"A Shaolin priest can walk through walls.

"It is said that listened for he cannot be heard; looked for he cannot be seen; felt he cannot be touched."

                                             - Kung Fu the television series, circa 1972

I was raised in a mainline protestant church.  They taught me all the old Bible stories like Jonah and the whale, David and Goliath, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  I learned about Moses and the exodus of the children of Israel from their bondage in Egypt.  They taught me to sing "Jesus Loves Me" and the words to many traditional hymns.  There were a few people there who obviously loved me and everyone else with an unselfish love I could not comprehend.  By the time I was 13 or 14 I began to sense that something was missing. 

One day I something provoked me to read the story of how Moses was sent to confront Pharaoh.  Perhaps I'd seen a movie about the story that made me wonder about a certain part of what happened.  For whatever reason, I found the part of the story in Exodus Chapter 7 where Moses threw down his rod and it became a serpent.  The next couple of verses said that Pharaoh's magicians threw down their rods and they became serpents too.  Moses' snake ate the other snakes, but even a snake that could be eaten by a more powerful snake sounded a good deal more spectacular to me than whatever it was I was seeing around that church at that time. 

Even at that age I frequently found myself wondering what else was out there, what might be around the next corner.  I was just beginning to become aware that evil existed in the world.  I had experienced some disappointments.  Several friends had lost parents.  Many things did not turn out the way it seemed they should.  If God was good enough and big enough to turn sticks into snakes for Moses, why should he not be willing to do something similar for people today? 

I developed an expectation that there must be some sort of power in the universe, something more useful than the old stories and songs they taught me in Sunday school.  If God had been in the power business before, I saw no reason why he could not and should not be so now.  The people at my church either had no idea how to tap into that power or else they saw no need to grace me with their special knowledge.  Somewhere I had gotten the impression that shamen or other people who did wield this sort of power did exist in "the mystic east."  My ambition became to go there and study with those people and learn the knowledge of that power. 

Hindsight teaches me that my intentions at the time pretty much were all selfish.  I did not know any better.  I was a kid trying to find his way in a world that was getting bigger by the day.  That meant I was growing comparatively smaller.  I had no use for this powerless religion they were teaching me at that church.  I surmised it was good enough to hold me over and keep me out of hell-jail until I could find the real thing, but I believed there must be more something useful, more practical; and I wanted to find it. 

My perception has changed dramatically since then, but I think I understand better now what was happening within me at the time.  The people at that church were doing the best they could do and were sharing all they had with me.  The problem was that none of it seemed very practical at the time.  It might get my ticket punched to board the train headed up rather than the one headed down when I died, but what other use was it?  I needed help now.  I did not need ideas or stories about what God had done for some other guy who had died centuries before the language I spoke had even come into existence!  I needed something with some oomph to it and I needed it as soon as I could get it.  If these guys did not have it, I was willing to seek it among those who claimed they did. 

I also understand now that, as stubborn as I have been my entire life, I began to develop at that stage capacity to admit that I might be wrong about a few things.  How valuable that has been throughout the remaining years of my life. 

The Kung Fu television show did not appear for another several years, but something in the spirit of that show depicts what I had hoped or expected to find at the end of my search.  I did not know what it was.  I did need to believe that there must be something more than was being shown to me. 

Without being able to articulate it so effectively as my buddy Max Reed, I was just beginning to realize that I did not know what I did not know.