INTRODUCTION

"Our nature imposes on us a certain pattern of development which we must follow if we are to fulfill our best capacities and achieve at least the partial happiness of being human. This pattern must be properly understood and it must be worked out in all its essential elements. Otherwise, we fail. But it can be stated very simply, in a single sentence: We must know the truth, and we must love the truth we know, and we must act according to the measure of our love."

Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth

Generally I'll be posting my own thoughts here, with only the occasional quote, but I wanted to put this one out front, so you'd know where I stand.

This will be the story of my journey toward, conversion to, and (hopefully) sanctification in, the "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church" (as the Creed calls it). I was baptized in 1979 or 80, at the Tucker Swamp Baptist Church in Zuni, Virginia. I was received into full communion with the Catholic Church (first confession, confirmation, first communion) on Easter Vigil, 1998, at the Parish of St. John the Baptist in Edmond, Oklahoma. Between the two events is a long story of faith, hope and love, interspersed with skepticism, despair and narcissism.

I'm telling it partly for me, so that I'll never foget what it took to get me where I am; partly for you, in case you're on a similar path, or are going to be and don't know it yet, and partly for Fr. Mary Louis, known to the world as Thomas Merton, who wrote, and, I'm convinced, prayed me, into Mother Church, and into an encounter with Truth incarnate.