Driving down the main street of virtually any town or city in America, from atop the brown brick Catholic parish with its beautiful stain glass windows or the plain Congregational church with its white clapboard siding, you will see multiple crosses against the sky.  No one can escape the timeless issue they represent. It is the search for God and the meaning of life.

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For centuries, these were the places where most people looked to find answers.  But in the 1960s religion was changing and what people were looking for was changing.  People were dissatisfied with these institutions and they had  questions that were not being fully answered, because their lives were increasingly complicated and painful and empty.  Where was God and what really was the purpose of life?

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Early on, after my mother’s simple faith was shattered by mental illness, driving me into despair and an angry rejection of God, these very questions forced me into a difficult and painful search.  Yet in the turmoil of life, it was a difficult to find any meaning or any evidence of God outside the everyday, most especially anything valid in the conflicts, hypocrisy, competing claims, and disappointments of religious movements and institutions.  How was I to navigate this world to find something to believe?

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This is the story my memoir tells. It is the story of lived struggles to find faith within an imperfect world, a life where challenges were not escaped, where there were no simple answers, but something authentic could be found just the same, all within the pain and difficulty that we all share regardless of who we are or our place in life.  Above all, it is a journey through the rich and turbulent religious landscape, at times conflicted and even crazy, as seen through the eyes and in the experience of others in their own search for God and meaning.

In a nihilistic world increasingly defined by anxiety, despair, depression, suicide, loneliness, and emptiness, all now epidemic, and a need to escape through alcohol, drugs, sex, violence and intense forms of entertainment, this search is more imperative than ever.  And every day the world grows darker as stories of scandals, gun violence, hypocrisy, and the collapse of every place we once looked to for meaning dominate the news, resulting in a crisis of mental health.  Within all of this, there is this haunting need we all have to find more meaning in our lives.

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But where to begin?  Everyone’s search will be different, but what might such a journey look like?  Especially for anyone disappointed or disillusioned by their involvement in religion in the past or present, it is an imperative act for our time.

This is not a how to or self help book.  There are too many of these already and they rarely satisfy.  This is the story of a personal journey.  And not an easy one, but one full of challenges, including dead ends, conflicts, disappointments, and disillusion – the way real life is – but finally resolution, reward, and wisdom. It is finding the holy imbedded in the flawed and imperfect.  It is an inspiration that comes of struggle.

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When I first entered into my search, I looked for help from the real world experiences of others, but this proved futile.  Nothing truly real or personal existed.  That is why I am so passionate about telling my story from brokenness and despair to wholeness and fulfillment and a journey struggling with life in a difficult and turbulent world.  Within an epidemic of purposelessness, I needed to share this in a way that anyone from any state in life could related to and understand so they could know that the journey is often hard, the struggle real, but also worthwhile and life changing at the same time.

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I have been an ordained Episcopal Priest for forty years.  I am also a trained and experienced Spiritual Director, teacher, and poverty attorney.  As a chaplain and counselor, I have worked in acute and chronic care hospitals, prisons, nursing homes, psychiatric facilities, Spiritual Direction centers, and churches.

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When you read my story, my hope is that you will feel some of the desire and the courage to search for God in unusual places and to know the hope and excitement and fulfillment that such a journey can bring, regardless of all the twists and turns, the trials and dead ends, and to know that life is a journey that never ends.