He learned that we grow only by letting go of those things that protect us, or confirm our importance, or justify to ourselves our attitudes and actions, and moving forward into the shadows, where faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen. The eyes that look calmly past the viewer in Rembrandt’s last self-portrait are contemplating the next steps—who knows how many little, stumbling steps?—and beyond them, the last great leap from Here to There. The painter of The