This week in my religion course we read John Jeremiah Sullivan’s “Upon this Rock,” about his RV trip to the Creation Festival, and Matthew Teague’s “The Aftermath,” reporting in the wake of the murder of five Amish girls, “an event with no meaning.” Both brilliant. And it had not occurred to me before this week, before talking with my students, how seriously these essays both take the lives and loves of children and teenagers. Let that be the lesson for this week.

From Sullivan’s essay:

Mostly I thought of Darius, Jake, Josh, Bub, Ritter, and Pee Wee, whom I doubted I’d ever see again, whom I’d come to love, and who loved God—for it’s true, I would have said it even if Darius hadn’t asked me to, it may be the truest thing I will have written here. They were crazy, and they loved God—and I thought about the unimpeachable dignity of that love, which I never was capable of. Because knowing it isn’t true doesn’t mean you would be strong enough to believe if it were.