It was summer 1961. I was 17, skinny, 6’ 2”, 130 pounds. We were living in Fargo North Dakota where my father was Commandant of Cadets for the AFROTC program at North Dakota State University. He made me go down to the unemployment office every day that I was not employed already, and take whatever job was available. I hated him for making me do that.

I worked baling hay for a mean old farmer, sun up to sun down. I worked construction where the foreman told me to “shovel like a man.” I helped set up a rig for the motorcyclist at the carnival who rode his cycle around a vertical circle at high speed. I cleaned out a corn silo and almost passed out from the fumes of the rotting corn.

I worked as a bell hop at the Fargo Hotel, operating the elevator. It was tricky getting it to line up with the floors. It was usually pretty quiet except when the drunken Shriners came to town. Once the manager caught me hiding in the phone booth reading Grapes of Wrath.

I hated him, but of course now I am grateful to have had such a father. He was much better at it than I have been.

As the Holy Spirit works in me, little by little, He undoes the life long habit of taking the easy way out. What a blessing! It’s not something I could ever do on my own. Still a long way to go.

When I used to hear people talk about being born again or receiving Jesus into their heart as their personal saviour, I was skeptical. I dug Jesus. I was a fan. But I had never had any such experience as being “born again”, and I suspected that it was just something people said, a way of expressing their enthusiasm for Jesus.

Then it happened to me. I started attending church and was baptized on Easter 2019. The Holy Spirit became my companion. As long as I continued to listen and follow His guidance, He stayed with me, cleaning my soul, strengthening me, increasing my understanding. I became a new man. I was reborn.

It’s real! Jesus Christ truly is the way, the truth, and the life! I wanted everyone to know the good news. But not everyone wants to hear it. The good news is amazingly unwelcome. At church I am surrounded by people who are continually becoming smarter, kinder, less and less selfish, but out here in the world the name of Jesus, as often as not, just pisses people off. Same as it ever was.

All of the progressive impulses are suicidal. Free the criminals. Eliminate all reliable sources of energy. Eat bugs instead of meat. Encourage abortion. Force everyone to take dangerous experimental vaccines that don’t work. Shut down the school system. Train young people to hate their country, and if white, to hate their race. Facilitate the import of fentanyl into the U.S. Destroy people’s trust in the government and the media. Start a proxy war with the world’s second largest nuclear power. To name a few of the many impulses of this suicidal cult.

The problem is that they are not just suicidal. They want to take everyone else with them.

Trump lunged forward twenty feet from the rear of the limousine, broke through the bullet proof glass, vaulted over the front seat, tried to grab the steering wheel, and choked the driver with his tiny hands. Ms. Hutchinson wasn’t there, didn’t see it, but she is sure that is what happened.

Every news outlet, including Fox, is buying the story as true without a doubt, even though she is not a witness, was never cross examined, and there are three people who actually were present at the scene who are prepared to testify under oath that it never happened. Of course the committee will not be calling them to testify.

Add this to the Russian collusion, the treasonous phone call, the drinking bleach, the Nazis are fine people, the mocking cripples, and all of the other lies and hoaxes.

You can fool some of the people all of the time.

Although he was a false prophet, by injecting old fashioned morality into the acid culture of the Haight, Stephen Gaskin saved many of us from far worse fates. I feel lucky to have been rescued from the worst excesses of the 60s by Stephen and The Farm.

This kangaroo court show trial J6 committee is a far greater “threat to democracy” than anything that happened on January 6th or anything that Trump has ever said or done. Anyone who can’t see that is in the grip of a mass formation psychosis.

Why were there hardly any Capitol police there? The President is not the boss of the Capitol police. Nancy Pelosi is. Trump asked for National Guard troops. Nancy refused. Why would she do that? The crowd was sprinkled with FBI informants egging on the bunch of useful idiots who took the bait. It was a setup. Trump should have known better. He got suckered.

I took a lot of psychedelics over 30 some years, LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, peyote, mushrooms, morning glory seeds, and ayahuasca. I have no regrets. On balance, although I obviously overdid it, I believe it was good for me, but that may not be true for everyone.

I do believe psychedelics can be an effective treatment for despair, but I no longer believe they are a path to enlightenment. The bottom line is that psychedelics are neither necessary nor sufficient for salvation.

Father Chris encouraged us to tell our stories. Here is mine.

My coming to Christ was not a sudden spectacular event. I was not blinded by the light on the road to Damascus. It was a long, gradual process.

I was not exposed to Christianity growing up. My parents were not religious. I never set foot in a church until I was an adult and then only for the occasional wedding or funeral. As a kid I assumed that the story of Jesus was just something adults told children, like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. I didn’t have any idea that grown-ups actually believed it.

When I was in college at Iowa State University I was the kind of atheist jerk who mocked people for believing in God. Then the 60s arrived. I was living in a crash pad in Iowa City in 1966 when a friend of mine discovered that you could order fresh peyote buttons through the mail from Lawson’s Texas Cactus Gardens. The first time I ate peyote my materialism vanished. There were obviously more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in my philosophy.

After that it was a long, strange trip through psychedelics, Zen, a false prophet named Stephen Gaskin, eight years living on a hippie commune in Tennessee, and a period of going to Native American Church tipi meetings, among many spiritual dead end journeys. I read many many books on Buddhism, Jungian psychology, Yoga, everything but the Bible. Christianity was too square, unhip.

Then I came across C. S. Lewis, and was presented with a clear, coherent, intelligent, passionate exposition of the truth of Jesus Christ. If this is really true, if Jesus really is the Son of God who came to Earth, was crucified, died, was resurrected, and ascended into Heaven, that changes everything. It made such perfect sense that that is what the Creator would do. That is who He must be.

At that point it was an intellectual realization. There must be a God and the God of the Bible must be who he is. I loved Zen, but this was clearly a more human and more profound truth. I started thinking of myself as a Christian, but I was still very leery of getting involved with a church. I called myself a lone wolf Christian.

At some point reading Lewis I found a passage describing the absolute necessity of being a member of a church, which is after all the body of Christ, and of taking part in the sacrament of Communion. So I figured I had better find a church. I went online and looked at church websites in Murfreesboro and listened to some recorded sermons. Finally I came to stpatricksboro.org and listened to a sermon from Father B that I really liked. As it turns out, Candace had happened to drive by Saint Patrick’s previously and thought it was a church I might like, just from the look of it.

So I went on Sunday. I was a little nervous. I’m not exactly a people person, and I had never attended church before. Father Ray was preaching. I loved it. I loved everything about it. I loved the liturgy. I loved the sermon. I loved the people. I started going to the class in Cole House that Father Chris was teaching. I asked him about being baptized.

Easter 2019 I was baptized and everything changed. The Holy Spirit entered my life. I began receiving instructions, to pray in the morning and the evening, to read the Bible, to quit drinking and smoking marijuana, to catch myself before being irritated by little things that didn’t go my way.

I had never thought of myself as being a sinner. I always believed I was a good person. Now I realized how wrong I was. I became painfully aware of the sins I had committed against many people, my parents, my wife, my children, friends, lovers. I confessed my sins to Father Ray, repented, was absolved, and began to make amends. What a relief! I am happier and more at peace now than I have ever been. As Father Chris has said, it’s night and day. Recently my wife told me, “You are much easier since you became a Christian.”

The Holy Spirit has also informed me that far from being the accomplished spiritual athlete I imagined myself to be, I am a rank beginner. My faith is weak, my trust in the Lord is wobbly. I have a long way to go, but there is help. The way is narrow, but His yoke is easy.

Tulsi Gabbard would seem to be the ultra electable politician. She is beautiful, the perfect age, tough, smart, and smack dab in the middle of American political opinion. And yet she is unlikely to be elected to anything because she is anathema to both parties. Is this a sign that a third party is in the offing? How bankrupt must a political party be to turn its back on a candidate like Tulsi?