Truth was, this wasn’t just a horticultural failure. I feared the dead plants were omen and metaphor: After 15 years as a journalist, I felt stuck and miserable. I was writing for a business magazine. Where I’d once reported on geopolitics, poverty alleviation, and the human costs and opportunities of the global economy, I was now profiling fashion designers and asking rich people how they managed to be so productive. Did this work matter, or was I making just another superfluous luxury product? I’d overcome previous career crises by working harder and doing more. But I knew I couldn’t work my way out of this one, because my restlessness wasn’t just career-related. I also harbored deeper, more existential questions: Did I matter? Where did I belong? At 39, I enrolled as a student at Princeton Theological Seminary.