“It’s odd that after thousands of years of great spiritual example and literature we have to remind ourselves that spirituality is to be found in everyday life.”

—Thomas Moore

Not long ago, the Provost of Emory University, where I taught for four decades, asked me what I planned to do after retirement. I told him I had only one open slot on my resume, to become a saint. This was something of a conversation stopper. After moments of silence and a puzzled look, he said: “You mean a canonized saint as in the Catholic Church?” I said no, that I had a different view of sanctity than the canonizing process. I was referring to a less heroic notion of holiness. I meant something simpler: to move beyond or beneath religious institutions and their teachings.

I wanted to reconnect with a natural or primordial way of living spirit in the ups and downs of everyday life. My path has been a lifelong search for home, a true way for body/spirit here and now. Some may see this as just secular living. I’ve come to view daily existence as the main arena of spiritual life. Other aspects of traditional religion can be helpful but are secondary. To get to this gut-level, down-home spirit in the quotidian, I’ve had to let go of heady theories and false estimates of myself to learn from hard times. Without becoming a Pollyanna, I seek to discover divinity in persons and nature. How might we re-imagine life, secular and spiritual, intimately linked to one another?

In this memoir I try to explain myself to myself. I invite readers to look over my shoulder as I select events over seven decades. My bag of mixed motives for this venture surely includes a quotient of ego and another of self-deception. Yet that’s all part of being human. If we had to exclude every trace of self-interest, we’d never write anything personal. And I dare to hope that you may resonate with some of my experiences.

I’ve been involved with religion as a Jesuit priest and later as a university professor. I want to trace changes in my personal grasp of it. I continue to be interested in specific spiritual traditions, especially their contemplative sides. As a teacher and writer, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on church reform. My outlook has become increasingly ecumenical. While the contemplative path is paramount for me, religious institutions remain important, because they influence the world for good or ill.

I hope my tale will strike some sparks with the ever-increasing number of “in-between” people who have one foot, however tentatively, in a tradition and the other searching for new spiritual paths. Being in-between will surely expand in a cybernetic age. Science and technology are moving too fast for it to be otherwise.

My approach to the spiritual did not come as a sudden vision. It fell together gradually, a piece here, a stone there. It dawned on me in quiet ways through a lifetime of study, but especially during times of emotional turmoil. It’s a story of discovery that extends from a childhood with Italian immigrants to the Jesuits to being a leading advocate for married priests to finding the spiritual in the everyday. It’s a circuitous journey that may resonate with others whose lives and longings parallel mine in some way.

Since I write as an elder, I will be interpreting things from a distance. But approximations to how it was in Oakland , California in the forties or in the Jesuit order are good enough. I may have a better chance to see the wider pattern from a longer vista. I’ve also had the good fortune of keeping written journals from the late fifties to bring back specific memories.

My vocation as a teacher is another reason for writing this memoir. I’ve always said to students that they didn’t have to accept my viewpoints. I hope the book will stimulate reflection in readers who feel kinship and in those who don’t.