A graduate of Amherst College and Johns Hopkins University, Mike teaches English at Pingree School in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, and he lives with his family in Newburyport. At the age of 39, he got married and became the father of two adopted daughters, and within a year a son was on the way. To navigate the rich but occasionally chaotic time that ensued, he took another look at philosophical and religious texts he’d read in college, as well as the literature he was teaching at the time; and he wove what he found into a series of essays that helped him make meaning in a world that conspires to blur it.