Welcome

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When I became a Freshman at the University of Denver in 1968, conditions in the United States presaged those today. The Vietnam War was raging, causing deep divisions among us. Some supported the government, yet others wanted to burn it all down and start over. What was true? What was right? Just? Many had no answers, only questions, so they turned to drugs as a path to wisdom. I refused. I saw the effects on some fellow students, who didn’t lose their sanity and lives by battles in foreign lands but wars within. Dropping out because of bad trips was all too common during winter break. So was suicide. Others turned to Eastern Religions, which, like most religions, interested me, although I felt no strong attraction to any of them.

Universities were hubs of colliding views. From a small, insulated town on Colorado’s Eastern Plains, I found myself shaken more than those who grew up in informed and diverse communities. (All of us lacked the surfeit of news sources and social media that bombard everyone from every angle today, causing the threats to certainty and identity to multiply geometrically.)

When I was four, I walked down to the altar of my family’s American Baptist Church to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I was soon baptized. I believed and never doubted my faith in God. However, I was not very concerned about a personal relationship with Jesus. Like most people I knew, I didn’t really know what that meant or have any special experiences with him. I did, however, feel a deep connection with what I intuited to be God. When I tuned in, I felt God’s presence and relied on it to get me through whatever happened.

In college, I began feeling haunted by the question of whether Jesus existed, and whether he really was the incarnation of God, his Son. The University of Denver was affiliated with the Methodist church. I was a member of the university-wide Scholars Program as well as the English Department Honors Society. The majority of the Religion Department were believers, with ministers on their faculty (I took some classes from them), but the English Department was populated by atheists and agnostics. My advisor and mentor, whom I greatly admired, was agnostic, but his brother was an Episcopal priest who was rector of the Episcopal church across the street from campus. He respected Christianity but had no personal conviction. Christian faculty who never pushed their faith were scattered all over campus, as were Jewish faculty who seemed in general to reject religion in every form. It never occurred to me that I should disrespect anyone’s views, even if I found them disconcerting. Nor did I ever consider objecting to the wide range of texts we were required to read in my classes. I don’t know if anyone did. Tolerance was the educational and social axiom then.

Whether Jesus had existed rarely receded from consciousness. My Jewish friends insisted that there was no evidence even of his mortal existence, let alone divine. I began walking and praying, praying and walking, seeking an answer. If Jesus existed, I had to know. No blind belief, no inherited religion for me. True to my name Thomas, I wanted proof. Jesus did not deny Thomas. If he was who he said he was, he would not deny me. Of that I was sure.

At the end of my sophomore year, I married a young woman who was reared in a fundamentalist family. They did not believe in miracles or special gifts of any kind because they were unnecessary now that “the Perfect” had come (the Bible, rather than Christ, the traditional Christian understanding). Even in rebellion she covertly mocked “her old fogey parents,” while robotically insisting that the entire Bible was true from cover to cover, without error. She had memorized the name of every single book in the Old and New Testaments. She could recite them all—in order. She could even remember how many chapters and verses each book contained. She won prizes for that. I believed that reading and understanding the contents was far more important than such superficial notions.

However, she said she appreciated me because, according to her, I was a liberal Christian who didn’t accept everything literally. I questioned rules and regulations, even doctrine and dogma. I didn’t believe in the necessity of converting everyone I knew through acts of domestic and worldwide evangelization. I had never paid attention to Billy Graham, his crusades and television broadcasts, which my mother often watched on TV. Her entire family, however, even attended his crusades in person.

My wife said she was sure of her faith, although, when probed, I found that, unlike me, she’d never had a conversion experience. She was reared a Christian. And that was that. “God says it, I believe it, and that settles it,” was one of her mother’s favorite aphorisms, her answer to all questions. I began to see the smugness of such professions and such certainty in everything.

Unlike my own, her home life seemed functional, though boring and dogmatic. Her mother and father had sex once a week, every Sunday afternoon. My parents never had sex, not after my little sister was conceived ten years earlier, and rarely before that—one of my dad’s complaints. Her parents never argued. My home had been full of strife and violence, enacted by my dad. He finally left when I was fifteen. So I had no such illusions. My mother’s favorite saying after another violent episode typically with me as the object of my dad’s wrath, was, “Tomorrow is another day.” Straight out of Gone with the Wind.

I was never preached at, even by my devout Great Aunt Ethel. An elementary teacher who never married. She taught by telling stories, many about Britain, and especially London. Her beloved lay minister Papa always promised to take his children to visit London. They would tour all the famed sites and even visit the Palladium. She encouraged me to pray and follow Jesus. He would lead.

One night, my deep desire for proof was satisfied. I was sleeping. Suddenly, Jesus snatched me out of the clutches of Satan, who gloated, “I’ve got you now!” “Oh no, you don’t,” said Jesus, who whisked me away in the air with him.

So began my life of prophetic dreams, visions, words of wisdom and knowledge, as well as divine visitations centered on Jesus of the Gospels, sometimes angels and now and then Mary, not on dogma or doctrine. Such experiences have granted me firsthand insight and guidance. I have also learned the special place of animals, especially dogs and cats, who have come into my life, as animals do in many people’s lives, to advance our souls' development.

Spending the rest of my life trying to listen, to practice the presence, I learn more about the mysteries that lie at the heart of creation. To follow Jesus in word and deed, not some false and twisted notion of him, that shuts out all who don’t toe the line of their group, drives me forward. It gives me purpose and meaning.

Unfortunately, many claim to be preaching the gospel of Christ, while in reality leading many followers astray with a gospel that is not good news but bad. A perverted gospel of rules and regulations that bind others to “another Jesus,” as St. Paul writes. Rather than freedom in Christ and union with all that is in Love, which, St. John of the Cross writes, is all there is.

God calls us to learn to be quiet and listen. To then pass the tests thrown our way.

So that we may grow in wisdom and grace.

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I am an author, coach, counselor, theological and literary scholar, who was also a university professor and chaplain.

Because I am a writer and scholar with a Ph.D. in British and American literature, and a strong background in the Bible and theology, you will see many reflections of these interests in my writing.

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That takes place in many forms not just in churches. I will not tell you what to believe or who to follow. “That,” as a very wise spiritual advisor, who lived for decades with brain cancer, told me, “Is God’s business.”

So I bear witness to what I have learned. And what I am learning. We lay down our lives and offer them up so that in dying we resurrect to new life in various and expanding ways. The prize is eternal life in Christ, in whom we live and breathe and have our being. We become more and more who we were meant to be all along. We enjoy Communion with all that is.

May you have enough. Enough of good things. Enough of things many don’t consider good until viewed from the perspective of soul growth.

So that by the time we get to the final goodbye we can affirm that we have indeed had enough.

Tom

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