Settle4It - You are so right about the things they would see!

I have a personal story about myself for both you and Saddletramp that I think you may relate to.

I'm went to a small Catholic University here in Texas and it was the best choice I *ever* made. The Priests and Professors I had were a godsend. There were several that changed my perceptions of the Universe, the Divine, and Humanity, but there is one Priest in particular who changed my life forever.

He was a short, stocky, and fiery little man who came here from Indonesia. His name was Father Peter Phan. I'll never forget the first day of class as he strode in, books in hand and announced, "My name is Dr. Peter Phan. Not Peter Pan, but Phan - P H A N - Phan! I am not here to teach you religion. I am here to show you the Christian Bible as a Literary work - not a literal work. I am here to teach you to think and challenge you to rethink every thing you've arrogantly accepted as Truth. If you have a problem with this, then please leave now."

I was like...alllll righty, then!

Over the course of the first few weeks, I wanted to strangle the man. I was a fundamentalist, bible thumping, infallible word of God believer and he was ruffling every feather I had including the down! One day, I met with him after class in his office for a show down. He was a Priest, after all, and to hear him rip apart my foundations was more than I could stand. So I pridefully strode into his office and accused him of being a wolf in sheep's clothing; a man of the cloth who obviously had no allegiance to what that cloth represented nor the God he claimed to believe in. He smiled at me, calmly took off his glasses and started cleaning them and said, "Ah! You seek understanding! This is good." Being the arrogant little know-it-all arse I was at the time, I told him I knew everything I needed to know. Everything was right there contained in the pages of the Bible. Again he smiled as he looked up at me and there was such playful joy in his eyes that at the time I felt insulted.

He offered me a seat and asked me just how much did I know about God. I spewed out the memorized dogma I had been taught and he stopped me and repeated, "How much do you KNOW about God." I didn't understand the question and fell silent. He said, "Ah. Progress. Now that you are quiet perhaps you aren't as hopeless a case as I thought when you came in. Meet me here tomorrow after class and I will show you the wonders of the Universe."

Over the next few months, he yanked my carpet of self-righteous arrogance right out from under me an landed me smack on my ass. I studied the history of man's earliest attempts to understand who or what controlled the universe. The Enuma E'lish, Epic of Gilgamesh, Teachings of the Buddha, Hinduism, and countless others. I saw the universal and timeless concepts of spirituality leap from the pages and I realized that I knew nothing. Absolutely nothing about the Divine, myself, my fellow man - nothing. I became a clean slate with no foundations, no beliefs other than I believed in a Divine Creator who was a loving Father and Mother. It was only then that I began my quest for understanding, knowledge, and truth. Only then that I truly began to realize just how timeless Man's quest for understanding was, and that just like them I might never touch the face of God in my lifetime, but the goal was not as important as the journey.

Father Phan gave me the greatest gift I've ever been given - the gift of humility and the courage to admit that I knew nothing. By teaching me the Bible as a Literary work and not a literal work showed me that it is the key to understanding the many lessons those pages can teach us. The many genres of literature contained in those pages is a literal plethora of teachings on over coming the Human condition if one is willing to learn. I just wonder what other treasures are contained in those writings that were not included during its compilation at the Council of Nicaea.