autobiography and epigraph and sterling college and brown university

I came upon the genre of autobiography quite by accident. I had just moved with my family from Portland, OR to Sterling, KS in August 1990 to take a position teaching history at Sterling College. That year was a very busy one for me, as I had to "retool" myself from being a professor of religion (focusing on sacred texts) to history (focusing on periods/people/movements). I wanted to make the change, however, since I secretly wanted to get "credit" for all the books I had been reading, and I figured that since, depending on how much you stretched the term, everything fit under the rubric of "history, I could find a way to sneak all my reading into the classroom in some way. Teaching history also gave free play to at least two characteristics of my mind--its precise and polymathic aspects--and so I eagerly took up the challenge of learning and teaching world history in this small Christian college about 90 minutes from nowhere.

First Autobiography--1991

At the end of the first year, however, I felt that I not only had come a long way professionally by so retooling myself, but that I had come a long way geographically, spiritually, relationally and intellectually since my days as a Brown University freshman (now called 'first-year students'--never do in one word what you can do in three) in 1970 and before. Thus, I decided to write my autobiography in 1991. I was only 39, but I wanted to take stock of my life to date. Two very important things to me about the autobiography were the title and the epigraph. I wanted both to communicate something about how I understood myself and the task of writing autobiography. So I called the book 39 and Lost in America. I had enough good sense to recognize that all the changes of the previous several years (earning two advanced degrees, getting married, holding three jobs, living in two countries and several cities, having two children, moving to a hitherto unexplored region of the country) had left me adrift rather than focused, and I wanted to explore the "drift." I think this was my way of trying to kindle focus or discover focus in life. Indeed, I entitled one of the chapters in my 1997 book (written in 1996; Yearning Minds and Burning Hearts: Rediscovering the Spirituality of Jesus) "Jesus and the Focused Life," as if Jesus was wrestling with the same issues that occupied me in Kansas.

Then there was the epigraph. I chose it from Thoreau, one of the many writers I was reading at the time. It had to do with writing autobiographies. 'I wouldn't write so much about myself if there was someone I knew better' was the gist. Indeed, at 39 I didn't consider that I knew very much, even though I had been toiling away at my field and my varied Portland activities for several years. I felt as if I had assembled a collection of bricks and they were strewn around me as I sat on the ground. Perhaps one day they could be erected into a striking or attractive structure, but for now they were bits and pieces of knowledge, experience and personal contacts that lay about me. So, I decided to try to make some sense of my confusion if I could. I recall going to the office each morning and working diligently on the project, from about May 20-July 1. I wrote around five single-spaced, dot-matrixed (I used an old Mac) pages per day, and by the first of July 1 had finished my first "book," --a 150-page, single-spaced narrative of my life. Occasionally I dip into the book today.

What is apparent to anyone who reads it is the tone of the tome--it is theological (occasional reflections on Dante and Augustine), teleological (God must have some kind of purpose in mind in all this), and determined (I will find out the meaning of all of this). Yet it is not "theological history"--it skillfully sets the historical tone for understanding the people and institutions with which I had to do over the years. Some accounts of various distresses fill the pages, but I didn't realize in 1991 the extent of my tethering to my personal past and family of origin. In the words of the motivational speakers of the 1980s, life was what you made of it; it was brimming with new possibilities. All you had to do was to reach out and grab them. It all sounded so easy, and I think I was looking for the easy and clear redemption that was, no doubt, right around the corner.

Second Autobiography--2004

Of course there was no deliverence or redemption right around the corner. I don't know if I would have recognized it if it confronted me. Or, better said, perhaps there was redemption before me every day and I failed to see it. Or, perhaps my categories were skewed. Why should one construe life as a series of challenges and redemptions? Why should one expect an irruption of meaning into one's life, as if life was some kind of volcanic formation which would explode every once in a while? I began to see that I had adopted an "Evangelical" view of time, a view of time which emphasized that there were chronos and kairos moments, the former stressing the humdrum or chronological nature of life (one damn thing after another), while the latter stressing the "special" character of time (in Jesus' words, "The time has arrived, and the kingdom of God is at hand"--Mk. 1:14-15). But I had no time or inclination to try to write another autobiography, either by bringing the first one "up to date" or by completely rewriting my life.

Until 2004. Again, I wasn't planning to write a second autobiography last year, but I had an unexpected and possibly serious medical situation early in 2004 that left me wondering whether I was as healthy as I had assumed all along. It has turned out, at least in mid-2005, that I am healthy, but I didn't know that in May 2004. Thus, I decided to write a second autobiography, not really as a valedictory to life but as a way of trying to limn whether and how my mind had changed in the previous 13 years. What was interesting to me was that my title and epigraph didn't arise until after the narrative was complete.

The next essay will tell the story of what I learned in this second autobiography, as well as try to suggest, humorously and ironically, the epigraphs to my (not-yet-written) third and fourth autobiographies.

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