[January 1999 journal entry] [1/99]
There is a ‘what if’ list of events/choices that influenced the direction my story has taken – e.g., What if I had been physically and/or mentally disabled as a young boy when I lost control of my bicycle and skidded in front of a car on a highway that stopped with the front axle just inches from my head? What if I had pursued a professional baseball career past high school? What if I had returned to my home town in rural Western Kentucky to be a teacher and coach? What if I had gone to a college/university associated with the fundamentalist ‘religious’ tradition into which I was born rather than enroll in a state university? What if I had taken the MA-PhD track in speech and communications I had envisioned early in my undergraduate years? What if I had broken my neck or worse when in 1977 I fell backward more than twenty feet off a castle wall in Carcasonne, France? What if my first wife (d. 1987) had not had Multiple Sclerosis (especially in such a devastating form)? What if I had gone to Yale for doctoral work -- as Dr. Hinson suggested I consider doing -- rather than to enter the Southern Seminary program under his supervision? What if I had returned to Oxford after finishing my doctoral program at Southern Seminary to study with Maurice Wiles had agreed to guide my Oxford DPhil thesis (plans/arrangements for which were in place by 1979 to do so)? What if my twin daughters had not been born at such a strategic time in my life? What if I had not (yet) introduced the spirituality classics course in the evening schedule slot when Dr. Elkins was looking for evening classes to attend (as preparation for his beginning an academic career in Obstetrics and Gynecology) and from which our collaborative partnership re the ethical dimensions of medicine formed? What if . . . ?
There is a ‘what if’ list of events/choices that influenced the direction my story has taken – e.g., What if I had been physically and/or mentally disabled as a young boy when I lost control of my bicycle and skidded in front of a car on a highway that stopped with the front axle just inches from my head? What if I had pursued a professional baseball career past high school? What if I had returned to my home town in rural Western Kentucky to be a teacher and coach? What if I had gone to a college/university associated with the fundamentalist ‘religious’ tradition into which I was born rather than enroll in a state university? What if I had taken the MA-PhD track in speech and communications I had envisioned early in my undergraduate years? What if I had broken my neck or worse when in 1977 I fell backward more than twenty feet off a castle wall in Carcasonne, France? What if my first wife (d. 1987) had not had Multiple Sclerosis (especially in such a devastating form)? What if I had gone to Yale for doctoral work -- as Dr. Hinson suggested I consider doing -- rather than to enter the Southern Seminary program under his supervision? What if I had returned to Oxford after finishing my doctoral program at Southern Seminary to study with Maurice Wiles had agreed to guide my Oxford DPhil thesis (plans/arrangements for which were in place by 1979 to do so)? What if my twin daughters had not been born at such a strategic time in my life? What if I had not (yet) introduced the spirituality classics course in the evening schedule slot when Dr. Elkins was looking for evening classes to attend (as preparation for his beginning an academic career in Obstetrics and Gynecology) and from which our collaborative partnership re the ethical dimensions of medicine formed? What if . . . ?
