Currents of Faith: Open and Unfolding Reflections

I learned about a significant part of my past in a counseling office. Dr. Paul King was my first psychotherapist at the Michigan State University Student Counseling Center. I was learning to counsel by experiencing counseling from the other side of the desk. During this time period we were talking about my fears and my guilt. Frequently as I spoke I would feel a strong tightening feeling surging upward into my neck then my head would shake rapidly back and forth uncontrollably. This was truly puzzling and disturbing. On one such occasion a flood of memories rushed into my awareness. I re-lived myself as an eight year old boy sitting on the basement steps, horrified, and clinging to my mother. I experienced moments of my past which had been repressed for years, too overwhelming and intense for me to bear.

by Pat Patterson

I have a deep sense of sorrow and depression.  Our country is, I believe, in a period of profound criminality and loss.  It is an era marked by war, murder, and the unleashing of violence in Iraq and Afghanistan; increasing control and exploitation by corporations in the global economy resulting in bourgeoning poverty; denial of devastating assaults on the environment; and erosion of constitutional, civil, and human rights.  The escalation of destruction on every side gives me a sense of despair, and I wonder if redemption is possible.

We drove through the gate into the school yard on that cold New Year’s Day of 1944. All our possessions were loaded into a pickup truck and our 1934 Chevrolet sedan. On our left was a small white building with windows across the side and wooden steps leading to a doorway. On the right was a tiny white frame house with a pile of coal near the door. Farther ahead were two out houses and a fenced corral. Two small trees graced the property. The school yard was surrounded by open fields, this time of year brown with skiffs of white from the most recent snow. Open space greeted our eyes in all directions leading to the majestic Sawtooth mountains in the distance. Our forty mile trip had brought us to Roseworth.

It was a day in May, 1960 and we were now living in Pullman, Washington. I was in my first year as a faculty member of WSU and approaching my twenty-seventh birthday. As a staff counselor my office was in a remodeled barn, which explains why the offices were on the third floor and the restrooms inconveniently located on the second floor. It was a normal morning of counseling and I had quickly walked downstairs to “prepare for my next appointment,” our euphemism for saying, “I am going to the restroom.”

God is an integral part of the center of creativity and it is here that I wish to focus. I wrote the story of God’s role in the motorcycle accident twenty years ago to illustrate God’s intimate and persuasive presence. I have deepened and enlarged my vision of God since then, first in a book, Eight Paths to Forgiveness, and more recently in a sermon I offered at Trinity United Methodist Church in East Wenatchee. This enriched vision follows.

I will now relate what I learned as I read that book years ago in preaching class, a book which still resides on my bookshelf bearing within it all the underlining in red ink. I cherish it because it was my source of hope which kept the original light bulb burning. There would be many more books read and presentations heard to bring me to the present.