A common trope of professorial reportage is the moment of illumination about the shape of undergraduate life today, the classroom surprise that, at best, can become a theophany for future teaching. I had such an experience last week in my introductory course on Christianity. While reaching for examples to explain 20th century interpretations of salvation as the movement from inauthentic to authentic existence, I confidently asked how many in the room had read Thomas Merton, thinking I could invite a student to share what they’d learned from Merton that could illustrate the point at hand. Out of 33 students, zero hands went up. Then I asked, okay, how many had ever *heard* of Merton. Again, out of 33 students, with probably half (at least) coming from more or less Catholic backgrounds, *zero* hands went up. Earlier in the class, when I mentioned a theological question my 2-year old daughter had asked, a young woman in the class asked if I had taken my daughter to Disney. (The answer is no.) In response, I asked the class how many of *them* had gone to Disney. A full 32 of 33 students raised animated hands. (Vincent Miller, in reflections occasioned by his own young daughter, well characterizes the transition to Disney language in his excellent book _Consuming Religion_, where on page 6 he memorably (and critically) writes: “Gloria in Excelsis Deo! Hakuna Matata!”) I left the lesson that day with a keen awareness for how much work must be done in entering the world of thought, emotion, and intuition of this post-post-Vatican II generation. And in bringing the worlds of thought, emotion, and intuition from other theological times and places into my students’ sensibilities. It seems to me a task both daunting and absolutely essential. Tom Beaudoin Santa Clara, California

 Tom Beaudoin is associate professor of theology at Fordham University, in the Graduate School of Religion. His latest book is Witness to Dispossession: The Vocation of a Postmodern Theologian.