a bit of my story

There was a time -- and not that long ago -- when I believed in accidents. When I believed in simple coincidences. When I believed in only what I could see with my two eyes, hear with my two ears, smell with my nose, taste with my mouth and touch with my skin.

I believed in science. Evolution made sense to me (it still does). Mathematics, chemistry, geology, astronomy where the anchors which held my world in place.

The world I lived in seemed comfortable enough -- wars, random acts of violence and plunging stock markets excepted. The earth moved around the sun; gravity held me on the patio; I ate chili dogs and got indigestion. Most people were okay, but the rest you couldn't count on.

Basically, I was a carnivore who had adapted to a carnivorous planet.

-- And don't even get me started on God! What a sweet, little ruse that was to keep the masses in place and men running things.

All you had to do was look at the world around you to know that if there were a God, ours must be the one the other gods didn't want to hang around with after school.

Oh yes, I was very sure of my place in the universe. I was born bloody and helpless and would probably go out the same way. In between I'd grudgingly finish school, grudgingly get a job, get a wife, get a mortgage, get kids, get an ulcer, get fat, get a heart attack and die.

End of story.

Such was the way of things on this little blue and brown ball spinning silently within dead space within a cold, cold and empty universe.

And just when I'd gotten about as smug as one could get, something happened. Something extraordinary. Something unbelievable. I woke up one day, as if from a thirty-four year coma and found myself in a new world. Tuesday life made sense. Wednesday I wasn't so sure.

Without going into the details (some of which were down right frightening), suffice it to say that over the following six years my life was turned upside down and inside out. I was no longer sure about anything -- and that included gravity! I had awakened, through no effort of my own, to a new universe, a universe about which I didn't even know the basic rules.

So began a six year crash course in Awakened Humanity 101:

That not only is this universe not cold and empty, it is exactly the opposite: a universe so filled with unconditional love as to make our collective hearts weep.

That we are not small, arbitrary, unimportant organisms coughed up from the maw of evolution to scratch out survival and die alone.

That we are, in fact, a magnificent, integral part of a loving plan of creation.

And than came the coup d'grais for an old, arrogant agnostic like myself: There is a God -- and thank god, One with a sense of humor.

But let's be very clear, this was not a God of hellfire and brimstone; of judgments and punishments; of an-eye-for-an eye; of spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child; of indifference and separation and distance. This was a God worthy of being considered a god, unconditional in the expression of love, gentle and wise and friendly and good-natured and committed and intensely interested, protective and ever-encouraging. The parent we'd always wanted but never had. The person we'd hoped to be but haven't yet achieved.

I'd lost one home, but found another, my true home.

The One Home.