The Answer to Life
There was a night when I was about 4 1/2 years old when my mother woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me to quietly to go get in the car. This would prove to be a little difficult for me for as you see earlier that week there was a fire in the row houses we were living in near Dayton, Ohio and a bunch of stuff from the burnt house had gotten thrown into a dumpster and a few of us kids had retrieved some of these items which my prized possession was a swiss army type knife. So, I am arguing with my mom that I cannot leave the house without that knife as she is trying to whisk me into the car to escape my father as it turns out...
Several months later, my father shows up in Pennsylvania where we were now living with my grandparents and makes an attempt to make amends with my mother. I remember it as a really good day for a 5 year old as you can imagine being back together with his mom and dad for the first time in months. We went to the mall and then to Burger King afterwards, I had the burger king crown on and we were driving around in the typical large size car of the late 70's early 80's as this is occurring in 1981. My father pulls up to a stop sign and then tells my mother to get out of the car as he is taking me with him and that is it. A scuffle ensued as my mom was not about to give up her oldest son easily. They both began shouting instructions to me one telling me run, the other telling me stay. I felt compassion for my mother and jumped out the window and ran...there were some construction workers nearby that came to the aid of my mother and we escaped my father again. And with the exception of one failed kidnapping attempt which I will save that story for another day, this would be the last time I would see my father until I was 20 years old.
The point of me sharing this story is to express where my personal quest for a meaning to life began. For you see, I have always been a very cerebral type of person since I can remember and through the many hardships I was facing at such an early age I began to question early on many things and established at an early age a faith and hope in something more...
This faith and hope now about 4 decades later has lead me near and far where I have searched for someone or something to reveal to me The Answer to Life! I have been to many churches, monasteries, universities, coffee houses, book stores, and even mountain tops and caves. I have sat with writers, philosophers, psychologist, religious leaders, monastics, men, women and children of all types and cultures. I have traveled in bikes, boats, planes, trains, buses, taxis, mules, horses and on foot all around this world. Quite a lot of experiences I can assure you, some that put me in fear, some very rewarding and some that I have felt the greatest of all emotions and that is love! I had a great friend who has since passed away as did both my mother and my father btw, again more stories for future blogs I suppose...anyhow, this great friend I met in a cemetery, his name was Mike. He was standing at his wife's grave praying and I was standing at my son's grave praying and being that we were close by each other we decided to each pray together at both of the graves and so began our relationship. That day in addition to our friendship he gave me two gifts, the first was a book entitled Crazy John, the second was a saying: Ο Θεός είναι αγάπη-η αγάπη είναι ο Θεός, χωρίς Θεό δεν θα υπήρχε τίποτα! which means God is Love - Love is God, without God there would be nothing!