From whence it came

A long journey, it was. About thirty-five years of age I'd guess when I had my first intimate words with Christ. It was a joke, those first words. I made some remark about my "boss" at the restaurant I was working at when He looked at me for just a second, then burst out laughing, "Your boss! That's a good one!" Such closeness, it's hard to describe. Of course the preparation for that day was long in coming. I was raised as a Secular humanist like so many others in the world today. I still have a great fondness for the heroes of that religion. Men like Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov and Gene Rodenberry. These are great men with great intellects. I still love to read and/or watch their works. Humanist believe in a moral code. It's based on Humanism of course, but they do believe in them, and I thank my Dad for at least giving me this system to grow up in. My Mother is a good old fashion Methodist and I'm very proud of her. She gave me an extra helping of "do the right thing." Harming people, disrespecting people, cheating etc., it just didn't enter our world while growing up. I love science. I always have. God used this love to inform me and prepare me. I'll try to be brief: As a young adult I found myself focusing on anthropology/origins. When Donald Johansen published Lucy, I was very excited I read it cover to cover in a day or two. These were good times for the Out of Africa folks. After that though I wanted more, so I continued to read on the same subject. Richard Leaky's book "People of the Lake" was next. Finally a great book called "The Creative Explosion." It posited this great little theory that I just love. Just as before the Big Bang, matter and energy and time may have been the same thing, so in our origins, religion, art and science were the same. Only over time do we see them as separate things. Anyway, I soon noticed that every book on Human Origins that I read included a chapter on religion and its origins. So I started looking for books on just that subject. I bumped into Mythology and soon I was reading Joseph Campbell. I read nothing but Campbell for about two years. I think I read almost everything. (Hero with a Thousand Faces is a must read for all.) Campbell takes you chronologically in his volume called Occidental Mythology so eventually I ran into Genesis, Moses and then Jesus. When Campbell described Genesis as poetry, I finally got it. It had depth and meaning. I began to sense that the Protestant Church that I had drifted away from possibly didn't get it. If I asked a preacher "what about this Virgin Birth thing, explain that to me," he really didn't know. He was a product of the liberalization of religion and probably didn't think it meant anything and it wasn't really true. At least now, Joseph Campbell told me what it meant and I could be confident that my myth was as good as the next guy's. (Remind me to tell you what it means later.) Then, when my daughter was 2 years of age or so, I thought that the right thing to do was give her at least the same structure I had growing up. The same moral code that my parents gave me. A good liberal Methodist Church was just the thing. Part 2 coming later.