Part of becoming more competent Catholic Christians involves learning to share our stories, so, I’m sharing mine to lead the way.

To become Catholic Christian witnesses means that we learn to reflect on and share some of our stories as people of faith. It’s called a narrative approach. As we go along, I’ll be sharing a lot on the process of becoming witnesses.

However, I don’t want to ask others to do what I haven’t already done. So, I’m sharing a file I call, “My life.” I started writing down the broad outlines of my life many years ago. So much was going on that I could no longer remember exactly where I was and when at various parts of my life. Over the years, I have continued updating the “My life” file. It’s been most useful when composing an assortment of resumes, questionnaires, applications and so on. I don’t think I could reconstruct all the times and places at this point in my life.

Over time the “My life” file has gotten more and more complex. Unlike some friends I’ve known who did one or two jobs over their lives and lived in one or two places, I’ve moved a lot and had a whole range of jobs. I ended up counting my moves and places I’ve lived at one boring meeting twenty-five years ago. For example, my latest move was from New Jersey to Edmonds, Washington State, in 2012 to be near our grandchildren. That was my thirtieth move. My family of origin moved several times. During my eleven years in a couple of seminaries, I moved eight or ten times. During my time in the military, I moved a couple of times, and while I was still single, I moved a couple more times. In my fifty-year marriage we’ve also moved several times. I surprised myself when I first made my “moves list” and my best estimate is that the number is currently thirty.

Some of the moves I expected to last a long time and didn’t. Some moves I expected to be brief, weren’t. However, each meant getting rid of “stuff,” meeting new people, and adapting to a new place. My life certainly hasn’t gone as I planned, but it’s been quite a wonderful ride.

However, my motivation for writing this blog is that for forty years of doing psychotherapy, at the end of each day I was typically too worn out with people-time to do anything like social media. But now as I venture into social media, I’m getting multiple requests every day, “Were you the person I knew” here or there and would you like to stay in touch?

The answer is that I can’t “stay in touch.” At age eighty-one, I get up early and write until I’m mentally exhausted. It’s a pattern many writers follow. For me, God’s “word” to me consistently to work to finish my work on mystagogy before I die. For me to do otherwise would mean ignoring the nudgings of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, I ask the many people I’ve been gifted to share this planet with to please forgive me for staying with what I believe the Spirit is putting before me: to finish this work on mystagogy. I do pray every day that we all merrily meet in God’s city. My prayers continue to include countless fellow students, learners, and teachers, the thousands of clients whose stories I shared in doing psychotherapy for forty years, the tens of thousands I continue to share concern and ministry with in parishes, those I supervised or treated in institutions, so many friends, and all those others along the way.

So, I pray every day that you will forgive my daily too-exhausted-to-socialize. I also pray that mystagogy will be a way to reach the multitudes of searchers for a way to serve God in spirit and in truth (John 4:23-24). Overall, I pray that Jesus brings us all safely to God’s city and able to stand without reproach before the Son of Man on our day of reckoning. Until that day, may we all find loving rest in the hands of the Lord.

For a quick overview of my life, please go to the Resources page on this website and look for “Deacon Ray’s Life in Outline.”