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"The Ragman" - by Dr. Walter Wangerin, Jr.
First published in 1984, the book "Ragman and Other Cries of Faith" helped to establish Dr. Wangerin's reputation as one of the most cutting-edge Christian writers on the market.  I first became familiar with the Ragman story sometime during my tenure at Valparaiso, when Dr. Wangerin himself told the story as one of the Sunday sermons at Valparaiso University.  I was absolutely taken in by his delivery and ability to pull me into the story.

Currently, Dr. Wangerin holds the Jochum Chair at Valparaiso University where he teaches literature and creative writing, and is writer-in-residence.  Dr. Wangerin came to Valparaiso University in 1991 sometime around my sophomore and junior years.  His son Joe was actually in several of my classes at Valparaiso, and we were both a part of Christ College (the honors program) at Valparaiso.

In my fifth year at Valpo, I had the privilege of taking a theology class with Dr. Wangerin as the professor.  It was an amazing class about the different forms of stories (such as epics, myths, and legends) and how they all related to the Bible.  It was a fascinating class - one from which I learned a lot about my own interpretation and meaning of the stories of the Bible.

As already mentioned in the introduction to this section of my site, I obtained a copy of the story and memorized it so that I could tell it to the kids at LMC.

Due to existing copyrights on the actual Ragman story, I am unable to have the full text of the story here.  However (and like I *really* have to tell you this) it's pretty easy to find on the web by way of that magic website called Google.  If you have never heard or read the story before, I would highly recommend that you do.  You can also find books of other stories by Dr. Wangerin on Amazon.
 
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