<p>The essence of <i>Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove</i>remains intact: its vision of religious studies as sustainedrefl ection on our lifelong voyage to discover who we are.The story we choose for ourselves, the story we live, cansacralize or secularize our lives and our world by the wayin which we choose to relate to it. With this awareness ofthe story dimension of life, <i>Ascent of the Mountain, Flightof the Dove</i> opens us to awe, reverence, and wonder at therisks and possibilities of human freedom.<p>This book is even more important than it was thirtyyears ago. We need religion to strike deeply into the self,away from public glare. Unless Americans become moresophisticated about the language of the self, inner life willshrivel. In addition, our people will continue to be vulnerableto fundamentalist movements. Such movements takeover too many innocents. Th ey promise, and sometimesdeliver, a touching happiness. But they do so by closingthe spirit in a powerful and dangerous way.<p>Families and schools do not provide a large and criticalvocabulary by which to express the inner longings ofthe spirit. The souls of many are parched and they gladlyaccept water, any water, from those who off er it. Th eliberation of the religious spirit from trivial, closed,and simplistic systems of thought can only be achievedthrough the development of a critical language, exercises,and disciplines that open rather than close the mind, thatlead to higher viewpoints, breakthroughs, and new syntheses,in a constant enlargement of spirit. Novak's bookleads us to that place.<p><i>Michael Novak</i> is George FrederickJewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy,and Public Policy at American EnterpriseInstitute for Public Policy Research. Hehas twice been the UN Ambassador to theUN Human Rights Commission and is thedirector of AEI's social and political studies.He is the author of twenty-fi ve booksand numerous scholarly articles.