I hitch-hiked across America twice. The first time, I was on 30 days leave, and I made it as far as Milwaukee before I got sidetracked. Somehow, I became convinced that going to Canada was a good idea, so I did. But just as I was realizing that Toronto was going to be freezing really soon, and that I had left no way open to return home, my mom rang the doorbell at the house where I was staying. Somehow she found out where I had gone, and she came after me. She took me home, bought me a new uniform (I had given mine away), and put me on a plane back to the Navy before I was even AWOL.
A month later, I was transferred to Hospital Corpsman A School in San Diego, and got another 30 days leave (which put me in a hole I had to buy my way out of when I finally got discharged). I went to Milwaukee again, and this time I got married. We separated after six months, and were divorced shortly after my active duty ended.
When I finally did get out of the Navy, I hitch-hiked to Milwaukee one more time, and this time ended up in the hospital with some sort of massive upper-respiratory infection. But, I got better, and continued uneventfully to Connecticut, where I filed for and then collected unemployment benefits for fifty-two consecutive weeks. I understand that now, one can collect for over two hundred! (How does that work?)
The other major thing that occurs during this four to five year period happened so slowly that it doesn't really have a definite time reference in my memory. The influence, and the presence of God in my life seemed to gradually erode until it became not much more than a vague memory of a way of life I used to have. Church became a wedding and funeral event, no longer even part of Christmas.
2 Timothy 4: 3 says this: For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
Pretty much describes what happened to me during this period of my life. And I'd be lying if I tried to tell you I didn't have a pretty itchy pair of ears. I was now pretty much full swing into listening to anybody but God. Carlos Castenada, Khalil Gibran, Herman Hesse, Arthur Janov, et al-- anyone who could posit a reason for being the way we wanted to be that justified us in that pursuit became "guru" for a day for my newly liberated friends and I. Did I mention the Maharishi? We didn't need God anymore. God was dead. Nietzsche said so. That's Nietzsche over there >>>>>>Great mustache, huh?
The moon was in the seventh house! Harmony and understanding! Sympathy and trust abounding! No more falsehoods or derisions. Golden living dreams of visions. Mystic crystal revelation, and the mind's true liberation-- oh yeah!!!! Hair, down to where it stopped by itself! That's what it was all about!
There was no more need for God. And there was no more room for God.
And I never even noticed that He wasn't there, when I drove off on my life without Him . . .
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