Imagining Eternity: a Journey Toward Meaning

By William E. Marsh

We’re all on a journey.  We all want more meaning than what we have at the present moment.  We wouldn’t be human if we did not. 

Imagining Eternity is about one person’s journey.  It’s an honest and forthright account of a human being looking for lasting value and purpose in his life.  In this, Imagining Eternity is everyone’s story, a thoroughly human sojourn into the dreams, pain, hopes, and longings which all of us explore and encounter.  It’s a mirror, not so much of content, but of form, of the universal realities we all face in our quest to find value in our existence.

We’re all looking for permanence.  Imagining Eternity is one person’s telling of how he found it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 11, 2008
• ISBN: 9781467831994

William E. Marsh

William E. Marsh has been a writer and teacher for over thirty-five years. Do You Believe? is his sixth book.

Book preview

IMAGINING ETERNITY:

A JOURNEY TOWARD MEANING

By

William E. Marsh

"… I have come that they may have

life, and have it more abundantly."

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AuthorHouse™

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© 2008 William E. Marsh. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means

without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 3/3/2008

ISBN: 978-1-4343-5342-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-3199-4 (ebk)

2nd Edition

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

Foreword

Beginnings

Taking The Leap

Decadence And Revolution

Mellowing

Wandering In Fallen Truth

Opening The Earth

Captured By The Tumult

Arctic Dreams And Autumn Meditations

Snow And Spring

Life As Sheen

Relentless Destiny

Time Traveling

The Shape Of Light

About The Author

The author thanks the following for permission to reprint the following previously published material:

The Most Beautiful Girl by Norris Wilson, Billy Sherrill, and Rory Bourke © 1973 EMI Gallico Music Inc. and EMI Algee Music Inc.

All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

WARNER BROS. PUBLICATIONS U.S. INC., Miami, FL. 33014

Rebellion and Repression by Tom Hayden

Copyright © 1969 Used by Permission.

Seasons in the Sun - Rod McKuen (English lyrics)

© 1964 - Edward B. Marks Music Company

Copyright renewed.

Used by Permission. All rights reserved.

On Ice and Snow and Rock by Gaston Rebuffat, Oxford University Press, 1970, reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.

Op-Ed/The New Measure of Man by Vaclav Havel

Copyright © 1994 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted by Permission.

I’m Free by Pete Townshend, appearing on page 53,

Copyright 1969 Fabulous Music, Ltd.

Reprinted by permission of Towser Tunes, Inc. All rights in the United States, its territories and possessions, Canada, Mexico and the Philippines are controlled by Towser Tunes, Inc. All rights reserved. International Copyright secured.

Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door by Bob Dylan

Copyright © 1973, 1974 by Ram’s Horn Music

Incense and Peppermints

Words and music by John Carter and Tim Gilbert

© 1967 (Renewed) CLARIDGE MUSIC COMPANY,

a Division of MPL Communications, Inc.

All rights reserved

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 Used by permission.

FOREWORD

We’re all on a journey. We’re all on a journey to find hope, purpose, and meaning in our lives. We all desire more than what we have and experience at the present moment. We wouldn’t be human if we did not.

The book in your hands is a story of my journey towards meaning. When I say meaning, however, I do not refer to the meaning that, for example, accompanies the satisfaction of accomplishing a difficult task, participating in an intimate relationship, or doing something purposeful for others. Most of us have these aplenty. Imagining Eternity is about looking for a meaning that lasts beyond the next moment, a meaning that is more than a temporary blip of oneness with work, humanity, or the universe. A permanency of meaning.

I do not share my journey with you because it is more special or profound than yours, nor do I share it because it has led me to a meaning that no one else can find or understand. Just the opposite. I share my journey with you precisely because I believe that although the characters and adventures in my journey are unique to me (just as those of your journey are unique to you), what I found is not. What I have found—and continue to find—anyone can find, really, provided he or she earnestly desires to find it. There are no hidden secrets to finding lasting meaning.

On the one hand, Imagining Eternity is no more, and no less, than an honest and forthright journey of a fellow human being looking for lasting value and purpose in his life. It’s one person’s account of his adventures (and misadventures) with life and the God who makes it. On the other hand, Imagining Eternity is everyone’s story, a thoroughly human sojourn into the dreams, pain, hopes, and longings which all of us explore and encounter. It’s a mirror, not so much of content, but of form, of the universal realities we all face in our quest to find value in our existence.

I trust that in reading about my experience you will find new ways of looking at your own spiritual aspirations, that you will see richer ways of moving yourself toward greater wholeness and beauty in your life. Moreover, I hope that you arrive at a deeper perception of God and who He has made Himself to be for us.

Just as one does not search for meaning in isolation, so does one not write apart from the human communities in which he participates. Many people have helped me in my trek toward completion of this book, and I would be remiss if I did not mention at least some of them. To Ben and Sarah Sanders, I am grateful for initial assistance and encouragement. To Julie Crutchfield, Markie Clements, Steve Zelt, Helen Beatty, Elizabeth Marsh, and Anna Dewere I give thanks for reading the manuscript and offering much good advice as it went through its many permutations. Finally, I offer my deepest gratitude to my dear wife, Carol, who has consistently supported and loved me throughout this lengthy endeavor. It is to her and the wonder of who she is that I dedicate this book.

Soli Deo Gloria.

BEGINNINGS

God is a funny thing. Though people have built splendid temples to honor and worship Him, waged horrible wars to spread the word of His name, given much of their money to what they consider to be His earthly work, and restructured their hearts, minds, and lives to reflect what they believe pleases Him, no one has yet succeeded in proving beyond a doubt that He does in fact exist. As a matter of verifiable truth, God is elusive.

Does this matter? Only if we believe that God is important; that is, only if we believe that we will be better off for believing in Him. For then we must consider how we will explain God to ourselves as well as to those who do not interpret or understand God as we do. What should we make Him to be?

There are no easy solutions. Whether we imagine God as personal deity, faceless presence, ultimate meaning, ground of order, source of life, fountain of intelligence or something else altogether, we find describing Him to be difficult. The extraordinary and supernormal do not translate easily into everyday experience.

If we go a step further and assert that we are in a relationship with God, we compound our problems even more. How do we describe a relationship with something (or someone) we can’t touch, hear, or see?

This is precisely the problem I face as I begin this narrative. I believe that in the autumn of 1974, as I camped in the mountains near Jasper, Alberta, I entered into a relationship with God. I believe that I established a personal bond with a supernatural being and committed myself to learning about Him in my life.

There’s more. I didn’t choose to believe in just God. I chose to believe in Jesus, the impoverished carpenter and itinerant preacher from northern Israel who, in the view of orthodox Christianity, was God in human form and who, moreover, declared himself to be the way—in fact, the only way—to know and understand God.

Why did I chose to believe in such a thing? Why do I claim that in the twinkling of an eye, in the deepest and darkest depths of my emotional longings I came to believe in the reality of this human visage of the divine? And why do I believe that this encounter infused me with a life and spirit that I could never have created myself?

How do I know?

When I think about these questions, I think about the span of my life up to that point. One doesn’t make such a decision out of the blue. Every conversion and transformation, like most significant points of decision, has antecedents, that is, events, happenings, impressions, and encounters which, when put together, create a framework or tapestry in which that decision, whatever it may be, is made.

So it was with me. Through a web of circumstances, passages, and influences spread over many years, I came to a point where I was willing to believe that if I directed my talk to God someone, or something, would answer.

And I believe that God, in Jesus, answered me. Even so, as I prepare to describe those six or so years of mirth and contemplation, I set neither guideline nor agenda. I never expected to believe in God, much less Jesus and, given a similar set of circumstances today, I cannot say that I would do so again. Why I did remains to me a profound mystery. All that I can do is describe who I was when I began my journey; who I grew into as my journey progressed; and, finally, who I have become from what I believe to be is a voyage into the human and personal side of the infinite, the divine, that is, eternity.

Although I can describe the thinking and circumstances which led me to conclude that I should believe, I submit that my decision to believe was, on all counts, a leap of faith, and one that, though William James describes it very well, nonetheless defies chemical or psychological explanation. It summons issues that I approach with uncertainty and trepidation, and carries me into a realm of spirit and soul and being I cannot readily understand or convey.

Faith laughs at the door of knowing.

*    *    *

On the night the Eisenhower presidential era began, November 4, 1952, I came into the world, the oldest of what would eventually be four children (two boys, followed by two girls) in a family in an upper middle class white community in Los Angeles. I had no reason to complain about what followed. Life was good, a naive cultivation of the remarkable and seemingly universal (although it was in fact not) affluence of late fifties and early sixties America. We always had plenty, and always found plenty to do. I was happy and, I was told, creative, smart, and, despite my stuttering, articulate. I felt as if I could do anything I wanted to do.

We lived near the ocean, and I learned to surf at an early age. I loved the beach, and spent many hours on it every summer, relishing the taste of salt water on my tongue, thrilling at the collective spray of the waves that pounded the sand at high tide every afternoon. At summer’s end I returned to school deeply tanned.

Yet every day, really, regardless of season, was a new adventure beneath a California sun whose warmth was immeasurably deepened by the rich and indefatigable love of my parents for me. I never felt abandoned, lost, or lonely at home. Security and comfort permeated every aspect of my existence.

When I was not playing along the ocean, I collected insects (my favorite was the Yellow Swallowtail Butterfly), bicycled, played basketball in my driveway, made countless creations with Lincoln Logs and erector sets, explored the open fields behind our house (finding many snakes and lizards along the way), and experimented with my microscope, telescope, and chemistry set. I spent many nights pondering the intensity and depth of the stars, and the countless spiders who crept into our sandbox. I also loved doing origami, playing my saxophone and, on occasion, joining with brother Bob to attempt to dig through our backyard’s grass and trees to China. I kept rats as pets, and held funerals for them when they died.

In general, I got along with my siblings, though like most brothers and sisters, we had our share of fights and disputes. No bloodshed, however. My dad, a confident, competent, and loving man, as well as holder of a master’s degree from the University of Southern California, worked as an administrator for Los Angeles County. Despite his pacifistic leanings, he enlisted and served stateside in the Army during World War II (Hitler was a real menace, he often noted).

My mom earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from U.C.L.A. She met Dad when they both worked for the County in the late forties. They married in 1950. After the wedding, however, Mom stopped working and never went back. It was just the expected thing to do in those days, she frequently told me. But I am thankful that she was always there.

The public school system was good in those days, and I learned much. In addition, Mom, who, whenever she had a spare moment, read books ranging from treatises on California history (she has more books about California’s origins than anyone else I know) to novels by Vladimir Nabokov, took us to the library each week. I filled my head with tales of and facts about the world, past and present, and devoured books about mythology, wolves, dinosaurs, mountains, history, politics, economics, and the vastness of the Milky Way.

Every August we camped two weeks in the national parks of the Sierra Nevada, two weeks of energetic hiking, popcorn and marshmallows over campfires, swimming in cool (even frigid!) mountain lakes, and sleeping under the stars. We all loved our times in the mountains, and our experiences in them made for some of our happiest memories of childhood.

I delighted in camping. I loved breathing the thin but totally invigorating air; looking at the astonishing splash of nighttime heavens; trekking into the woods alone and fetching wood for the fire; getting up early for hot chocolate; playing forts and knights and castles in the granite rocks that abounded throughout the range; and wondering what lay beyond the blueness of sky that surrounded us with such luminous splendor. Everything was a burst of meaning and pleasure.

The summits of peaks always dazzled and enticed me, and I often told Dad that I hiked to the top of them to get closer to the mystery of the other side. He always smiled, perhaps wondering whether I knew what I was saying, but encouraged me to keep on climbing. You’ll go far with an imagination like that, Bill, he said. Mom and I would often hike with each other to lakes to which no one else in the family wanted to go, braving the sharp rocks and scree to find the perfect picture of alpine sublimity. The trek was always worth the effort.

At the close of many a trip, I’d pack up a bunch of sticks and place them in a paper bag for transport back to Los Angeles. For weeks afterward, I regularly took time to inhale the pungent scent of pine and fir that filled the sack, and remembered where I had been. I could never get enough of the mountains.

Catholicism, like the guardian angel it taught me to count on always being with me, lurked about me from day one. Though I was too young to recall the moment, Mom told me I was baptized as an infant. I believed her, but didn’t think much about it. I couldn’t see how important being doused with water could be to my standing in the world. Mom never failed to take us to mass and catechism every Sunday; though when I was fourteen, Sunday instruction was transformed into something called CCD, taught by laypeople and which we attended on Wednesday nights. Unfortunately, the change in venue didn’t change the content: it remained highly boring.

I had my first communion at age seven, and subsequently took the Eucharistic host each week, kneeling at the altar rail and obediently (or perhaps I should obsequiously) sticking out my tongue for the priest to set the dry wafer on it. I would often laugh to myself at how some people seemed to be practically vomiting as they accepted the host, so vigorously did they thrust out their tongue at the sour-faced clergy before them.

Like good Catholics, we dutifully attended confession almost every Saturday afternoon, trying hard to believe, without really knowing why, that we had always done wrong and needed divine absolution from and for ourselves. We generally arrived at the sanctuary around four o’clock, following Mom into the church like baby ducks on parade, then quietly filing into an empty pew to await our turn. The confessional stalls, shrouded in black and tucked into the sides of the cavernous room, always looked intimidating.

Once, when I stuttered when confessing my sins and addressing the priest, as I always did, as Father, he, a monsignor no less (the next step up from a priest), called me a dumbbell, leaving me puzzled and hurt. I thought that he was supposed to be holier and better than I was, a man who knew more about God than I. So why did he call me a name?

Although I cried that night (Mom and Dad were upset about it, too), I kept going. I had no choice. Venial sins (those that do not automatically trigger eternal damnation) I confessed readily, telling the priest about the bad names I called my siblings, the times I disobeyed my parents, the occasions I ventured to think of sex by looking at some of Mom and Dad’s Grecian art books. The priest listened (I think) and, usually without pause, assigned me a penance consisting of a series of prayers like the Hail Mary and the Lord’s Prayer. After I completed my penance, I remained in the cold wood pew until my siblings were finished, staring at the icons around the altar, and wondering about the darkened cubbyholes in which shrines to various saints lurked in the faint candlelight. Could those saints really hear me?

Each week, as I left the church and rode home with Mom, brother Bob, and sisters Ellen and Kathleen, I inwardly trembled, hoping desperately that I wouldn’t commit another infraction, another transgression that would dirty what I had been led to believe was now a clean slate before God. I was almost afraid to speak, for fear that I would slip up. Later on, when I committed the inevitable sin, I was so disappointed with myself: why did you do it, Billy? What will God do to you?

One day I told the priest that I had committed a mortal sin which, Catholic doctrine asserts, if left unconfessed, would doom me to hell the moment I died. Seeming concerned, the cleric asked me if I was sure, and I told him yes, I was (I think that I had inadvertently said, goddammit.), and that I felt as if I needed to repent. He advised me that indeed I did, although since I had said the word accidentally, I was not as guilty as I had thought. Nevertheless, he instructed me to be more careful in the future, and gave me a lengthy penance.

In retrospect, I think I may have confessed simply to see what the priest would say. Though I had been taught the penalty for mortal sins many times over, I wonder whether I really grasped the import of my crime, so to speak. Despite frequent stories about the horrors of the flaming pits of hell, along with a careful reading of the tortures of the damned in Dante’s Divine Comedy, I had no idea, really, what hell implied. What did it mean to be separated from God? Who was God anyway? I couldn’t come to grips with the notion of being distanced from someone—something—I didn’t know as a reality in my heart. Although I could recite much Catholic doctrine if asked to do so, I had let none of it into me. It never seemed sufficiently attractive to do so.

Nonetheless, Catholicism probed and gnawed on me throughout my childhood, coloring my world with ethereal thoughts of duty, obligation, submission, glory and, perhaps most of all, fear. In no way did I wish to suffer the fate of the damned of Dante’s literary creation. I gladly obeyed whatever people and rules had been set over me, reminding myself that foremost my lot was to happily accept and submit to the structures set over me, particularly those of what was assumed to be of divine origin. The alternative and its consequences were too unpleasant to contemplate. God was not a fun companion. And he certainly wasn’t a friend.

I should say here that Dad, who often joked that he was a pagan, had no interest in the Catholic doctrine with which Mom had grown up. But he did not object to her involving his children in the faith. While we were at church, he stayed home, reading the newspaper or working on various projects around the house or yard. Once, when I was about ten, he attended church. He lasted three weeks.

But the rest of us kept going, week after week, month after month, year after year. By the time I turned twelve, however, thinking that it would make me holier (whatever that meant!), I was going Mom one better and attending mass five days a week. Though I don’t know that I got much out of the experience spiritually, I did enjoy getting up early and bicycling to mass before I went to school. It was an adventure, a way of seeing the sunrise and an empty street. I knew no one else I knew was doing it. I felt as if I was doing something special, something different, something that was more important than what other people did.

Also, I thought that by watching the other people, all adults, who attended these early morning masses, I could learn more about how to please God. Buffeted and pressured by the constant nagging of the nuns who taught me each Sunday, I was determined to be what I thought God wanted me to be. No one advised me to do anything else, so carefully had my church elders sought to circumscribe my world. I particularly sought to emulate a man, probably in his forties, who rarely spoke but seemed filled with serenity at the prospect of walking into the sanctuary and communing with God. I longed for what I perceived to be that level of oneness with my creator.

But I wonder: why did I? I still didn’t know who God was. My religion was woefully empty, a mélange of weary shibboleths heaped on a plain of quicksand.

Nonetheless, I tried to make it otherwise. I didn’t know what else to do. On long family drives, I would sit in the backseat of our family station wagon, turn my head to the window and look at the clouds rolling across the sky. I tried to imagine God in those clouds, forming new mansions in heaven, new dwellings for the faithful, well deserved new rewards to those who knew Him. What would I need to do to gain entrance? Did God really care about me? Ha! I didn’t even know who He was.

God loomed over me as a judge, someone to be greatly feared. I trembled at the thought of Him. The nuns told me that God was a spirit, and that He was out there, somehow, somewhere in the sky, omnipotent creator of the world and undisputed master of the universe. God was everywhere, they said, always looking in what I was doing, always knowing what I was thinking. Be careful, they constantly warned me: God will see you!

The nuns also told me that God was more beautiful than anyone could imagine. Holding up pictures of a smiling Jesus, they told me over and over that Jesus was only a preview of what God would be like in heaven, where we would do nothing but worship God. It would be like being in church all the time, every day, forever and forever.

When I asked what this meant (how could we go to church for all eternity? plus, even if we could, why would we?) and asked for more information about what heaven was like, the nuns didn’t have much to say. Instead they talked about hell and how much I should want to avoid it. You don’t want to suffer the fate of those in the Divine Comedy do you?

I don’t recall anyone ever telling me that God loved me.

At age twelve I was confirmed which, I was advised, made me a soldier of Christ. Filled with my reading about the Aztec Indians, I dreamed about being a conquistador for God, adopting, in rather oxymoronic fashion, Francis of Assisi as my patron saint. I looked at paintings of him feeding the birds and attempted to imagine myself being as consistently gentle as he seemed always to be. How could I do it without a misstep into the pits of hell?

God was a conundrum, a duty of belief which ate away at the fabric of my adolescent existence, drawing me towards some semblance of uprightness and probity, but also dragging me into moral nightmares. Shouldn’t I be doing more, I told myself? Shouldn’t I be doing something worthwhile for the bewildering religious tradition into which I had been born? Maybe I was a soldier, but I didn’t know in whose army I had been called to serve.

Nevertheless, when I was thirteen, to my surprise, my interest in the Catholic Church took on a new dimension. After hearing a series of vigorous sermons on the importance of giving myself to God, thinking at length about how satisfied one of my priests seemed to be in his vocation, and recalling how Francis of Assisi had forsworn the ways of the world to follow God, I decided that I wanted to be a priest. I decided that I wanted to set myself aside, to give up my nascent and undefined ambitions of family (I had always thought I wanted to have four children like my parents) and material gain (I wanted to live comfortably) to serve God. It was my duty, I told myself, my calling, the natural consequence of the life, unconsidered and limited though it was, I found myself leading.

It was funny, really. I didn’t understand who God was and, even though I attended mass every day, I rarely paid any attention to its Latin ramblings. Spurred on, I think, by thoughts of parental approval and possible divine reprobation, I was caught, unknowingly, in the grip of a indelibly inscribed sense of duty and obligation, a sense that I had better go for the priesthood simply because it was there to do—and should be done. I didn’t bother with alternatives. I didn’t see any.

On the other hand, I didn’t know where to look. So clueless was I to my spirituality and the possibilities of my life destiny that I was ready to grab at the first thing that came up. When thoughts of priesthood popped into my brain, I snatched it. At least I had thought of something!

Happily, when I shared my ambitions with some of my classmates on career day in the eighth grade, no one laughed.

My nun was thrilled to hear about my newfound aspirations. She gave me some of her Latin and theology textbooks, and later invited me into her convent’s offices to talk to me at length about her joy of vocation. I felt very privileged, a special person. When I felt frustrated about my school work, particularly gym (I could never be as athletic as I wanted to be), or when my social adventures turned sour, I’d remind myself that I was going to be a priest. I was going to be someone that very few people were. The pettiness of junior high didn’t matter anymore.

When I asked Mom and Dad to send me to a pre-seminary preparatory school, however, they declined. It’s not the right time, they told me. And I suspect they also wondered whether I really knew what I was doing. Although Mom was a committed Catholic and, I think, appreciative that I attended mass every day, I don’t think she was eager for me to adopt celibacy and leave my family and home. I think she had other aspirations for me.

After Mom and Dad told me of their decision, I was crushed, and cried for a day. I was convinced I had been doing my duty to God, the God whom I had in some odd way become convinced that I should obey and serve.

After I finished mourning, however, I found that my desires for a vocation had left me almost as quickly as they had emerged. I stopped attending mass every day, set my nun’s Latin textbooks aside, and drifted back into my dreams (the ones I enjoyed much more than those of being a priest) of sexual encounter and getting to know more people at school. Church suddenly became little more than a chore to complete.

Once I realigned myself socially, I enjoyed serving in student government, getting elected to a number of offices throughout junior high school, as well as participating in all the student dances that came along. I danced with every girl, trading off with the other guys for the honor of swinging with the sexiest one. Snowballing, we called it. And I did my share of raving for the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Monkees, and a group called Love and its classic piece, Time. Upon graduation, I received the Outstanding Achievement Award, given to the graduate who had been most active in student government and other extracurricular activities at the school.

My parents, leftward even during the McCarthy era, discussed sociology, economics, and politics with my siblings and me from day one. Mom often expounded the virtues of Adlai Stevenson and how he should have beaten Dwight Eisenhower (playfully reminding me that I was born on the day Dwight was elected President for the first time), and Dad always reminded me of the importance of a Democratic majority in the Congress. I was taught that the government was good, that it kept the racists in the state governments in check and insured a quality education for everyone. A strong central government, Mom and Dad told me, was essential to keep America going as it rightly should. As far back as I can remember, Mom was active in the League of Women Voters, and often shared its officially nonpartisan but in truth liberal points of view in family conversations. She joined the American Civil Liberties Union in the fifties (and is still a card carrying member).

Occasionally I wondered why Mom was so liberal. Her parents were some of the most conservative people I knew, her father the son of Catholic Irish immigrants, her mother a dogmatic member of a lifelong German Catholic family. Dad, on the other hand, grew up in a liberal tradition that extended back several generations, and which, for the most part, didn’t bother with church or religion. Not until I was in my thirties did I realize how courageous Mom had been to marry Dad, a person whose religious and political viewpoints were so far apart from those of her family. But I never saw my parents argue, and remember a constancy of love and care in their relationship and life together.

Mom and Dad also emphasized the importance of civil rights, and told me early on that the color of someone’s skin shouldn’t determine how I treat him. They said that a black person was as much a person as I was.

I had no reason not to believe them. We were in the dawn of what seemed a golden era, our hearts flush with early sixties Kennedyesque expectations of social betterment, global peace, and structural change. Awed by the aura of Camelot and steeped in the Catholic rhetoric about universal brotherhood (I felt far more comfortable with the Catholic perspective on human dignity, at least as my priests expressed it to me, than its position that salvation was virtually unattainable), I thought that we should do whatever was necessary to bring about a universal righteousness. It seemed a good way to please God as well as my parents, splendidly encompassing all the obligations I believed I needed to meet to be fulfilled and content.

Beyond this, though, I think I genuinely cared about the blacks of America. I wanted people to be happy.

Civil rights became very important to me. Along with millions of comfortable and affluent white Americans, my parents and I watched as the freedom marchers entered the American South, cringing together at the news clips of police officers beating them, and jointly recoiling at the footage of the church bombings in Alabama. I also found myself flabbergasted at one Klansman’s assertion that, I don’t believe in segregation; I believe in slavery. Mom and Dad backed me at every step of my journey.

I also read the text of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, coming away deeply moved at its eloquence and the yearnings for freedom that it expressed. We must, I concluded, set the blacks free. Bubbling over with a righteousness probably not fully my own, I vowed to stand up for the cause of civil rights wherever I was.

The next year, 1964, I watched news clips of Barry Goldwater courting the right wing tendencies of America in his presidential bid, then stood by as my parents were thrown out of people’s homes and laughed at in the streets for their attempts to promote integration and racial harmony in our lily white (and happy to stay that way) community. Two years later, as Ronald Reagan was trying to convince Californians that he should be their next governor, I participated in the effort to defeat Proposition 14, an amendment to the state constitution which would have effectively allowed a homeowner to refuse to sell his home to anyone whose color he didn’t like. For my efforts I was called a nigger-lover and commie by many of my schoolmates. But I didn’t mind. I was convinced that morality was on my side.

So were Mom and Dad. Interacting with them about civil rights made me feel more like the responsible person, one who was capable of dialoguing with my elders and able to think like a grownup, the type of person whom I felt I should be aiming to be. In the midst of my constant worries about staying in the in crowd, my ability to commune with Mom and Dad on what I perceived to be weightier topics than the next Rolling Stones record release proved a panacea, a way that I could transcend the fun but often vexing social mundanities of adolescent existence. For although I enjoyed junior high, I spent a considerable amount of time trying to find my place in a world which, given the many strands of a nascent counterculture taking shape around me, seemed continually out of reach. I felt as if I were always a step back.

As the nation rolled into the summer of 1965, I, Mom, and Dad watched as the community of Watts erupted with terror and rage. We were appalled,