A Personal Walk of Faith

After a statement About the Author, this book of essays deals with many topics related to Faithing, Personal Behavior, The Religious Community, Bible Commentary Frequently Debated Questions and Study Tools. Other categories include: Jesus, God, the Devil and Notes. The conversational style makes for easy reading and the Appendix contains a synopsis of each piece. Fifty Pieces is just under one megabyte of text, and may be ordered below.

Also below, FIFTY PIECES IS NOW ON MP3 AND PDF.

Not too many years ago I lived in the hills of northern California. I had a pretty good life. I had a garden, an orchard, some chickens, a couple of dogs, some cats, two vehicles, a boat and lots of time to take care of it all. The reason I had enough time to manage forty acres and all those things was that I grew marijuana for a living. Thousands of dollars came rolling in every year. I had it made

Where I lived TV reception was very poor at best and I couldn't even get any PBS. So, money being no problem, I bought a satellite dish and was ready for all those movies, sports and specials; besides PBS.

Now I live "in town" on the busiest corner where all the trucks for the local supermarket AND all the school buses pass thirty feet from my bedroom window. I rarely oversleep.

I grew up in a Fundamentalist church and accompanied my father every Sunday until I was big enough to say no. From that time on, church was something for other people. I didn't like what I saw in my tradition-bound, legalistic church, where we were sure that Catholics weren't even Christians. I went my merry way.

I moved around the country from Chicago, to the southern California desert, to Los Angeles, to Monterey, to end up in Humboldt County, an area that became known as the Emerald Triangle, because of the three counties there that produced large quantities of marijuana. At one point I even heard of a person in England that recognized the brown shopping bag from our local market, having heard of our good crops. In England!

I had smoked marijuana frequently before moving north, even got into trouble trying to grow some in Monterey, but that was for personal use, not sale. And it was four years after I moved to the hills that I started growing the weed for sale. I had tried other things like teaching, wood cutting and commercial fishing. I worked at a saw mill for a while. I still wasn't "making it".

I grew dope for eight years and feel extremely fortunate that I didn't get caught. I think God was watching over me. Even when I started to sell cocaine to get it free for myself, I know God was behind me keeping me from going overboard. Then I bought my dish.

In a matter of days after the dish was installed I was flipping channels and came across a talking, white-haired head. I couldn't make out what kind of program this might be. I could tell that there were others in the studio with the White Head, and I could tell they were responding to what was being said by their laughter, but they were never shown on camera.

The thing that impressed me about the Head was that it obviously wasn't using any script, and there didn't seem to be any real structure to what was going on. I flipped by after hearing a few words about God.

Now I had read the "Autobiography of a Yogi", a bit of the Don Juan material and had landed on what I thought was the answer to life: the Seth Books. A woman named Jane Roberts would go into a trance and speak, verbatim, volumes of material on the workings of life and the universe in general. Her husband would take down all she said and without any editing have the finished book. There were four or five of these books. Today we would say the material was channeled. Jane Roberts voice and mannerisms would change and this entity who called itself Seth would speak and tell us that we "make our own reality."

I believed what Seth said. I worked on the method of improving my life. I read and re-read "The Nature of Personal Reality." I knew that this was the way things really worked, and that I could make my reality what I wanted, given the time and energy. It was a lot like the Positive Thinking that I'd been hearing so much about. This explanation of life made more sense than anything I'd heard, and it was concrete enough for me to get a handle on; unlike some of the abstract ways which purport to deal effectively with reality. Then I flipped by that same White Head during a church service.

By now I knew that the White Head was named Dr Gene Scott. I wasn't impressed. Lots of preachers are called doctor. Some seem prouder even of their title than they are of God.

Dr. Scott was just stepping up to a chalkboard and asking, "What is faith?" Having studied the Seth material extensively and knowing what faith was, I thought, "OK, TV preacher, tell me what faith is." He said, "Faith is an action, based on belief, sustained by confidence." Imagine my surprise at hearing exactly what I knew faith to be.

You see, Seth says that we make our reality by acting on certain beliefs. When we change those beliefs, we change our reality. Changing one's beliefs is a little too abstract for me to know just how to go about it, but Seth then follows by telling us to concentrate, for even five minutes a day, on what we want, then start acting in a way that demonstrates that we are, or will get, what we want. He says action will change your beliefs and thereby change your life. Action based on belief. Just what Doc said.

That was when my life started to change. Up to that point, I guess I was like most people where God was concerned. If pressed, I would admit to some kind of God, somewhere, but not the God of the Bible. Besides, most of that stuff in the Bible was too deep to understand anyway. I couldn't figure it out alone, and didn't care to have any Christian I'd ever seen tell me what it meant. All they ever seemed to want to do is tell me about all the bad stuff I'd been doing. It was almost like they looked for an opening to talk about sin.

I tuned in again to Doc's nighttime program, he calls it the Festival of Faith, to hear a little more. I got hooked. "Coincidentally", Doc was teaching on the lost tribes of Israel. I knew less than nothing about the subject, let alone the fact that five sevenths of the Bible concerns those folks. In fact, without understanding the roll that the lost tribes play in God's plan, you can't even understand Jesus sayings, actions, and mission on earth.

Now the thing that came out of this teaching was God's reality. I found that the God of the Bible was indeed real. He had to be real because all the things that those old prophets said concerning that northern nation, the ten tribed House of Israel, had come true over the course of 2500 years of history. How can a person argue with a track record like that? Do you realize how much of the Old Testament is prophesy? And do you realize how much of that same prophesy concerns the House of Israel? If you exclude the book of Daniel, almost everything else is directed at those ten tribes.

This knowledge doesn't come overnight. I had to study a lot of history to know that most of the predictions about the lost tribes had come true. But the thing that had me vibrating with excitement was that those people were not the Jews as most everyone thinks. Those lost tribes became the Celts, the very people who were my ancestors!

Well that was just too much. Not only was God real, I was directly descended from the very people of the Bible. It was staggering. I haven't stopped studying since.

Shortly after I started getting serious about Doc and his teaching, my marriage got pretty bumpy and I left for a while. I stayed in a small trailer for three months. I seldom went out. I hid the clock in a cabinet and mainly pleasured myself. I kept a tape recorder on hold, and when I'd notice a thought process, or think of a saying concerning life, or get an insight into my actions, I'd record a quick note. Soon my routine became taking drugs, recording notes, fighting with the devil, sleeping, and transcribing my recorded notes.

I went back to my wife for two years. During those two years, I watched Doc, supported and prayed that God help me stop growing marijuana. Little did I know that my whole lifestyle would change. My marriage failed. I lost my animals, my house, my land, my whole way of life. I had no job.

This book is the outgrowth of all of the above. Mostly when I'd be thinking about or acting in faith, something inspiring would happen and I'd get an insight into the practical side of life and faithing. These chapters are the individual pieces which describe and dissect those practicalities.

I won't apologize for the quality of repetition of the pieces. They all deal with faithing, after all. I also need to mention that the title "50 Pieces of Faith" was only a working title. I had about fifty pieces to offer, and I like the number fifty. Five is the number of Grace, and ten is the number of human responsibility. I liked the title so much it stuck, in spite of there not being fifty actual pieces.

You won't find a lot of traditional concepts in this book. The language may at times sound traditional, but be prepared to hear the truth. The truth is always hard to hear, especially the truth about God and the Bible.

I guess I wrote this book for myself, but I hope that someone else will come to know the God I know by reading what I've written. I didn't start out to write a book, it just happened. From what I've experienced with God so far, that seems to be the way things go. You look back and see the thing after the fact.

Lastly, I need to thank Margaret for her unfailing support in getting these thoughts into print.