Toward the end of his lecture, he offers his students a kind of magic spell. A way of diffusing the chill of Chaos. In Courier type, just eight words long: There is grandeur in this view of life. I was horrified. There it was. My dad’s same trick. The same words that hang in a frame over his desk, to this day. Darwin’s call to arms. As different as David had seemed from my dad—as defiant, and hopeful, and full of faith—he had nothing new to offer me after all. Just a reminder of what I’d always been told. There is grandeur, and if you can’t see it, shame on you.
