It was the very cold winter of 1954.  The small town in the Appalachian Mountains where I grew up was deep into the Christmas season.  It had been snowing hard so the cars were making tracks as they made their way up and down the city streets.  It was evening and Christmas lights decorated Main Street and little shops were casting a cheery glow on the sidewalks.  Our old stone Anglican church was on a small side street and it too was glowing with multicolored lights from the stained glass windows.  The evening Christmas service was in progress.

It was a beautiful church with large dark timbers overhead, mahogany and brass pews.  There was a choir section on either side of the large white marble altar that held a gold cross.  Lighted candles and red and white chrysanthemums adorned with white and gold brocade ribbons completed the traditional Christmas season decorations.

As an acolyte, I was seated next to the altar and slowly dimmed the lights in the church as the minister ascended the two steps up to the pulpit to present the Christmas sermon.  The minister was an old man nearing retirement.  He loved his religion; he loved his church and had served the parishioners well for over 30 years.  He looked up from his notes and his first words were, “The Rocket and the Christmas Tree”.

The week before, the a local newspaper had two side by side pictures, one of an Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile , the other a huge Christmas tree, probably the one at the White House.  The newspaper had scaled the  pictures so the missile and the tree appeared to be about the same size.  I won’t go into the details of the sermon but you can imagine what a skilled minister could do with imagery like that as an inspiration.  It was a memorable sermon.

At one point in the service the minister called for all attending to “make a declaration of our faith” at which time we always repeated the Apostle’s Creed.  I had done this every Sunday for 11 years and had little attendance pins to prove my record.  Only two of us had achieved perfect attendance for 11 years.  As we started to intone…”  

I believe in God the Father Almighty,

Maker of heaven and earth:

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord,

Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,

Born of the Virgin Mary, … 

I started to notice that I was falling behind in the recital and I was actually listening to myself and for the first time.  I thought…”What am I saying?”  Do I REALLY believe what I’m saying in front of all these people?  Do I even understand what I’m saying?  “born of the Virgin Mary”  “Father, Son, Holy Ghost”?

I didn’t finish saying the remainder of the creed but I did read it, carefully, critically and silently.  I knew my world had changed because I realized for the first time that I really did not believe what I had repeated over 500 times.   

Our old minister retired and a new minister took over the parish.  He was young, bright, pragmatic and I enjoyed talking with him.  When I finally told him of this experience he did not react as I expected.  He simply smiled and said that I had chosen a very challenging path and he would be glad to help in any way he could.   

A few years later, my girlfriend, whom I had dated since high school, and I decided to get married as soon as we both graduated from college.  She was Catholic and I was not.  In the ‘60’s it was necessary for any non-Catholic to take a series of classes if there was any plan to be married in the Catholic church.  My wife-to-be was half Italian and that was the plan.   

I was in California, my fiancée was in New York.   Because of schedule conflicts I could not attend the regular classes but a local parish priest in Inglewood agreed give me “private lessons”.  At the time, I had been studying books by Bertrand Russell, the famous atheist.  The first question out of that very Irish priest’s mouth was, “Have you ever studied any philosophy?”   

I was not sure how or if I should answer that since I knew I had to get his signature on the “approval” papers.  I decided to play it straight and told him I had just read three of Bertrand Russell’s books.  There was a silence.  His eyes opened a bit wider than normal and he said, “Bertrand Russell, now!” as only an Irish priest could do. 

To make a long story short, he turned out to be a great guy.  He was pleased that I had delved into “the examined life” and that I was very familiar with the Catholic Church and all its culture.  He signed the papers with best wishes.    

So we are here today and I think back on that young Anglican minister and his parting words of advice, “Don’t concentrate on what you DON’T believe but rather get your thoughts organized around what you DO believe.”  That one little sentence has been my lighthouse in the fog during my odyssey that has lasted 60 years.  I have read works of the classic philosophers, studied the major religions of both the east and the west and have studied the primitive religions of the indigenous inhabitants of the continents.   No one religion or philosophy contained the credible essence and pragmatic guidance that I was looking for.  Therefore I have chosen to publish what I have slowly gathered and distilled.  I am making a declaration of MY faith and proposing MY philosophy.  It is intended to make a declaration of belief from a humanist perspective.  It  is further intended to describe a philosophy that champions a positive view of the future and proposes pragmatic guidelines for implementing it.  I hope that it will contribute to meeting the challenges facing society. 

 

Let the adventure begin!