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Introduction

This is a spiritual autobiography. To understand it, you need to know how I came to write it. I had a series of spiritual experiences that occurred over a period of seven years, from early 1993 through 1999. During those years, I wrote a daily spiritual journal and also retained my weekly planners. Thus, when I decided to write a spiritual autobiography of those years, I had the raw materials available. I wrote the autobiography during 2001 and 2002, framing it as a series of monthly letters to the spiritual presence I refer to as Jesus or Christ or God or the Holy Spirit or any of several other metaphors typical of Christian references to the deity—Comforter, Advocate, Light, Savior, Teacher.

This essay offers a taste of that 60,000-word book in fewer than 8,000 words. I have retained most of the first year and the last and offered central letters from the intervening years. I deleted most of my social and work life, leaving a core centered on my spiritual experiences. I began as an Episcopalian and later joined the Catholic Church. Along the way, I worshiped with the silent Quakers and the jubilant charismatics. I had visions, and I spoke in Tongues. I came to understand that God is present in all things and all people. Indeed God is truly omnipresent, as orthodox Christian theology proclaims.

Please do not mistake the narrator for an omniscient voice. I am the narrator, and I have tried to capture what I experienced at the time and what I thought about it then, whether I considered it right or wrong upon later reflection.

30 April 1993

Dear God,

You've made a mistake. I've thought a lot about it, and now I'm going to write about it, to see it in front of me, on paper. I got your message okay. That's not the problem. The problem is, I'm the wrong person. Your message must have been meant for someone else. I admit the time was right—my favorite day of the church year, Maundy Thursday, when the institution of my beloved Eucharist is celebrated. And the place was right, too—church immediately after the celebration, the altar stripped, the lights dimmed, holy silence. And the vision. There's no mistaking the vision, a mental vision, of course, not one a camera could capture, but a vision nonetheless. It was a vision of me as a bride, a very classical '50s bride, long dress, white veil, and all.

I didn't like the symbol even then. Marriage is not my thing, not to mention being a classical '50s bride. Yet the use of a bride as symbol is one reason I don't think my own mind made up the message. My mind would have chosen a symbol I liked. Anyway the message is clear. It's a call to what the Catholic mystics know as the unitive life, a life fully united to yours. The Catholic writers used the symbol of marriage to talk about it.

Swept up as I was at the time, in that spiritual atmosphere and state of prayer, I said "yes! yes!" joyously. Suddenly the Spirit of altar and Eucharist, who has always seemed exterior, seemed interior. Your familiar presence appeared inside me. At the time, I was enormously grateful. However, in the cool light of day, I know something is wrong. I'm not worthy of such a thing. There must have been a mistake. The message was meant for someone else, someone far better than I, a saint somewhere. The heavenly bureaucracy got the address wrong.

You know? I'm hardly even religious. I teach in a secular university. I'm a philosopher of science. I admire reason and evidence. I defend science against faith, evolution against creationism, and naturalized ethics against the Bible. I don't think the Bible is authoritative. Christianity might be the wrong religion. I've not believed it to be the right religion since I was in eighth grade, when I read up on world religions and decided I would never know what the right one is, if there is a right one. I'm an Episcopalian merely because I decided to stay in the religion of my childhood unless I saw good reason to change. Moreover I'm a skeptic. I'm perfectly willing to admit that God might not exist, that all religious experience might be mere fantasy, including my own. I don't believe half the things the church teaches, any church. I've remained an Episcopalian while I've been a Christian, a theist, an agnostic, and an atheist. Yes, an atheist. I was an atheist for four or five years—that’s years, not minutes.

Furthermore my behavior isn’t saintly. I drink, I cuss, and I've had a dozen lovers. I've broken most of the Ten Commandments more than once. I admit I've not born false witness. Nor am I covetous. Nor have I murdered anyone, but I certainly wanted to. I remember being disappointed when Dave died because his death meant I could no longer kill him. I get angry! I was so angry at one time, I felt killing people was good. I knew my feelings were wrong, but I certainly felt the emotions. My sympathies were with the gunmen who randomly shot people in McDonald's. I knew how they felt.

Dear God, there's been a mistake. People like me are not called to unity with you. We'll never sit among the saints. We can only hope to slip unnoticed some foggy night through a crack in the heavenly portals.

26 May 1993

Dear and Blessed Spirit,

Today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me. Maybe this is a good day to write you.

The Maundy Thursday vision is still worrying me, partly because my skepticism cuts both ways. It's possible, although highly improbable, that there wasn't a mistake. If you have called me, it's an incredible privilege and honor, and I should be responding positively.

THEOLOGYAUTHOR

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