A photograph of Mary Baker Eddy hung in my bedroom and every Sunday we drove the couple of miles down Liberty Road to the Second Church of Christ Scientist. My brother and I both wore our McDonough uniforms so my parents could show us off and I hated it. I hated when after church and Sunday school my father proudly stood by his two boys and accepted compliments about how handsome we looked. I don’t remember being taught anything about prayer in Sunday school and children were not allowed to attend church; so, until I was ten and we left Christian Science and became Lutheran I had never seen the inside of a church much less prayed, except the rote like words I repeated every evening at bedtime for my mother.

But the first time I attended the Lutheran Church there was a difference. Sitting in those pews and seeing the stain glass windows all around me I was awe struck and after just a couple of months I told my parents I wanted to be a minister, something that remained my career goal all the way through high school, but truthfully it was a farce, something I was putting on to please my parents. Now during those years I can remember praying and being an acolyte in church and it all made me feel OK, but that was just it, it was just OK.

I felt the same too about college and after just a year I quit and took a job working with horses seven days a week. And even though church attendance was nonexistent, I felt a strong sense of something out there taking care of me that I talked to everyday. Like the time the horse I was riding fell over a jump and I broke my leg, or the time one reared up and knocked all my teeth loose, or when a horse I trained broke down on the racetrack, something was there to comfort me and I became successful.

But in 1987 my life took an unexpected turn. I had started running to keep my weight down and in May of that year while running in a 5K race I started to feel numbness in both of my legs. I finished the race and on Monday saw my primary care doctor, who was also a runner. He had worked with me through my roller coaster ride with my weight and this time he thought I had done one too many reps on the Nautilist machines and ran one to many miles trying to loose another ten pounds. I spent Memorial Day weekend that year in Mercy Hospital, where after ten days of testing me for everything they could think of, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and my days at the racetrack came to an end. I felt abandoned. No amount of prayer seemed to make any difference and for the next few years alcohol and a failing marriage were part of my life. Then there was Chuck.

I was working as a counselor at a residential treatment center for juvenile services kids and he was on my caseload. Along with a serious drug problem and an arrest record for possession with the intent to distribute, Chuck was a graffiti artist and had spent much of his time spray painting his art on brick walls, bridge abutments and any other surface he could embellish with his sometimes violent portrayals of life on the streets, which he signed with his trademark “Chucky.” As part of his rehabilitation we started doing some art therapy. He drew his graffiti like drawings and I drew horses, as we got us to know each other better.

Another part of Chuck’s rehabilitation was to spend 30 days in a juvenile drug treatment center. The first Saturday and Sunday he was there was parent’s weekend. Since Chuck didn’t have any parents to speak of I went as his foster father and was exposed to a crash course on the first five steps of Alcoholics Anonymous where I came to realize that my drinking had become serious problem. I was told by Chuck’s counselor, “If I you don’t stop drinking how can you expect Chuck to.” I stopped drinking that day, August 31,1991 and with the help of my High Power have been sober since.

Working with Chuck was during what I thought was my last semester at Harford Community College. I would be graduating in May with an A.A. degree in Psychology and had been accepted to the University of Baltimore. But all those plans changed. They all changed when I took a class that semester in American Art and Architecture to fulfill my humanities requirement for graduation.

She walked into the classroom right at the starting time of 10AM. “Hello class I am Dr. Claire Eckels and this is American Art and Architecture from the colonial period through the Ashcan School.” If I hadn’t looked through the textbook ahead of time I would have had no idea what the Ashcan School was. As I said I was only taking this class to fulfill the graduation requirements and so far my first impressions were not very good.

You see Dr. Eckels was old and walked very slowly; so, I was expecting a professor who sat at her desk every week through the entire hour and a half class and read from the textbook until all of her students either dropped the class, or were asleep. But before that first hour and a half was over I knew I was wrong. Dr. Eckels was one of the most dynamic, interesting teachers I had ever experienced. Attending her class every week for the next few months changed my life.

I forgot about the University of Baltimore and soon became part of the art program at Harford Community College, where creativity flowed. In the paintings I did during the next few months I started to experience a way of self-expression that gave me great pleasure, but also a sense of peace within myself. A feeling of joy that was not boastful but born by an inner Light, where what ever I expressed on the canvas was accepted as mine, my thoughts, and my ideas.

In June of 1995 my best friend Jim died of AIDS and my self-expression in response to my loss was challenged. I had several one-man shows where my anger was expressed in a way that the art critics hated and my ideas brought controversy and my paintings were vandalized. My prayers were those of anger and frustration: why were all these people dying, why is nothing being done! And again God put someone in my life to show me the right path.

His name was Don Keyser and he was the pastor of the Lutheran church I had been attending since I left the racetrack. He listened to my anger and told me about HERO the Health Education Resource Organization, which is an HIV/AIDS support service agency. I started volunteering there and through my visits to the AIDS ward at what was then City Hospital I was able to turn my anger into compassion for the patients I visited. I felt I was truly doing Gods work and volunteered more and more until I was burned out emotionally and my MS took care of the physical end - I had an exacerbation.  

This was also the time that the stress of a failing marriage became more than I could handle and I moved from my suburban Harford County neighborhood to East Baltimore. I had discovered an abandoned row house that was part of an artist housing project. I made that house into the perfect studio space. I honestly believe God had lead me there and for the next four years my art flourished in a creative community similar to what I had experienced in school, but it didn’t last long enough

In 2001 my father became ill and needed someone living with him 24/7, so I moved back to my boyhood home in Lutherville. It was a very difficult situation until I met Barbara. Along with being an artist, she was the most spiritual person I had ever known. Our first date was just a walk from her neighborhood to the artist housing a few blocks away. She talked to everyone and because of her friendliness we were invited into an artist home and got the grand tour of this fabulous house he had restored and a first hand look at his art work and studio. I knew that day by just the way she talked Barbara was someone special.

She was there for me when my father died and has been by my side during the heated settlement of his estate, which still goes on today. We were married at sunset on the porch of a Quaker meeting house with Native American music and the wedding vase, which symbolized our two spirits becoming one as we each drank from a spout of the vase. My interest in the Native American church has grown since then through the words of one of its great spiritual leaders Bear Heart, who says about prayer, “Let your every step be as a prayer.”