timeline

Writing on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

Following is a basic time-line of my spiritual development. There is not much detail, but it is a place to start.

· 1954: Born on January 29th. Baptized during the winter of 1954 at All Saints Catholic Church (I presume).

· 1972: Went to BASIC late summer, by fall I had committed to Christ and Christianity.

· 1973: Got married on June 23rd. I listened to a “religious” radio program on an alternative station in Wichita, Kansas. Don’t know what it was. I would like to discover it. Seems like a priest hosted it.

· 1974: Moved to Lawrence, Kansas in August of 1974. Joined with New Life Christian Fellowship at that time. Meet at the Ohio House. Rachael is born Thanksgiving Day, November 28th.

· 1976: Moved to the Bible Chapel (associated with the Plymouth Brethren Movement). Elisabeth is born September 26th.

· 1978: Becky is born April 24th.

· 1979: Hannah is born September 26th.

· 1980: Moved to the Reformed Presbyterian Church.

· 1985: Moved to Saint John’s Catholic Church. Had the kids baptized and the marriage blessed.

· 1986: Joined Coalition for Christian Outreach. Attended training in State College, Pennsylvania, June thru August. Lived as a guest with a family in the White Oak borough (suburb of McKeesport, Pennsylvania) September thru November. My family moved to White Oak in November. Fellowshipped at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in McKeesport where I was the youth director and Saint Angela Merici Catholic Church in White Oak where I ran the pizza kitchen on bingo nights.

· 1987: Failure. Resigned from the Coalition in August and moved to Hope Mills, North Carolina. My faith is seriously challenged. Attended Good Shepard Catholic Church. I really liked this church.

· 1988: I moved to Wilmington, North Carolina mid-summer and separated from my wife. I seemed to have been moving away from Christianity, but was thinking about the meaning of life. The family moved back to Lawrence in August; I followed in November.

· 1990: Separated for good and continued to think about the meaning of life.

· 1993: Divorced in September. Christianity is left completely behind by now, rejected.

· 2000: I am an agnostic graduate student in Anthropology.

· 2006: Started thinking seriously about faith again (I have been for a while. I have been attending Unity Church of Lawrence with my girlfriend for some time now.) and in August I started to attend mass at Saint John’s as an experiment. I started praying the hours, i.e. the psalms, during the summer and have sustained this practice to the present, as well as continuing to attend mass at Saint John’s.

· 2007: In August I started to document my project on my blog.