In my lifetime I've done a wide variety of things, as summarized below. The activity I'm enjoying most these days is conducting weddings. This involves several activities that I really enjoy: meeting with young couples, helping them with plans for their weddings, occasionally helping them grapple with issues affecting their long-term happiness and success, and (last but not least) officiating at weddings.
Most of my writing seems to be on hold at the moment. I'm still doing research into Historical Jesus issues. After stumbling onto the powerful and compelling work of English theologian Michael Goulder, I ended up completely re-working my two study-guides on the gospels of Mark and Matthew. I feel that, because of Goulder's insights, the history of the gospels now makes sense to me -- though there will always be unanswered (and unanswerable) questions.
I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bangkok, Thailand (so there's a draft of a book about that -- with pictures).
I've been an English teacher. I could write a very non-mainstream book about grammar (and perhaps will) -- but would you really want to read it?
I spent four years as a counselor in a ghetto junior high school. No writing has come out of that experience, but it has undoubtedly shaped many of my attitudes.
I've designed, set up, run, and evaluated job-training programs.
I've run a home-repair business -- done carpentry, painting, plumbing -- put on roofs -- finally established working with windows, particularly old window units with sash-weights and puttied-in glass, as an uncontested area of expertise. (I was working with windows before I ever saw a computer.)
I have -- for over a decade -- taught groups of senior citizens how to tell their stories so that grandchildren -- and others -- will want to read them. This experience led to the book Tell Your Story.
I've managed an apartment building for low-income elderly (and now, seven years later, my wife and I still go back there weekly to visit many of the tenants).
I'm an amateur Biblical scholar, specializing in Historical Jesus Studies. (Who was Jesus really, and what did he really teach?) This has led to several books (now available for purchase). Information
I've led Course in Miracles study groups.
The experience of co-managing (with my now ex-wife) an apartment building for low-income elderly led me a decade of homeowner-association management, from which I recently retired
I continue to be interested in languages. In junior high I took French and Latin. In college and grad school I took lots of German, which eventually led to an exchange year in Hamburg -- and fluency (lost and regained several times over the decades). Background in several languages led to my selection for Peace Corps service in Bangkok (on the theory that Thai is extremely difficult and best learned by those already fluent in several languages). Prior to a vacation in Italy a few years back, I learned enough Italian to read signs and newspapers, and even to write notes in Italian to the non-English-speaking nuns who ran the convent where we stayed -- but a long way from enough to engage in conversation. And now in preparation for a trip to Hungary, I have been working on mastering Hungarian grammar an d have amassed a large Hungarian vocabulary -- but again am a long way from conversational ability.
Kay and I have both become ordained and now work with couples to plan the wedding service they want. We perform 25-30 weddings a year, and have done about 200 over the last half-dozen years.
