About the Author

Your author was born in Edmond, OK in 1957. I attended high school in Bethany, Oklahoma and studied in various colleges and universities, somehow managing to avoid actually graduating from any of them. I began developing electronic devices and specialized sensors for a small Oklahoma company in 1977 while studying Sociology at Oklahoma State University. In the long run, I abandoned Sociology and ended up on Engineering projects in the fields of electronics, hydraulics, metallurgy and software. While writing this book, I was a Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems in Broomfield, Colorado

I learned my catechism in Oklahoma City at Little Flower Church from a Carmelite priest named Thomas Beneke. He was a brilliant man who was slow to fold to the pressures of the hierarchy. Father Thomas once said, "Never wake up Catholic." I assume everyone interpreted that differently, but for me it meant, "Choose your path every day." To quote Martin Heidegger:

"...a faith that does not perpetually expose itself to the possibility of unfaith is no faith but merely a convenience: the believer simply makes up his mind to adhere to the traditional doctrine. This is neither faith nor questioning, but the indifference of those who can busy themselves with everything, sometimes even displaying a keen interest in faith as well as questioning."

In other words, if you wake up Catholic (or Republican or Vegetarian) it's become a habit. You've forgotten your reasons. You are what you are because that's easier than considering alternatives.

Living in Nederland, Colorado and attending Mass at St. Rita's Church, I became a part of a loving and largely progressive community. Nonetheless, there was something missing. There was a key message missing from the Church that seemed essential. I began considering whether I could formulate that message in a way that at least I could understand. I began toying with various approaches for conveying this message. I ended up with several swatches of non-fiction tedium and was very disappointed.

In 2004, the bishops of Denver and Colorado Springs made it very clear that to vote for any candidate other than George W. Bush, a malevolent buffoon, would be equivalent to a latae sententiae excommunication. That November, I announced that I would not be attending Mass any more. Since there was no better candidate, I voted for John Kerry.

My beliefs, though, had not changed. I was what I thought I had always been but the Catholic Church had told me that I was not Catholic. What was I?

One morning I woke up with a phrase in my head. It was a prayer - an odd prayer. It was, "I love you Lord more than my precious wife because you are my wife and more." I thought about it all day. It blended with the way I had always taught my children to pray - with thanks and not with requests. Over the next few days, I considered what these concepts meant and how they would go together. One of those evenings, I went to bed as a Sica.