Book excerpt: When Cynthia Trenshaw, recently widowed, moves to Berkeley, she thinks the reason she has transplanted herself is to earn her master’s degree in theology. But when, step by unexpected step, she is drawn into the cultural borderlands where society’s “invisible people” reside, she encounters dispossessed and demanding teachers not listed on any academic roster—and becomes immersed in a heady curriculum of helplessness and joy, wisdom and pain. A book that encourages readers to receive the generosity and reciprocity of the margins, Meeting in the Margins offers guidance for how we can all, as individuals, begin to repair the rift between the margins and the mainstream of society—simply by being profoundly present.