If you have been following this story line you’ll remember this pagan hippy having been caught up in the rapture of Christianity, kicking and screaming all the way. My pagan family and friends, while supportive, questioned this new-found direction. There was simply no reason for a reasonable academic sceptic to go this route of becoming a seminary-stamped pastor.

Such it was as I piloted our rented U-Haul truck carrying our lives from one Sin City to another, namely Eugene, to Berkeley, California, where the (get ready for it) “American Baptist Seminary of the West” was waiting. Just before crossing the state border, to celebrate the occasion I whipped out a Romeo y Julieta Cubano a friend had smuggled into the country for me, lit it up and savored the beginning of a new life. At Checkpoint Charley, the inspector asked me if I had any contraband I was bring into the state. Good Christian that I was, I flashed a Jack Nicholson smile, chomped down on the cigar butt between my teeth and said, “No sir.” There it was: off to the East Bay for some spirit, baby!

How do you know God exists? Salvation, baby. Amy and I arrived that evening, poor as the proverbial church mice. Our church in Springfield had gifted us with first month’s rent in student housing and our meager savings would cover food but tuition was expensive and was due in a week before school even started. Upon arriving, lo and behold, turns out I’m the recipient of a large scholarship I had no idea existed for a “new incoming student who shows promise.” This grant belonged to the consortium of seminaries circling the UC campus, the Graduate Theological Union, colloquially known as “Holy Hill” of which ABSW was a part. Every year a different school in the group was awarded the scholarship on a rotating basis and this year (1995) was ABSW’s turn. The award was presented to me presumably due to a high GPA but it was really because I was broke and needed it to attend, God knew that and it was part of the plan, baby!

Friends helped us move into a third floor apartment in seminary housing, a building directly across the street from one of the University of California’s primary student housing quads that housed about 500 rich and spoiled eighteen-year-olds away from home unsupervised for the first time in their lives crammed together on one city block. It was then I discovered that, interestingly enough, heaven and hell border one another and are separated only by the width of Dwight Avenue. Needless to say, except for the precious summer months, I attended heaven while living in hell. Animal House every night, live in our bedroom. The Berkeley City Fire Department sued Cal repeatedly for kids falsely setting off the fire alarms in this quad complex, a daily — and I mean daily — run of the hook-and-ladder notwithstanding. You get the picture.

And then.

The first day of class. Happened to be “Introduction to New Testament Greek.” We’d heard from students ahead of us it was a make-or-break class. Evidently, learning to read, speak and write a language that’s been dead (Koine Greek as opposed to Classical Greek) for a few millennia was taught right up front in this three-year program to weed out early anyone who wasn’t meant for the job. As I walked into the large classroom I distinctly heard some beautiful singing coming from within. It was three Black female students practicing a gospel piece they were going to sing later that day in worship.

My dream. There it was. Just as I’d dreamed it minus the wings. Wow. God. What a mystery. Three Blacks and a hooie, baby. Just like that.