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As long as I can remember, I have taken it as my task to try to "do good" and "do well" in the world. One of the earliest lessons I learned from the Scriptures was "to whom much is given, much is expected." It never seemed to be open to question that I was given much; therefore, the "other shoe" fell before I even knew there was a first shoe. Much, therefore, would be expected of me. I internalized this message, which I picked up in all kinds of situations I am sure, and began to expect a lot of myself. Then, when I began to read and study seriously, I realized that I had adopted what the American theologian/philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr called the "Christ transforming Culture" view of the world. As a Christian in the world, I took it is my duty to be a "transforming presence," whatever that really meant.

Sometimes you want to head for the hills when you are in the presence of someone who feels his call is to be a "transforming presence." I think that is probably my reaction to such people now, but I was certainly one of them back then. I was, to paraphrase Woody Allen, a member of a club that I now wouldn't want to join or have much to do with.

I felt, reasonably, that what was "expected" from me would naturally arise as I engaged with people and with the world. As the old Scottish hymn says, "God is His own interpreter; and He will make it plain." I didn't know where I was going, but I was confident that with my gifts and with people's help, I would get to where I should be going. Knowledge would be very important to me, but people would be the instrument through which I would discover and demonstrate my passions, gifts and skills. When you combine this philosophy with the soft-core Marxism that hovered like a brooding omnipresence about 12' above Boston, where I lived from 1974-1980, I felt that I had my life's task clearly before me. I would somehow engage the world in a transformative way that would bring justice to the "little people" in the world, even as I taught and studied at elite colleges and universities.

Sometimes my engagement with the world was silky smooth, with words zinging to hearts of hearers like arrows shot from Cupid's quiver. At those moments you think you finally know why you are here in the world--to be a mediator of knowledge, of goodness, of some kind of meaning and connection among people. But often I found myself befuddled and, increasingly, clumsy in the world. This befuddlement was not fundamentally an issue of ineptitude but rather of inattention. Yet my inattention was not like that of Christian on the way to the Heavenly City in Pilgrim's Progress who, "being heedless," plunged into the Slough of Despond and only with difficulty was able to extricate himself. Christian's inattention was a sort of blitheness and general carelessness in life. Mine, in contrast, was the inattention caused by the lure of other voices, so faint as almost to be imperceptible. It was as if I was gradually becoming a sort of latter-day Odysseus struck with longing for something I couldn't specify because of the faint but indescribably beautiful sounds of some modern-day Sirens titillating my ears.

I began to, as it were, hear this beautiful music but I didn't know where it came from; I didn't know how to get closer to it; and I didn't really have the time to pursue it. Why? Well, because as I said previously, I felt that I was to find my purpose, satisfaction and meaning in life in engaging with the world and not by taking loads of time to see if I could "tune into" these unknown Sirens. I was a man "on the make," and I didn't have too much time for contemplative leisure. I didn't really have the time for another reason--and that was because from about age 30-50 I was pretty fully engaged in family and career building. There is nothing like the desires and needs of two beautiful children and a wife to tether you to the existential realities of the physical world around you. And, then, I didn't listen to the Siren call because I felt it wasn't the "right" call. After all, the Sirens in the Odyssey lured unsuspecting sailors to their deaths. They sailed closer and closer to the irresistible sound and, before they knew it, they wrecked their ships on the jagged rocks.

Yet by the time I was 35 years old (1987), I was clearly unhappy. I attributed it to a loss in an election (1986) and to not getting a prestigious job for which I had applied (1987), but the roots of my sadness were much deeper than that. I had been committed to the notion that the harder I ran, the more I did, the more people I met and tasks I accomplished in my political, teaching and community-service life, the more fruitful my life would become. I likened my life to some kind of flower which would gradually open when sunlight, moisture and nourishment were applied to it. And I was trying to give it all the nourishment I could. But I was incredibly scattered and rootless. I was like former NBA player Dennis Rodman described himself as a rookie--he had so much energy and enthusiasm that he just bounded all over the place, wasting it on all sorts of valueless things and never really getting anything useful accomplished.

I used to think when looking back on my life that I had a year or two that weren't stellar for me--maybe 1987 or 1995--but I am now coming to realize that I had significant losses and steady negative apprehensions, fears and afflictions for nearly two decades, from about 1986-2004. Maybe it is no accident, as I review my life, that I first started teaching the Book of Job earnestly in 1989 and finished the last of my hundreds of mini-essays on Job (on this site) and my third book on Job in 2004-2005. Job was a vade mecum off and on for two decades, and his heart and struggle are now ineradicably burned into my consciousness.

Coming to Myself

I finally decided I had to make a change in my life at the end of January 2003. I had come off of a difficult divorce (Oct. 1, 2001), and had just left my high-paying, prestige-laden job at "BLF" (big law firm) to take up a part-time, which matured into nearly a full-time, position teaching law at my alma mater, Willamette University College of Law in Salem, OR. No more would I be making the terrible commute of 90 minutes each way to Portland, then rushing home to do a variety of tasks, and then have perhaps an hour to myself and my son at the end of the day. I had gained the whole world in that law firm, but I did it at the cost of losing much of my life. From now on, I would simply be teaching my Jurisprudence course (Friday mornings) from January-May 2003, and then have the rest of my time "free." I actually didn't finish my legal work in Portland until the end of January, so February 1 began my "free time."

I will never forget the immense sense of freedom I felt when I sat down at my office at the school one day in February 2003, opened my books to study/plan, took out my pen and pad and then realized I didn't have to "keep time" anymore. I billed clients in six-minute time blocks when I was in law practice, and now I realized that I literally "owed" no one my time. Thus, it was up to me to create my world, to create the future which would be mine. When I realized that now I not only had no one to blame, if that is what I was looking for, and that I had nothing but time and freedom before me (with a course that took me about 10 hours a week to prepare for), I almost wept for joy. The realization that I was free from engagements hit me so strongly that it was almost like a conversion experience. I realized that I had been running all these years to try my best to fit into the beats of other people's drums, whether they were clients, or partners or administrators or colleagues or, even, the throbbing hearts of my family members. The more I tried to "fit in," the more dessicated and disoriented I felt.

But now, with no one basically telling me to do anything, I could begin my life again. I had choices, energy, but I was totally unsure where I would go. One thing, however, became clear to me as I gradually began exploring this new world--I would do all that I could to see if the faint voices of indescribably beautiful music I heard three decades previously were still there. And, I can tell you this, friends. Not only was the music there, but I began to hear it with such a pleasure, with such enjoyment, that I knew that I really would never want to go back to the world, to "re-engage" with the world as I thought I was here on earth to do.

How did I begin again to hear the music? How did I discover the sense of expansive freedom which I feel has been part of my life since then? Let the next essay lay that out, and then I will get to Plato and Thomas Jefferson!

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