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all reality outside, meant that there had to be something outside of the material world. In short, he was asking that age old question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" He was really precocious. And I know that because that is not an idea I was thinking about at 14 years old. And as a former ninth grade humanities teacher, I have taught hundreds of 14-year-olds, and it is not an idea most of them seem to be thinking about. Once he realized that there was something more to the universe than what he could see, and touch, and measure, Caldecott started look- ing for meaning. He read Baha'i, and Buddhist and New Age philosophy. He studied Islamic poetry and literature. He searched for truth — as a teenager, as a young man, and even after he was married, at 25. The more he searched for truth, the more Stratford realized he already had it. He realized that certain stories from his childhood had stuck with him. They will be familiar stories to you. Stratford realized that while he could change philosophical perspectives and explore different religions, he couldn't shake King Arthur, or Narnia, or Tolkien's Middle Earth. Those stories had a hold on his imagination. And eventually, he realized those stories stuck with him because they were true. They stuck with him, Stratford realized, because we're made for truth, and they were stories writ- ten on the foundation of truth. They conveyed, in allegory and symbols, the truth of the Gospel. Later, he wrote: "All along, my imagination had been built on a Christian foundation, and I had never noticed it before. I knew that in some sense, on some level, I was already a Christian." Soon, he was in formation to become a Cath- olic. He wrote that his heart "burned within him" as he learned the faith. And he realized that God had long been preparing him to be baptized. "The Absolute had always loomed on my interior horizon as the source and goal of my thinking. But it was only in the Church that this interior God approached me from outside and invited me to trust him as absolutely as God ought to be trusted," he wrote. At 27, Caldecott was baptized. He became a Catholic, and one committed to living his entire life for the mission of the Gospel. He became a disciple of Jesus. ⊲ 11 DENVER CATHOLIC | SEPTEMBER 2022