Top o’ the Stack. Explores the difference between puerile and mature faith. Topics include: idolatry, superstition, grades of prayer, mysticism, Simone Weil.
It starts out:
One of the minor characters of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild is the old man to whom Krakauer gave the name ‘Ron Franz.’ He was 80 years old when his and Christopher McCandless’s paths crossed. McCandless made indelible impressions on the people he met, but he affected Franz more than anyone else, so much so that the old man with no surviving kin wanted to adopt the 24-year-old as his grandson. The story of their encounter is recounted in the chapter entitled ‘Anza-Borrego’ and is also well told in the movie version of Krakauer’s book. Franz came to pin his hopes on the remarkable young man and longed for his return from Alaska. When he heard from a hitchhiker that McCandless had died, he and his faith were shattered: