CHAPTER ONE

A Crack of the Hip and Off to the Twilight Zone

When I was a building contractor the first time around, before I had any thought of becoming a pastor, I learned an important lesson: you have to be out of your mind to work with concrete. There are any number of ways to get concrete where you want it—all of them bad. You can shovel it, pour it, wheelbarrow it, dump it, pump it, use a conveyor, crane it, rake it, screed it, trowel it, push it, pull it, or even use a Georgia buggy. But no matter how you do it, the concrete will inevitably extract its pound of flesh, and then some.

It has its own timetable. Once the pour has begun, there's no stopping—no matter what—for load after load, truck after truck. Just when you think you can't stand anymore, a form breaks, a truck gets stuck, or a load spills. And when that happens, it's nothing but busted knuckles and rivers of sweat to set it right.

Bad days are the best you can hope for in concrete work.

Why would anyone want to make a living this way? If you'd asked my brother and me in 1979, we would've told you it was because we were smart. We were innovative and bold, with cutting-edge ideas.

We started marketing, doing trade shows, sending out flyers. We were on the radio. We were interviewed by the newspaper. We even spoke at the Kiwanis Club—slide show and all.

What we didn't know was that working with concrete is at the bottom of the food chain. So we learned the hard way that, in the concrete business, the best thing you can hope for is a bad day. My wife, Jacquie, had seen the strain on my face when I came home from work. She had witnessed, firsthand, the bruises, cuts, scrapes, and mangled flesh of the concrete business. She had become resigned to work clothes that could only be burned, because they were covered with form oil.

Knowing all this, why would she inexplicably begin praying one day that the concrete pour we had scheduled would go badly? Why would the love of my life, the mother of my children, my confidante, risk sending me, and our company, into the ravages of concrete hell?

She was looking for a sign.

IN SEARCH OF A SIGN

It had all started with the still, small voice.

While teaching Sunday school one day, these words popped into my head: “This is what I want you to do.” The voice was clear and precise. I knew it was speaking of the ministry. It carried the kind of tone and purpose that made me sit bolt upright in my chair.

However, knowing the cost of such a move, I wasn't about to jump. We already had two children and lived in a community we loved. We were deeply involved in the life of our church. Our extended families were close by, and we wanted very much for our children to grow up around their grandparents. We had just begun building a new house. Going to seminary would have meant leaving all that behind.

After hearing that voice, Jacquie and I were invited to have dinner with our best friends, Steve and Kay. Steve was the associate pastor of our church. While driving to their home, I turned to Jacquie and asked, “What would you say if I were to go to seminary?” I knew there was no way she would ever agree to such a harebrained idea. After her veto, I could get on with my life and business.

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than, without batting an eye, she piped up, “Yes! Let's go!”

The quickness of her reply floored me. “But…but…what do you mean, ‘Let's go’?

“Well, I think you'd be really good at it!”

Before we had a chance to discuss it any further, we pulled into our friends’ driveway. We shared a pleasant afternoon of raucous laughter, playing with the kids, and competing over video games. Then, after dinner, without warning, Jacquie looked at me and said, “Are you going to tell them?”

In that instant, Kay blurted out, “What? You're going to seminary?”

In the space of two hours, Id received three separate, distinctive signs. Things were moving much too fast.

Years ago, there was a movie starring Steve Martin called The Man with Two Brains.⁵ In it, he plays a famous brain surgeon who has lost his beloved wife.

His life is nothing but desolation until he becomes smitten with a woman who is the consummate gold digger. Martin is hopelessly infatuated and wants desperately to marry her. But, first, he must check for guidance from his deceased wife.

Hanging above the mantel is a portrait of his departed love. It's a shrine for him—the only place where he can find solace and comfort from his pain. In a touching scene, he poses the question of this new woman to his deceased wife.

“Becca, if there's anything wrong with my feelings for Dolores, just give me a sign,” he pleads.

Suddenly, a great rush of wind comes out of the firebox, the sconces on either side explode, the wall cracks as the whole room quakes, the painting of his wife spins on the wall, and from within the painting comes a wailing voice that cries out, “NOOOO! NOOOOO! NOOOOOO!”

Then there's silence. Martin's hair is mangled from the wind. His neatly pressed suit is rumpled, and his necktie hangs over his left shoulder. Backing away slowly, he mutters, “Just a sign…any sign…I'll keep a lookout for it…In the meantime, I'll just put you in the closet.”

When it comes to signs, we see and hear only what we want to. So Jacquie and I kept looking for more to convince us. There was just too much on the line.

One of the biggest hurdles was my brother, John. I knew that he couldn't handle the entire business by himself, not to mention the fact that he had little sympathy for my Christian faith. There was no way he would agree to my leaving.

I went to the senior pastor, looking for advice on the matter. He suggested that Jacquie and I schedule a dinner with John and his wife, then tell him about our struggle over going to seminary. “If he says something like ‘I expected this,’ then maybe you can take that as a sign from God.”

Good advice, I thought, but I knew it would never happen. We scheduled the dinner anyway.

After eating, I broached the subject. John sat motionless as I laid out all that had been happening. When I finished, he leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and said calmly, “I expected this.”

FALLING INTO THE KINGDOM

Still, Jacquie and I were unconvinced. We became desperate for signs.

One day, Jacquie decided to visit the construction site with our two boys, who were two and three years old at the time. (My boys liked to play in the soil so much that my friends began calling them Dirt One and Dirt Two.)

While driving to the site, Jacquie offered God a once-and-for-all, put-up-or-shut-up kind of bargain: “If Paul is supposed to go to seminary, then give us a sign that is unmistakable! Make the concrete pour go badly today!”

Then, realizing that the results of the concrete pour had a direct effect on our economic well-being, she quickly retracted, “No! No! Wait. Check that. Don't make the pour go badly, but please, please, give us a sign today that is unmistakable!”

Meanwhile, at the site, the pour was going suspiciously well. It was one of the best we'd ever had. A crane was doing most of the work, lifting the concrete in huge buckets to the roof.

Once all the concrete was in place, I looked over the forms and noticed a slight bow in one of the roof retaining walls. I pulled on one end of a brace to wedge the wall, and the 2 x 4 gave way. Suddenly, I found myself careening into space with no chance of saving myself.

As I fell, it was surrealistic to realize that this body—the one I came into this world with, the only one I have on loan, this body that had always been desperately allergic to pain, this body that is me in every shallow sense of the word—was about to be crumpled, broken, or maimed.

It was odd, because this mind that is attached to this body didn't have enough time to make a physical adjustment to cushion my impact, but it did have enough time to lay out vivid scenarios of my years ahead spent in wheelchairs and iron lungs, tethered forever to some machine that spells out yes-and-no answers to questions when I blink my eyes, because they're the only muscles still functioning.

This mind also had ample time to wonder at the absurdity of God's nonintervention, because how in the world could God allow this to happen to me? After all, what good is it if God isn't available for simple lifeguard duty? All I needed was for God to look down from that heavenly perch and cast even the smallest sideways glance, to make the wind shift (just slightly) so that, instead of hitting the rocks below, I might end up on a—

Pow!

My body slammed into the ground. My head missed the base of the crane by some six inches. I rolled over, then couldn't move my leg. Pain washed over me like a tidal wave.

The other workers called an ambulance. I was rushed to the hospital. Every time the ambulance moved, I nearly blacked out from the agony.

In the meantime, Jacquie had arrived at the construction site. Her brother, who was working with us, rushed to her car. “Paul's all right. Don't worry; they've taken him to the hospital. He fell off the roof”

Jacquie immediately turned the car around and headed to town in search of me. As she drove, she knew that this was the unmistakable sign for her. In my fall, God had spoken.

When she finally found me, they were about to move me from the emergency room bed to a wheelchair. X-rays had shown that there was no fracture in my hip; I could be moved by ambulance to a hospital nearer to my home.

The orderlies closed in to lift me up. With the movement, a wave of nausea swept through my body, as I slammed into a wall of pain. Everything turned black.

To my surprise, the blackness brought a blissful state that was free of pain. There was total stillness and, for the first time, relaxation. It was such a joy to be released from the pounding agony of my hip.

But Jacquie is a nurse. Cool, calm, she saw me slumping in the chair and did what all nurses are trained to do: she put her cupped hand over my mouth and nose so that my lungs would take in more carbon dioxide. This stopped my hyperventilating and brought me back to full awareness of the crushing pain. I was furious at her.

DOORWAY TO ANOTHER DIMENSION

That night, I was placed on a gurney in the corridor of a hospital because of a nurses’ strike. I would call for help, or a glass of water, or a trip to the bathroom, only to be neglected because I wasn't “a real patient” until I got into a room with a number. The incessant throbbing of my hip faded in and out with my consciousness.

The next day, when I nearly passed out again, more specific X-rays were ordered. Sure enough, there was, after all, a fracture.

Questions followed. The figure coated in white with stethoscope stood at the foot of my bed and fielded them. How long will I be in traction? “One week.” How long off work? “Six weeks.” Will I fully recover? “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You might be OK for a while, then fifteen years down the road need a hip replacement. We never know.”

I thought to myself that it would be great if I could build houses under those terms.

Customer: “Will this house stand up after you leave?”

Me: “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You might be OK for a while, and then a beam could crash in on your head and kill you. We never know.”

When the doctor left, all I could think of was the prison term of one week immobilized on my back with a weight attached to my leg. Six weeks off work? There was no way. This was the busiest time of the year. My brother couldn't possibly handle all the jobs we had lined up. This couldn't possibly be happening.

I entered into a cycle of pain and anxiety that led me deeper and deeper into a downward spiral. It was the loneliest of feelings to watch helplessly as everything unraveled. During that time, my fear took on a life of its own.

Then, in the briefest of moments, I broke through. Exactly what I broke through, I can't even say to this day. It was as if the downward spiral had a bottom, and the bottom itself wasn't an impenetrable barrier. Instead, it was, once pierced through, a doorway. Suddenly I found myself in another dimension.

All my life, I had been convinced that pain led to no place other than more pain. The only thing to do, when confronted with it, was to endure. I knew this from childhood visits to a dentist who didn't believe in novocain. The most horrifying words I ever heard were, “Oh, that's just a small cavity. We won't need to use anything for the pain. This'll just take a minute.”

That minute was a journey into the depths of hell. For me, pain had never led to other dimensions. It was a black, bottomless void. But now, for the first time, there was a door in the wall of pain.

The momentum of my agony and anxiety blew me into an utterly new realm. To my amazement, the pain vanished, and I was surrounded by complete peace. And even more surprising, I was fully alert and conscious.

THE PEACE BEYOND ALL UNDERSTANDING

To put words to that dimension would never do it justice. There was a stillness that was charged with potential. Questions were irrelevant, for everything was self-evident. The air seemed to vibrate with life and consciousness.

Never had I experienced anything remotely like it. This life that I had called my own was clearly linked to all of existence. Barriers disintegrated, as the web of creation became intertwined with my body.

A being of light stood in front of me, radiating streaks of white and gold in all directions. I couldn't make out the face, because it was similar to viewing a faint silhouette made by light shining from behind.

This person was strangely familiar to me. At the time, I equated him with Jesus, but, in retrospect, I'm not so sure. I don't recall him ever using that name; it was simply my own association.

There was no sense of time. Gone was the unyielding regularity of seconds and minutes. In some ways, it felt as if we had been standing in front of one another for all eternity. We communicated efficiently, yet without words.

To stand in that presence was to be fully known and completely loved. It became abundantly clear that this accident of falling off the roof was no accident at all. In fact, there were no such things as accidents. Every moment, every experience, was filled with purpose and intention. In that state, I knew that I knew that I knew.

The apostle Paul had a similarly transcendental encounter on the road to Damascus, when he was blinded by a great light and confronted by a dead man—Jesus of Nazareth. Later on, he would label that experience “the peace that passes all understanding.”⁶ In that encounter, Paul saw the direction of his life change toward a whole new purpose.

For me, the shift was indeed beyond all understanding. It was not a function of rational thinking that moved in linear progression. It was, instead, something that transcended thought altogether.

Standing in that light, I knew I was to go to seminary. It was the unmistakable sign.

In that moment, it seemed that the sole purpose for my mystical journey was to answer our question about seminary.

Over time, it was to become much more. An intense desire began to take root in me. It was the desire to touch that realm again, to understand it, to work with it, to travel between dimensions.

Naively, I thought that studying to become a pastor would lead me in that direction. After all, what is the religious life if it's not uniquely intertwined with the divine pursuit? What better way to discover the nuances of this other dimension than through the ministry?

The issue had finally been settled. I left with my family to enter Princeton Theological Seminary.

THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE

Jesus once told a parable about a person who found a great treasure hidden in a field owned by someone else. Excited beyond belief, because he knew that the treasure was priceless, he then did something that must have seemed positively bizarre: he sold everything he had.

Imagine the gossip:

“He's crazy! What will become of his retirement plan?”

“Oh, he's always been a dreamer.”

“What a disgrace! Selling the family heirlooms. Look at him; they mean nothing to him!”

Yet, within his own level of experience, the man's actions made perfect sense, for what he intended to do was to buy the field in which the treasure had been hidden. What he had found was so valuable that he was willing to trade everything for that prize.

Jesus began this parable with the words, “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field.”⁷ To reinforce his point, Jesus then told a second parable, very similar to the first.

This time he started by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls.”⁸ Coming across a pearl of extraordinary value, this merchant too sold all that he had in order to buy it.

In both cases, the kingdom of heaven is compared to something of ultimate worth. It is so priceless that all one's worldly goods would gladly, even gleefully, be sold in order to buy it. What could possibly be of such infinite value?

It wasn't until I fell into the mystical realm that I finally understood what Jesus was talking about. What would you pay for ultimate peace? While engaged in the pursuit of happiness, what would you give to stop chasing after joy and suddenly attain it?

For the first time, the kingdom of heaven became a living, present reality. For me, it was a reality open not just to a select few, but to everyone.

UNCOMMON SENSE

The problem is that, even though it might be open to everyone, most of us simply don't have the eyes to see it or the ears to hear it. Though the kingdom of heaven is all around us, we're preoccupied with a thousand other things, locked in a consciousness that denies anything out of the ordinary.

When I was younger, at times, I would slip into another realm unexpectedly. Without warning, my attention would drift into sublime reveries, and my awareness of this world would fade.

But these states, I learned, got in the way of focused attention. That was bad news.

If I got into trouble as a kid, my dad would usually demand, “What were you thinking?” And before I had a chance to answer, he would offer the withering accusation, “Well, ya weren't thinking, were ya?”

So the message was hammered home. I should always be thinking. But it wasn't just any type of thinking that was needed. Thinking had to be rooted in common sense. So, gradually, I learned to discount my own experience and to forget that mystery and wonder ever took a detour into my neighborhood. The world was what everyone else said it was. No more, no less.

But when I fell off the roof, I couldn't forget anymore. Spiritual amnesia was obviously nonsense. In that moment, I discovered that there is a world beyond description, flourishing at the edge of consciousness.

Falling off the roof allowed me to peer into a realm of uncommon sense. That wasn't my first encounter with mystery. It was just one that I couldn't ignore.