The Faith I Was Born Into Formed

I Come From A Missionary Family - I Grew Up In China - And In My Case, My Religious Upbringing Was Positive. Of Course, Not Everyone Has This Experience. I Know Many Of My Students Are What I Have Come To Think Of As Wounded Christians Or Wounded Jews. What Came Through To Them Was Dogmatism And Moralism, And It Rubbed Them The Wrong Way.

I Simply Wanted To Experience The Presence Of This Man Who Had Revolutionized My Understanding. After A While We Sat In Silence, Gazing At The Barren Canyon Walls. And The Mute Desert Seemed To Carry On Our Conversation For Us.

Historically, Religion Has Given People Another World To Live In, A World More Adaptive To The Human Spirit. As A Student Of World Religions, I See Religion As The Winnower Of The Wisdom Of The Human Race. Of Course, Not Everything About These Religions Is Wise. Their Social Patterns, For Example - Master-slave, Caste, And Gender Relations - Have Been Adopted From The Mores Of Their Time. But In Their View Of The Nature Of Reality, There Is Nothing In Either Modernity Or Postmodernity That Rivals Them.

...but With My Clamoring Ego Solidly In Place, I Considered The Title, 'memories Of A Failed Nobody'.

Exclusively Oral Cultures Are Unencumbered By Dead Knowledge, Dead Facts. Libraries, On The Other Hand, Are Full Of Them.