Robert C. Koehler: Growing up, becoming a man
by Robert C. Koehler, Tribune Content Agency
Jul 06, 2022
4 minutes
I’ve made my own choices along the path of life — spiritual, mental, physical. I declared myself a non-believer in my parents’ religion at age 16. I’d just read the book “Exodus,” by Leon Uris, and couldn’t tolerate the church’s teaching that all non-believers, including all Jews, were going to hell.
Bye bye, church on Sunday. My mother was devastated, but we slowly came to terms with one another. On a family vacation that summer, as we were driving on the Chicago Skyway, the radio announced a tornado warning. Mom later wrote a published essay that ended thus: “Three Christians and one agnostic prayed.”
In other words, we found a space beyond life’s cultural certainties to reconnect. We
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