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I have written two autobiographies to date. The first, 39 and Lost in America (1991), was penned after one year of living on the Kansas plains. I had lived my first 38 years in a bi-coastal existence, but decided with my wife in 1990 to venture out with her and our two young children (8 and 3 in 1990) to explore a section of our country's midsection by taking a position as chair of the department of history and government at Sterling College, Sterling, KS. In May-June 1991, when students had gone home, colleagues had split for the summer, and Sterling was as quiet as a fraternity house at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, I decided to put together my life's "story." In 150 single-spaced pages, written on my 1st generation Mac with dot matrix printer, I told that story.

Just as I wasn't planning to write my first autobiography, so I didn't think I would ever write a second. Yet, in the summer of 2004 I got the urge to put together my life's story once again. Rather than just picking up where I left off in 1991, I decided to retell my story, beginning at the beginning again, with a lot of attention being paid to events between 1991 and 2004. I wrote autobiography # 2 without consulting the first one. Entitled 52 and Strangely Found: An Autobiography Intimate and Intellectual, this 250-page study tried to probe motivations in a deeper way than my 1991. It was meant as a sort of antiphonal "response" to my 1991 work. Whereas the first had been written in the midst of confusion, though with hope abounding, the second was written after a lot of the confusion of early middle age had subsided and I was beginning on a path that I felt finally was my life's "work." The "lostness" of 1991 was supposed to be complemented, and completed, by the "foundness" of 2004.

Moving to the Third Autobiography

The purpose of this and the next essay is to take up an important theme in life and try honestly to confront how I dealt with it over many years. The theme is work. When I say "work," I mean working for money or for hire. I have been "working for myself" for the past eight or nine months, and I have a completely different philosophy regarding my activities and goals now than I did when I worked for someone else or, alternatively said, when I worked at an office with other colleagues, assistants and clients. I will begin with a general statement about what I have done and then move to specifics.

Working

For the first 25 years of my work experience I was privileged to work in the leading academic/intellectual institutions of Oregon. I moved to Oregon in 1982 at age 30, having just completed my Ph. D. in the History of Religions: Early Christianity from Brown University in Providence, RI and the University of Tuebingen, West Germany. For six years (1982-88) I taught at Reed College in Portland as a professor of religion and humanities. Recent essays on Reed are here. While on a Vollum Junior Sabbatical from Reed in 1985-86 (I have developed the art of sabbatical over my work life!), I decided to "make up" for some lost income (the sabbatical paid me 6 months at full pay or 12 months at half-pay; I chose the latter alternative) by writing editorials for the Oregonian in Portland. While still having time on my Reed contract, I jumped at the opportunity to become the interim senior minister at Westminister Presbyterian Church in Portland (1988-89). Then, after another sabbatical (1989-90), I moved to KS to become a professor of history and government at Sterling (1990-96) before returning to Oregon to attend law school at Willamette (1996-99). After a bit of a break I became a litigation attorney at Stoel Rives LLP in Portland (2000-2003) and then was invited back to Willamette to teach law for four years (Jan. 2003- Dec. 2006). I was fortunate in the last position not to be a tenured professor (I was a visiting professor), because I was spared the responsibilities of institutional management which make most tenured professors educational bureaucrats rather than knowledge seekers.

Despite this "sterling" resume (some pun intended), I don't feel that my work life really "worked" for me. As I look back at my work life from 1982-2006 I conclude that I was not prepared for work because of lingering issues with family of origin, that I didn't approach work with the right spirit of service and support of others, and that therefore the things that I really most needed out of a work environment never came to me. Since all this is terribly vague, I will dive into each, beginning with the last first.

Personal Needs

One of the "problems" with life is that we only are ready to live it when it is nearly over. By the time we are my age (55--though I hope I have many years yet to live) we generally have calmed down enough, have gotten over the issues that were unexplored in youth, and have more honestly assessed our skills and limitations than we ever could do at 25 or 35. What I know about myself now, which has always been true but which for many reasons I never admitted was true, is that the two things I most need/needed in a work situation are/were to be treasured and to be protected. I choose these words very deliberately. I didn't merely need to be "appreciated" or even "welcomed" in the work place; I think I had/have a deep personal need to be valued or, better said, treasured. The act of "treasuring" would come from people's recognition of what I can uniquely bring to a situation. Indeed, I have realized in life that I can't bring much to most situations in life, but there are a few at which I am very good in bringing help. I didn't know this in 1982 or even in 1992. I thought I was a person of "general brilliance" or excellence, who could bring light and life to every situation. I have learned, however, that I can't or that I don't want to do so.

One of the problems of the notion of being "treasured" is that I wasn't confident enough in myself in the early years to recognize that this is what I needed and wanted. Indeed, there probably were people who wanted to treasure my contributions in every institution with which I have been associated, but I didn't recognize that. Why? Well, there are long historical issues to explain that one, and I will have to leave it hanging for now.

The other thing I most needed from a work experience was to be protected. I suppose we all need some forms of protection in life to keep us from being torn apart, but I needed more than most. And I would never admit it to myself. Why would I need protection? Because I am an unconventional thinker and a person whose thoughts and interests don't easily fit within the grooves of the modern corporate structure of education and law cultures. For example, the Dean of the Law School where I taught for four years, had a sense of what he valued and didn't value in "scholarly" contributions. The only thing that he valued was editing casebooks and publishing articles in the "top 20" law review journals. He was fairly blind to other contributions. I wasn't interested in doing either--but in developing a series of mini-essays on law (on this site), which actually have been read and commented on by may more people than ever have read my law review articles.

Two other examples come readily to mind. When I was teaching at Reed in the early 1980s, I used my position as a sort of "perch" to launch out to the rest of the Portland community in public service and teaching. But by doing this at the expense of my work at Reed, which didn't value my public service in ways that I did, I was undermining myself. Or, finally, when I was a litigation attorney at a prominent firm in Portland, I often would tackle legal problems in ways that seemed most fitting to me. I consulted with people who had been there longer than I, of course, but I generally tried to "frame things" in ways which would allow me to use my historical sense and rhetorical/writing powers. But I don't think that people were much interested in these things at the firm. I needed "protection" from institutions because I was going to study things in the way that made most sense to me and communicate my knowledge in ways that flowed from the heart of my life. I have always been confident that I knew what I was doing in the intellectual realm; I also felt that others had very little patience for the way I wanted to structure and tell the stories of knowledge. This, indeed, is yet another issue that has to be laid aside now.

I have made it seem as if others were responsible for some of my dissatisfaction with work life. The next essay shows how I bear a great deal of responsibility for things not working well.

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