The image I associate with the first part of my life (maybe 25 years) is “sleep-walker”.  I recall my fierce need to find ways to be accepted and to get attention.  I knew I was different physically, in that I was born with a much shorter right leg with a partially formed foot.  The amputation at age 7 changed me in many ways, although most profoundly internally.  Learning to walk on my first wooden leg was the easy part. I remember feeling unsafe in the world, and decided to be “a good boy” to cut the risks of rejection and abandonment.  This strategy worked in part, yet I still feared that if people really knew me, they would see me as incomplete and unworthy of love.  I overcompensated to win approval.  I felt bewilderment, fear, self-pity, hate, envy and judgement. It took me more than 25 years to really accept my “new” leg, although I was very thankful to get around very well. I’m happy to say that now I walk briskly an hour every day in comfort and gratitude. I grew up in a religious tradition based on fear and the threat of punishment if I was not “right with God”.  This was a perilous position, in that I believed I could never be good enough, and was plagued by guilt, insecurity and self-consciousness.  I felt extremely alone.

I learned early how to put on a front.  My decision to become a clergyman was rooted in desperation, and with the attempt to please God, even while I thought I would never measure up to all the demands I understood to be placed on me.  I continued to fear eternity in hell. I might add that my inner life through those years seemed like a living hell.  After ordination, the tension worsened, and my self-image shriveled more and more, to the point where I could hardly see a way out from this inner pain.

I can recall only one major exception to my dismal world.  That was the birth and developing lives of my two phenomenal daughters. My first real experience of love was for and with them. I had no fear, no conditionality, no expectations.  I felt good honoring their lives and supporting them in their choices.

I knew I needed help, and began appointments with a warm, skilled therapist.  I had an amazing experience in a relatively short time.  I felt valued, accepted, understood, seen, heard, and cared about.  Now I had the courage and delight in challenging my old beliefs and concept of God.  I had encouragement to carve out a new life, and quickly began to see the benefits.  I went to England for a year to study Clinical Theology in order to prepare to become an effective counselor, as well as to further my personal growth.  The more inner work I did, the better I felt about myself, even though the road was also fraught with pain in the process of facing and coming to terms with big chunks of my unfinished business. It is clear to me that the experience of love is transformative and it was love that propelled me to a new, richer experience of God.  It was through this time that I moved away from my old notion of God = Fear.  Now I began to be open to experience God as the creator and expression of love in the world – showing up in people, in nature, in silence and through my senses.  I am sure that a big part of my transition from my “old” spirituality to the “new” was an urgency in me to be free and to be myself.  I was about to re-define myself. Many life-altering experiences were to follow, and I’ll mention a few. I was about 30 when I quit the church and became a probation officer. This environment really opened up a new world to me, and I relished a chance to learn and grow in what felt like the real world.  I unflinchingly took off my rose-coloured glasses.  I loved interfacing with people who also were at cross-roads in their lives.  My first wife and I decided to end our 12 year marriage, and did so amicably.  I went to Esalen Institute for my first personal growth workshop, and the very next week to another, Gestalt and Nature, in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.  It was here that I had a near-drowning experience that further changed my life.  While I flailed in the 80 foot deep water, I confronted an ultimate choice.  It was here that I “heard God speak” to me – “You could give up here, now, and people would think your death was an accident.  Do you want to stay alive for your children, for your parents, for any external reason? (These were the considerations that “flashed in front of my eyes”) What about being alive for YOU?”  I started swimming again, and after I reached the big rock in the middle of the lake, I heard the nurse say “He has no pulse, he’s dead”. I was unable to speak or move. When I regained consciousness, the next day, I had a new appreciation and reverence for life that grew exponentially.  A few weeks later I started my teaching career in community colleges, and facilitated Human Relations classes right to my retirement.  I loved this “work”, and got paid for it!  I also continued my private practice in counseling, and still enjoy it very, very much to this day.

I benefited hugely from a week long workshop on Life, Death and Transition with Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross.  I did a firewalk which offered a wonderful metaphor for one of my truths that anything is possible. I did a Ropes Course in a canyon in California. I did a 10 km. run in Moscow.  I loved the safari in Kenya and my archeology course in six countries of the Middle East. I had a healing session with a psychic surgeon in the Phillipines. I learned to fly an airplane.  I did a parachute jump.  I married two more times.  My marriages and other primary relationships were wonderfully full of experiences giving me continuous reference to inner versus outer locus of evaluation. I increasingly got used to the idea that we always have choice, and nothing has to stop us.  This is certainly a core belief that I hold. I wrote poetry in my thirties to express my feelings and gradually saw the importance of listening to my inner world, taking it seriously, and sharing it with others. I needed to grow trust in myself, which counts so much more than trusting anything or anyone outside myself. Years later I wrote six books as a way to express my perspective on life and relationships. After my children, this has been one of my most exciting, enjoyable and rewarding creations.  Another was the construction of a six-story home in the Bruce Peninsula which has 8 sides and 120 windows.

If you look at my books, you will notice that I have reduced concepts to the fewest possible words.  I believe brief is better. I wrote the first book, Thoughts on Relationships, after it dawned on me that I could write a book for use in the Human Relations classes.  I had been frustrated for years that nobody had written such a book.  The receptivity to that book was so positive (it became a Canadian bestseller) that I was inspired to write a second one.  A lot of people   told me they benefited from the thoughts. That, along with the fact that I enjoyed writing and publishing at this point led me to keep on writing until I felt finished with the series. The pages were all born out of my life experiences.

For many years I was on the Board of Directors of the Goddard Booth Society For Holistic Health.  During that time I became clear that mind and body are interconnected.  This was a definite contrast from my early years, when the two were polarized, and in fact enemies.  The same could be said for science and religion.  I have much gratitude for the learning that we are a whole person, and that every part of us speaks continuously with every other part.

Part of my transition to a new spirituality came about as I moved away from “acting” to being more authentic. My world travels have mellowed and enriched me. I have come to see that everyone and everything is a gift.  Perhaps this is how I have transformed pain into growth. I treasure the Conversations With God material, and use it daily in my meditation.

My purpose here is to speak of the strength of the human-divine spirit, as well as the power of intention. I do not mean to boast of my accomplishments or to come from my ego.  It is my attempt at sharing significant aspects of my life and ways I participate in it.  I am grateful for the breadth, depth and elasticity of spirit. I have no regrets. I take full responsibility for all I have created and co-created in my life.

I don’t blame anyone for anything.  I don’t like the spotlight, and never have. Now, as I turn 70, I see myself as follows: creative, intelligent, sometimes witty, sensitive, gentle, compassionate, dynamic, honest, sensuous, spontaneous, and flexible.  Although I'm intense, I'm not frightening.  I'd say I know myself quite well, and I'm not egotistical or overbearing - in fact, in some ways, I'm humble and semi-modest. In other words, although I'm secure in myself, I'm human! I'm quite aware that, as humans, we all have "cracks in our plaster", and that's okay. I have learned from and been enriched by previous relationships and life's hard experiences, and I am not bitter or cynical.  I like expressing affection with words and actions, but I'm not pushy or indiscreet. I'm a relaxed person, and many have told me that I am relaxing, comforting and comfortable to be around. My curiosity shows up in playful ways.