And then we went on to read one of my favorite books, Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead," which is an extended letter from a father to his son.
He loved this line: "I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life ... you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle."
Something about this language, its love, its longing, its voice, rekindled Patrick's desire to write.
And he would fill notebooks upon notebooks with letters to his daughter.
In these beautiful, intricate letters, he would imagine him and his daughter going canoeing down the Mississippi river.
He would imagine them finding a mountain stream with perfectly clear water.
As I watched Patrick write, I thought to myself, and I now ask all of you, how many of you have written a letter to somebody you feel you have let down? It is just much easier to put those people out of your mind.
But Patrick showed up every day, facing his daughter, holding himself accountable to her, word by word with intense concentration.
I wanted in my own life to put myself at risk in that way.
Because that risk reveals the strength of one's heart.