Introduction

I am a child of God and so are you, and I am a child of a small town of the Pacific Northwest. I have ancestors who were Irish, Welsh, and Scots with a little Polish and French and an even smaller part Native American. I am Catholic and Protestant and pagan. I grew up in a loving extended family with interesting siblings. I played in the apple tree in the back yard and in the field across the street. I played baseball, basketball, football, and tennis – I still play tennis. In more ways than playing tennis I am still the person who grew up on Hill Street in Snohomish.

When I left my parents’ home, I lived for about the next 20 years on a kind of generic University Avenue though there were real University Avenues too. In Seattle we lived with our white cat and high school friend for two months in a ramshackle house on University Avenue until the place was razed. For half a year I drove down a different University Avenue from the ghetto of East Palo Alto to the campus of Stanford University. In all I took ten years worth of formal courses at three different universities, mostly paid for by scholarships, fellowships, grants, loans, and a research faculty appointment. My real University Avenue is a life of the mind. My mother planted the seeds of intellectual life, and this interest continues to grow.

At the end of our first year of marriage my wife and I moved with our white cat and all our worldly possessions in our VW bus from California to Washington. For the next 40 years my father-in-law sent us tickets to fly to Kansas City at least once a year and stay in his house on Lockton Lane. The ‘us’ grew to include children, sons-in law, and grandchildren. From this place of the heart my awareness gradually grew to include those yet to be born and the ancestors who stand as our cloud of witnesses. And now we seek to be good ancestors ourselves and are grateful for our slice of time.

Like Jesus, I have been privileged to “teach beside the sea.” (Mark 4/1) I was called to this glorious work at age 36. A little more than a year later my family and I found ourselves accepted into this community by the sea. Here I hope to live the remainder of my days in this safe harbor. In teaching for 30 years I found there were long hours to be worked in the cycle of planning, teaching, and evaluation and found there were advanced credentials to be obtained and local and national awards to be won. As I travel now along Drayton Harbor Road, I discover that like the sea birds along this rural byway, most of my students have flown away to their own stories. But I remember the good relationships with teaching colleagues, finding a place for mathematics in my relationships with others, saying “thank you for playing” at the end of every class, and the love that came back from the students.

In chapter 24 of Luke’s Gospel two disciples discover that they have been walking with Jesus on the Road to Emmaus. I walk that road more often now, and I believe all of us have or will walk that way eventually.