Page 104 - MN

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can remember shoveling snow off that court to play in the winter so I guess we were dedicated.
I also remember being an acolyte. I would put on a long maroon cassock and then a white surplice and we would march down the aisle with one of us holding the cross in front. Russel Brad became famous for tripping one Sunday and breaking the cross off the pole. I became famous for kneeling at the altar during morning prayer and peeling off in a dead faint. Morning prayers were a bit long.
In 1957 we left Grosse Ile to move to Seattle. It was one of the great moments in my life because Seattle was a totally different culture from Michigan. Seattle is a university town with three or four colleges and the thinking seemed much more open to me. Then too, I was just starting my college career at the University of Washington. My church going days were over and my beer drinking days had begun.
At first I was totally overwhelmed. I had come from a high school with about 200 kids to a University with 17,000 students. I just walked around bumping into things.
Religion popped up in two different ways. At one point I took a class in the Bible as literature. I took it because the professor was renowned for interesting lectures and that was true. Sadly, I took it at one o'clock in the afternoon and was generally sleepy after lunch and my bridge game in the commons, but the lectures were really good and I learned a lot about the stories in the Bible. I have since forgotten them all. Retention is for wimps.
My second experience was reading Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey books, which introduced me to Buddhist thinking. These were the beatnik writers and there was all kinds of Zen stuff being talked about. I then moved into books like Zen and the Art of Archery, Siddhartha, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Buddhist thought made a huge amount of sense to me.
Here's my quick comparison of Christianity and Buddhism:
In Christianity, you are born a horrible person. A sinner. Christ died for you because you are so awful. And your only hope for salvation is to spend your life praying for forgiveness.
In Buddhism, you are born a good person and your job is to meditate and try to find that goodness inside you.
Tough choice.