I have long been a seeker of the Big Picture. My mother told me that my first sentence – uttered in New York City around 1950 – was a question: “What’s this?” And she said I repeated this question over and over when faced with new things and activities. “What’s this?.. and this?… and this?” I remember early discussions with my mother – perhaps from age 5 to 7 – about how plants differ from rocks… how animals differ from plants… how humans differ from animals… and how God differs from humans. These were my earliest philosophical and theological explorations into the levels of reality, and my initial ponderings about human nature and what lies beyond. There is a photo of me in our family album, sitting in a small rocking chair and fishing in a bucket. I remember enjoying this activity – despite not catching any real fish, only symbolic fish – for it was a time to think about questions, conditions, people and events in my early life.

See more in My Religious Quest.