It was a dark and stormy night... Not really but I figure I will never get to use that line anywhere else in this short life and if you look up the weather on the day and time of my birth it was dry and the temp was in the 50's, it all started in a small Community in Northern Michigan, not the U.P. mind you but, almost as north as you can get on the large peninsula is where my meager existence begin in a cabin in the woods.

 

I was raised in a pretty worldly home, until my father found Christ (and to think he was behind the couch the whole time HA HA ok bad joke) at which point our home went full blown Super Christian involving our family in every aspect of the Baptist faith to the point where my father became an Ordained Minister and served as an unpaid associate pastor at several churches, Youth minister at a couple, and always on the Board of Trustees, he followed his heart and tried with every effort to make it my heart as well, I think he knew in the dark recesses of his mind that I was different.

 

These were tumultuous days for me, I struggled with my faith, my sexuality, my self worth as well as my worth in the eyes of others. You see there were secrets being kept all around me, so it therefore facilitated me learning how to be able to keep a secret very well.

 

Now let's leap forward to the mid 90's, "...in such a time as this!" (Curtis Hutson, 1994)  my father insisted that I attend the college of his choice, considering I had a complete 4 year full ride scholarship to a more liberal Christian college and he forced me to turn it down because they were too liberal, so I became a student at Crown College in Powell, TN the college of his choice. "A distinctive Baptist college" as their creed says when the only distinctive thing about it was how much brainwashing, and sexual repression went on there, when I began questioning the material that the teachers (using that term very loosely) were teaching about the faith and the doctrine they were perpetuating I was  quietly and promptly asked to leave I believe it was put like this "We feel that You are no longer a fit for the college here" That Dr. R was an eloquent orator, when the truth was I never really was a fit from day 1, after all I was sitting in the deans office in week 2 perhaps that should have been a clue that the next 3 yrs would be a very bumpy ride. I was constantly being stripped of privileges to the point I had to ask others to get me things from Walmart because of all the demerits I had accrued. What kind of college dictates to an adult whether or not they can go to Walmart let a lone when they can leave campus?

​

Fast Forward another 10 years and I finally came out of the closet as a gay man and then that began an even harder time of difficulty for me when there should have been none. I do openly admit that because I was afraid of my father(long history of abuse) I did effectively ruin an EXTREMELY good woman's life for many years and many more years after I told her we needed to divorce and no I did not disclose why I allowed her to use her imagination which she didn't really have to do because a "friend" gave her the idea I had found a girlfriend and cheated something I did not do. I have no excuse so I claim none, but I have sincerely apologized to her many many times. 

 

These difficulties I have referenced above did not come in my faith as many would presume, since I have been 9 I have been following an alternative faith from the faith of my family I had in secret, remember I became adept at keeping secrets, been a practicing pagan more specifically a male witch the entire time and no I am not a warlock as this term actually means "oath-breaker" not male witch. You might ask how did I pull it off, well those blinded by mainstream religion see what they want to see and those deafened by mainstream religion hear what they want to hear especially when you can answer all the right questions with the answers they expect, for there was once my own mother found my witchcraft books and destroyed them before my father could find them in Lamar, CO and said "Not a word of this to your father" maybe because she knew he would kill me (and I mean literally) or maybe she was just trying to keep a tyrant in check who knows. To this day there remains a question in the back of my mind that will never have an answer.

​​

It was at this time that I began a time of self rediscovery in the realms of religion, faith, spirituality or whatever words you choose to claim for it. It was then I began my path with Reiki and began practicing it that has been almost 10 years and I am now a Reiki Master-Teacher in several different Reiki methodologies or systems as the very stripped down methodology of every Reiki course has the same skeletal tree. I am also an ordained minister by several different churches even serving as a Bishop for one, anyway all the ordinations of differing faiths I have sought out were at the behest of a client, cause lets face it the majority of people out there have zero understanding of what interfaith truly means and in order to quell some of the stress that comes with preparing to marry another human being and make a pact with them to be their everything and at the same time promising not to change them is extremely stressful. 

​

That brings us to present day, in a nutshell, there are many different aspects or stories I could relay but this is me in a nutshell, and I am now a student of Buddhism.