Living in the City of Houston provides us with incredible opportunities to participate in cultural and intellectual events. Throughout the year, I’ll invite you and your friends and neighbors to join me in some of these activities that might either strengthen or challenge us as Christians.

The next “On the Road with the Rector” event is a last-minute invitation and part of the Center for Thomistic Studies Colloquium Series at the University of St. Thomas. It will feature a lecture on “Flannery O’Connor, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Christ Pantocrator” by Ralph Wood, a former professor of mine at Wake Forest University who is now University Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University.

Professor Wood is the author of Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South and was once interviewed by the awesome-but-now-defunct Wittenburg [sic] Door, which used to be the world’s “pretty much only religious satire magazine.” He also read a scripture lesson at my ordination to the priesthood more than 19 years ago at the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in Surfside Beach, South Carolina.

His presentation, which is free and open to the public, will take place this afternoon — Friday, November 20 — from 12:10 to 2:00 p.m. in Sullivan Hall. That building is located on the campus at 4218 Yoakum Boulevard. Refreshments will be provided.