January 2001 journal entry]
What accounts for my move so many standard deviations away from the mean in my approach to ethics and spirituality?
- Doctoral studies in the field of history led to my adopting/forming a radically modern/critical historiography.
- Existential experience with chronic illness and death (i.e., my first wife’s multiple sclerosis and death) during my 20s led to my resolving to align with the marginalized/outcast (i.e., a ‘from below’ perspective/journey).
- Being born within and raised within a fundamentalist Christian denomination created firsthand knowledge of the ‘black hole’ inward pull of the ‘religious’ sphere.
- Taking/finding opportunities to move outside the ‘religious’ sphere (personally and professionally) led to my thinking in the world’s ‘marketplaces’ and ‘wildernesses’ without the blinders/restrictions of the ‘religious’ sphere.
- My resolve to strive for consistency in multiple diverse conversations required that I prioritize my place in those conversations.
- Exposure to the breadth and depth of human suffering -- symbolized by my first wife’s experience with multiple sclerosis -- led to my crossing a threshold beyond which I could not forget, minimize, or compartmentalize such realities.
My sense is
- that few individuals face such a combination of experiences,
- that few individuals who face one or some combination of such experiences pursue the implications radically to the end, and
- that facing simultaneously an increasing number of such experiences multiplies the force/resolve/initiative to follow out the implications radically to the end.
