On one winter evening the normal limitations of our bodies seemed to fall away and we began to run further and faster than we ever had before. My strides felt like the looping arcs traced by an antelope in full flight. The stars overhead, like pinpricks in a curtain blocking a blinding light, bore down on us. Suddenly, many miles into our run, my sarcastic, lapsed-Catholic friend—the friend who used to boast to me about getting to second or third base with girls—turned to me (the naturally religious child) and said: “Let’s say the Lord’s Prayer.”

So there, along a back road in Duxbury, Massachusetts, we two boys loped along under starlight, inspired—taking huge lungfuls of air that seemed to fill every corner of our bodies, pumping adrenaline that was entirely natural, returning glory to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in plumes of air that came from a world without end.