About the Author

Alan Griesinger graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and received his Master of Arts in English from the University of Oregon. Subsequently, he taught junior and senior high school students at Naples Central School in Naples, New York, for twenty-eight years. This is where Mr. Griesinger’s true education began—where colleagues, parents, and students gave him a solid grounding in the principles and rituals of community life. Since retirement, he has written three books. Taken as a whole, they record in a series of related essays a pilgrimage of the spirit. Individually, each work aims at describing a place where people have traditionally found shelter and healing. In the first book, it is wisdom; in the second, it is self-government; and in this third book, it’s what the book of Genesis refers to as a “living soul.” These three works, like the pilgrimages of Odysseus and Dante in the Odyssey and the Commedia, tell the story of one whose spirit would come home.