In Letters to a Young Poet, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke advised to "be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves," for gradually, "you will live into the answers." These words have long struck renowned preacher and activist William Sloane Coffin as a wise way to view a growing and evolving life. Thus inspired, Coffin, former university chaplain at Yale, imagined a similar volume of letters.


In an exchange of letters over the months of an academic year, Coffin writes an imagined bright, young college student, answering his questions and giving typically Coffin sage advice about problems of faith, the difficulties of personal life, and the ever more confusing and complex problems of today's world.