Born Again with a Brother Sun Chaser

When my senior year started I had a girlfriend, but she was three-thousand miles away. In an unexpected way, this allowed me to completely be myself since I didn't have to impress any girls or pretend I was something I was not. Surprisingly I became more outgoing, discovered a sense of humor I'd kept long dormant, and allowed myself the luxury of waxing poetic and philosophic on all manner of topics. By having the pressure removed of having to 'play the field' I could simply be myself, for better or worse, and pursue whatever diversion or distraction held my interest. I spent a lot of time alone that year, invested hundreds of hours in the Seattle Public Library among the stacks of books, or strolling through the Pike Place Market, the Seattle Center, Volunteer Park, the U District. At school, during lunch, instead of going to the cafeteria I'd find an empty classroom and hunker down to read Charles Sanders Peirce, Alfred North Whitehead, William James, and John Dewey (apparently this was the beginning of an off-again/on-again Pragmatism phase).

One side effect of all this, because I no longer cared what anyone thought of me and adapted a laissez faire around the girls, I became quite popular despite my intentions. It seemed the more I was aloof, the more I was pursued. Such are the twists and turns of the human psyche.

During this time I wrote K twice a week, long rambling letters that declared my undying love then went on to espouse whatever philosophical concept I was currently struggling to work out. We tried to talking on the phone at least once every two or three weeks, but because of the long distance charges at the time we held our discussions to a minimum (this being long before there was an Internet, email, ICQ, voice messaging, etc). After she'd been in Florida a few months, I found it charming that she'd unconsciously adopted a southern drawl and I would jokingly call her "Belle."

That Christmas K sent me a beautifully engraved pocket watch with our names engraved in it (a gift I still own, still wind whenever I remember, still keep nearby in my home office) and I sent her flowers and an assortment of Jean Naté  hair and body products. At the time her gift of the pocket watch had a powerful effect on me, and I felt a little shameful for not putting as much thought into her gift as she had apparently put into mine. She sent me an engraved watch! I vowed that as far as gift-giving was concerned I would from then on be more conscientious and thoughful, to make every attempt to match a unique gift with the unique personality of the receiver (a noble exercise that has backfired on more than one occasion).

Sometime after the first of the year, out out of the blue, I underwent what can only be described as a 'born again' experience. Besides philosophy, I'd also been reading a variety of religious and metaphysical literature, including The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity by Alan Watts, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, et al, Christianity As Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity by Rudolf Steiner, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, and Intellectual Honesty and Religious Commitment by Henry Aiken, et al. For some reason, I'd also made the commitment to read the entire New Testament straight through before turning to the Old Testament (had I started with the Old Testament first I might have been a little more critical/skeptical of my religious leanings since no reasonable person could take it all literally, but metaphorically). Not once did it ever cross my mind to doubt any of the New Testament or to pursue any kind of dedicated research to explore its veracity. Without question, I accepted the New Testament as historical record, as unchallenged historical fact, simply because that's what I was taught since I was a small boy. With this mindset—not too mention the loneliness I was experiencing as a teenager, not realizing such feelings are normal—I thought there must be something missing.

One night I was feeling particularly lonely and out of sorts, restless, overwhelmed by this sense of 'something missing' (nevermind that K was on the other side of the country and I was avoiding temptation by behaving like a recluse). Suddenly I felt an irresistible compulsion to put myself in God's hands, to give myself to Him heart and soul, to confess my sins and start anew. I got down on my knees and let everything out and accepted Jesus as my savior. All at once I felt a warmth pour down over me and an indescribable rush of emotion. I started shaking and crying uncontrollably and found it difficult to breathe. This lasted what seemed for several minutes. Just went it felt as if my chest was going to explode, I returned to normal. Wet with perspiration and exhausted, I picked myself up off the floor feeling empowered with newfound understanding. I was 'born again' and 'saved', a 'new creature' in Christ. The next morning I told my mother what happened and she immediately went into a chorus of 'Praise Jesus!' and 'Thank you Jesus!', lifting her hands and doing a little dance in celebration. After her performance, I decided I didn't need to tell anyone else what happened, at least not just yet. A week later I wrote to K and tried to explain what I'd experienced, but she wrote back saying she didn't understand. I wrote again with a more detailed explanation and still she replied she didn't understand. I decided it best not to push the subject, especially with those who hadn't experienced it first-hand, so decided to publically go on about my business as if nothing had happened.

Two months after my 'born again' experience, in late Spring, I went to see the re-release of the Cliff Robertson movie Charly because it was based on a book (Flowers for Algernon) I'd read for class earlier that year. It turns out it was playing as a double-feature with another film I didn't know anything about, Franco Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon. Zeffirelli's film, which told the story of Francis of Assisi, was lush and beautifully photographed and included a wonderful soundtrack by singer-songwriter Donovan. For some reason, Brother Sun, Sister Moon affected me in ways I am still unable to completely fathom. I had recently read Nikos Kazantzakis' book Saint Francis and found it to be almost life-changing in its passionate depiction of religious vervor. The combination of Kazantzakis' book and Zeffirelli's film had a synergistic effect on me whereby the two taken together were greater than the sum of their parts.

A week after seeing Brother Sun, Sister Moon I went to see it again and sat this time hunkered down in my seat crying silently to myself. Looking back, I am uncertain why I was moved so emotionally by this movie and this book. Whether out of loneliness, religious fantasy, or wishful thinking, I found myself struggling with a restless impulse to renounce my worldly life and—like Francis—to take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Again and again I returned to see Brother Sun, Sister Moon whenever it played at different theaters, sometimes dragging friends along to their bewilderment and bemusement, and always choking back the tears. In all, I had seen Brother Sun, Sister Moon ten times before K returned that summer after graduation, and it was the first place I took her, playing miles away at the Admiral Theater in West Seattle. Of course she didn't understand the movie or my reaction to it which only helped heighten my feverish religious ardor.

When K returned from Florida to start school in the fall at Western, she informed me our first night together that she was on 'The Pill'. No wonder she could not understand my growing fixation with the 'evangelical counsels' of poverty, chastity, and obedience! She had taken intelligent steps to assure our sexual intimacy, a closeness at which I silently balked. Truth be told, I would have rejoiced at the notion of 'going all the way' a year previous, but now found myself overwhelmed by religious fear and guilt. Unsure of myself, less sure of K's intentions, within weeks I initiated a break-up with K for reasons I was sure were both virtuous and godly. Could I have been a bigger ass, a greater fool, a more thoughtless imbecile? Undoubtedly, no. To this day I rue the way I treated K and all because I'd convinced myself it was what God wanted. I was too blind with my own self-righteousness and self-importance to see that I'd behaved abominably, that I was hurting K in ways obvious to everyone but me, that love and compassion have nothing to do with the literal reading of words on paper. Regrettably, I would repeat this same behavioral pattern many times throughout my life.

When school started in the fall, K went off to Bellingham and Western Washington University while I stayed in Seattle to attend the University of Washington. At first school went well and I was enjoying my Chemistry and Calculus classes. I was still set on majoring in Science, either Oceanography or Marine Biology, and was planning my next four years accordingly. All this would change, of course, within six months, but at the start of school I was still bouyed with hopes, zeal, and intellectual aspirations.