This issue of the Woodstock Report highlights two presentations given at two Woodstock events in the past two months. The first was a Woodstock "afternoon of conversation" at which visiting research fellow John Farina spoke on "Peace and the Christian Imagination." The second was a dinner we hosted for board members and friends at which I talked on "Woodstock's Mission in Times of Transition."

Both talks were occasioned by September 11 and both shared a common concern: How are we to understand what happened? How do we interpret and explain the facts?

How we interpret events depends very much on our own perspective and point of view. And our explanation is the work not only of insight, but of imagination. "Imagination is more important than knowledge," Einstein said. In fact, knowledge requires imagination. We understand things, we get an insight into their meaning, and we can organize events in intelligible and satisfying patterns, only to the extent that we conceive or discover an image which successfully "catches up" the key features of that event. Without imagery we cannot think, Thomas Aquinas tells us.

Think of all the images, the symbols, the songs, the pictures, the poems, and the photographs that have been produced and portrayed about September 11. Each is an effort to catch and convey some sense of what September 11 means or should mean to us.

What's more, our effort to imagine and express September 11 is also, for most of us, an exercise in self-discovery. "What I think of it," quickly becomes "How I think." What's important to me? What's my focus? What do I really value and cherish? What does life mean to me - my life, the life of the victims and their families, the life of the perpetrators and their families? Where am I coming from?

"Where are you coming from?" This question comes up often in the Gospels. Jesus asks it of his friends and his persecutors. And they ask it of him. Jesus knows where he "comes from" - from his Father, and not just in the sense of biological origins, but in the sense of how he views things and who he loves, what he is concerned about, and what he wants to accomplish. That's "where" he is "coming from." It's who he is.

Where are you "coming from?" "Who are you?" That's what these two talks explore. And raising this question is what Woodstock does for a living. It is our mission of "theological reflection on the human problems of today."

I hope to draft a book on this process between now and July, when I step down as director of the Woodstock Center. Until then, Father Drew Christiansen, S.J., has graciously agreed to be acting director of the Center. Please keep him in your prayers!

Wishing you and yours the peace and joy of the Easter season!