John 1:16-18 (NJB): Indeed, from His fullness we have, all of us, received - one gift replacing another, for the Law was given through Moses, grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made Him known.

This foundational habit of the Faber Institute is and will always be about the cultivation of depth in people, about the development and nourishing of the soul’s powers in each of us. Our exemplar is Jesus Christ, who is God’s way of being a human being. We want to quickly get people out of their depth, or to use an important poetic word, to get them into the void, into a “shining darkness” or a “sounding solitude”, where Beauty awaits them - a depth opening to them - the “holy Mystery”. 

Each evening of the Night School wants to push each person to grow by getting each person to reach beyond what he or she knows and feels and desires. The “push” each person is meant to experience is not pushy or intrusive but a summons to awaken and to be shown with courtesy how to engage what they find. And then when awakened, we want each person to experience a beauty and a richness of thought that is not typical of any other conversation that he or she has.

What we describe of our approach at the Night School is what Jesus was doing with the Samaritan woman in John 4 - “Whoever drinks of this water will be thirsty again; but no one who drinks of the water that I shall give will ever be thirsty again: the water I shall give will become a spring of water, welling up for eternal life.” (John 4:13-14)