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I was crossing the street one day at around noon to get some lunch at McDonald’s. I was in my mid-20’s and working a temp job as a “service writer” at a BMW dealership, of all things. In truth I can barely tell the difference between a piston and a gas cap.

In any event, I looked up the hill to see if any cars were coming when suddenly the scene was transfigured. It had spiritual content. On the face of it, this moment was about as mundane as any you might imagine. But in the blink of an eye it became infused with a luminous power. I was stunned, and decided it was God.

Not that I was looking for this sort of thing. If anything, it was just the opposite. Continue reading “New Beginnings”

I arrived in 1951, the third son born in fairly rapid succession (my sister came along three years later).

It was an extraordinary time to begin life in America. The war was over. I mean really over. Not like the many modern-day conflicts that seemingly never end. In WWII, you could mark the end date on the calendar.

In what was in some ways a “holiday from history,” a phrase later used to describe the 90’s, the 50’s and early 60’s were defined by a remarkable optimism. Continue reading “In the Beginning, Part IV”

My parents met in 1946. After college my mother started working as secretary to the head of the psychiatry department at Boston Children’s Hospital, sharing an apartment in the Back Bay with a couple of friends.

My father had just returned from the war. As a “conscientious objector,” he had volunteered for the American Field Service as an ambulance driver. Continue reading “In the Beginning, Part III”

If my mother’s family was sufficiently devoid of religiosity, my father’s side made up for it in spades.

Above is a photograph of the Hamilton Grange Reformed Church (one of the “Collegiate” churches in New York), whose pastorate my grandfather, Paul Leinbach, had just assumed the year my father was born (1913). Apropos, the church was located on property formerly owned by Alexander Hamilton in Harlem, on 149th St. and Convent Ave., to be precise. Continue reading “In the Beginning, Part II”