute of Philosophic Studies, The University of Dallas; the Teachers’ Academy at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture