For some time now I've had the habit of starting a new year by focusing in on a theologian and

actually spending the whole year with that theologian just getting to know them and read them and read about them.

Well, this year, 2021, as we all start this new year together,

I'm going with Augustine.

And as I do, I'll be working on a biography. And what I want to do is work on the biography and what I want to do is work on the book with you.

So we will spend the next eight weeks or so walking through his life and each week I'll be walking through a chapter of this

book that I'm working on with you. But to begin let's go big picture. When you

want to write a book a publisher asks you for a proposal and a key part of that

proposal is for you to answer the why question. Why this book? What is so compelling

about your idea or what you want to do that it should be

published so let's start there why Augustine why look at his life well I can think of

five reasons first he was a wanderer.

Augustine was from Numidia. The root of that word is nomad. These were nomads. And Augustine's life is so compelling because he

personifies the life of all of us. We are all wanderers, nomads, traveling east of Eden, trying to find our way home.

As you explore Augustine's life, you find he's a literal wanderer in such cool places Carthage Rome Milan and he's

a metaphorically a wanderer too he's wandering from the fold of God.

He's a lost sheep.

Augustine was a wanderer.

He was also a teacher.

The oldest portrait of Augustine is a fresco,

dating to the 500s.

Frescoes are made by applying watercolors to wet plaster and as the plaster dries it absorbs

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