The Tao by Lao Tzu says: Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know.

The rather famous Irish rock singer and humanitarian, Bono, put it this way -- "The less you know, the more you believe".

Generally speaking, the younger you are, the more you take things on faith. Children, inexperienced as they are, will believe just about anything they're told and it takes years for their instincts to tilt from trust to trial. And later, as the candle of life sputters out, faith once again swings into prominence , at least to the degree that it may help to allay fear and regret.

Somewhere in that swinging arc of this pendulum, I found myself studying at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, on track to be a minister of the United Church of Canada. This mainly liberal, socially activist denomination was born in 1925 out of the unifying urge of the more liberal elements of three mainline Protestant denominations, Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregationalist.

At my age, about 17, I was profoundly shaped by two factors: 1) I had been educated in a boy's private school in downtown Toronto, from grade 7 to grade 13 despite the fact that a perfectly good public high school was two blocks down at the end of our street, and 2) I was utterly dependent on my parents for food, shelter, clothing and transportation.

But the real complication was that all the years of Sunday School as both a pupil and later as a teacher had infused me with a desire to spread the gospel unto every creature, surely a difficult task for one so sheltered. And this was all the more remarkable because I had tried every ruse in the book to avoid going to church. I developed symptoms for undiscovered diseases. Indeed, on one rare Sunday when my mom and dad were not able to attend, I walked the five blocks to the church, laid my hand reverently on the door handle, gave a slight tug, and return home saying that it was locked. They were too sick to do anything about that one, although the next time I tried it, one of them took me back to church in the car.

Perhaps it was the influence of all those prayers feverishly muttered on my behalf by my mother's mother, who essentially ruled the roost from her upstairs bedroom, invalided as she was by a heart condition (which I was certain was "hardening"). Her perception of me was of one doom and gloom, but then she was also horrified by my father's unsubtle interest in Ed Sullivan's June Taylor Dancers on the devil's box in the corner. And on Sunday!

Be that as it may, I became the official church student of our congregation, and basked in the limited recognition that it afforded. There is no righteousness like self-righteousness. I was called upon to invoke blessings, read Scriptures and (gasp!) even to preach on one or two occasions when no greater talent was available.

Little wonder, then, that I was fodder for the cannons of reality. The first experience which was to challenge my rather rigidly-held beliefs was my stint as a student minister on a rather well-worn pastorate in the cottage country of Ontario at Fenelon Falls. It was the practice in those days to board the summer student at the home of anyone who would put up with the sanctimonious city slicker, so it was my lot to be garrisoned by a farmer named Mel, and his wife, Mary.

A strong, weathered man in his late 30's, Mel was the area's blacksmith. I was not the first student that they had accommodated, and Mel took it as his sworn duty to introduce me to the smoke of the smithy and the husbandry of horses. As one had only been away from home on those occasions when I would seek to escape from it by boarding a bus for my uncle's farm, I experienced all the emotions of loneliness, fear, and culture shock.

The first Sunday came, and I ascended to the pulpit. I redundantly introduced myself and was in the middle of telling the faithful few how much I was looking forward to serving them when my eyes began to lose focus and my ears set to ringing and my pulse became decidedly weaker. They had seen this before, but not to the point of collapse.

Stage fright it was. Common amongst the city fellers. So I lay down in the front pew, while someone went for a glass of water, and a young lady offered to read my sermon. In a few moments, my head stopped pounding and voices came back from the distance where they whispered just moments before. Strong hands helped me back to the pulpit, and, largely by avoiding eye contact, I was able to deliver whatever was on the paper before me.

My second service went better. But it did raise echoes of Scripture for me, such as Psalm 84:2 "My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD".

My second summer seasoning occurred in Saskatchewan. I was ready to take on the world, theologically speaking. Of course, the fact that I developed pneumonia and had to be brought home by my parents because I was too weak to drive was not enough to kill my determination to enter the pastoral life. But it was ironic. One of the old farmers pointed out that in the old days, the government used to send what are called "heavey horses" out west from Ontario because the dry, windy climate often helped them to recover from their pneumonia or asthma.

Incidentally, getting there was more than half the fun. In May, the roads had just begun to thaw out. As I neared my summer accommodations, the pavement turned to gravel, and eventually to a peculiar layer of clay known as "gumbo". My Volkswagen began to slow down, and no amount of accelerator pedal prevented it from almost stopping altogether. I got out to see what had happened, and found the back tires rotating slowly in a collar of mud, but in the same place. I was set back on course by a team of Clydesdales who, I swear, looked at each other and snickered.

The manse, a two-room uninsulated attachment to the back of the church, was heated by the wood stove in its kitchen. One of the members of the congregation remarked, on my departure, that never before had they had to bring in two loads of firewood for the summer student. Well, that was probably because they had never before had a student who wanted to bake his own bread. My reason, of course, was that it was a ten-mile drive to the nearest town over rutty earthen roads with a sparse coating of gravel, and it made sense to be self-sufficient. I was saving them money.

The first week I tried it, I stoked the stove with abandon, and put the bread to rise a little more efficiently in the warming oven. It looked a little flat when I took it out, but I put it in the oven which by now was approaching the temperatures of Mel's Fenelon Falls forge, and was soon enjoying the smell of warm, fresh bread, while I went off to compose my screed for the next day. The subject, if memory serves, was The Feeding of the Five Thousand.

Alas, when I remembered the bread, I retrieved an artifact from the oven that would not have been out of place amidst the bricks that the Israelites were forced to lay in Egypt, except only that the center was as raw as when I set it to baking. And so the text for the context became Matt 11:11, "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?"

You know, as a young, brash student minister, I thought I should show that I was willing to get my hands dirty, so I went out one day in the spring to a member's home and joined the family as they walked beside the "stone boat". This was a flat sledge, dragged behind the tractor that the farmer drove slowly along the fields. Boulders and stones that would break a harrow were picked up, some as much as twenty or thirty pounds, and heaved onto the sledge, which, when full, was taken to the edge of the field and dumped. Every year new stones showed up after plowing.

After I had just begun this labor, the farmer looked back, stopped the tractor and walked over to me, where I was struggling with a chunk of granite the size of a bowling ball. "What're you doing, Bill?" he said. "Trying to get this stone onto that trailer," said I, edgily. "Oh, hell," he said, "Out here we leave that size for seed!"

Saskatchewan was the first time when I had to confront my fears and inexperience of death and funerals. Yes, it is possible for someone at the age of 18 never to have been allowed to attend a funeral, and here I was, having to assist at one. And despite the many hours of meditating upon the impermanence of it all as I maneuvered the old lawnmower around the ancient grave markers of the Fenelon Falls cemetery (one of the more physically-demanding chores that always fell to the student of the day), I had, until that funeral, no sense of what bereavement really meant. And, as the professional on duty, or nearly so, I had no one to comfort me. In this case, I was lacking in both faith and knowledge, but both increased remarkably after it was over.

Saskatchewan, which the citizens call "Tomorrow Country", is a tough place. It breeds tough, skeptical people, who, nevertheless, profoundly cling to their beliefs because sometimes there's nothing you can do but pray.

I remember one family that fell on hard times: death and drought had foreclosed their farm, but they were too poor to live anywhere else, so they were allowed to live in the farmhouse (since the new owner only cared about cultivating the two or three sections) With no head of household, the mother and five children were supplied with food and firewood, clothing, transportation and all other necessities by the community. It had been this way for at least five years. This was unconditional love.

So this was the reality of the pastorate. No experience however, was so sobering as that which lay in wait for me as returned to the second year of the Honors program at the U of Toronto in Ancient Near Eastern Studies.

Our professor, the Reverend Bill Staples, was an elderly biblical scholar and ordained Methodist known at Victoria College for his freedom of thinking and expression. He began the first class in Old Testament Hebrew with this simple statement.

"Laddie, always remember. Theology is not the study of God. It is the study of man's ideas about God."

And then, he sat back and said nothing for at least a full minute, but for me it was as though someone had flushed the toilet while I was standing in the shower. Initially, I thought, "Well, now there's an aphorism worthy of Reader's Digest", but during the silence, interrupted only by his deliberate low whistling as he looked around at us and through narrowed eyes, scrutinized us for signs of intelligence, it suddenly hit me: "All this preaching you've been doing is prattling about what someone else thinks God is." At that point began my struggle to understand who I thought God was.

I felt deflated, humbled, enervated, and yet excited and confused. This was possibly the first time I had engaged in something more profound than theological debate or sophistry, or even just plain imitating the great preachers. If there was a revelatory moment, or, in Buddhist terms, an enlightenment, this must surely rank somewhere close to it.

After that, the Biblical Hebrew classes became my finest hours. I learned that the languages of Mesopotamia drew from a common Indo-European root, and that many of the ancient creator myths were hand-me-downs from earlier oral traditions. The word "elohim", translated as "God" is actually plural, pointing to an earlier heritage of a plurality of gods, and how the word Yahweh, too sacred to be pronounced, was given the vowels of Adonai (the lord) and came to be "Jehovah". The closest translation of the four letters of Yahweh was like Popeye, who said, "I yam what I yam". Even today, for many practicing Jews, the name of God is spelled "G underscore D", as if to emphasize the unknowability of the Deity.

So it all came down to words. In the beginning was the Word. Words and their meanings, which change over time and with translation made some huge differences in understanding.

It was these revelations (not those of the book) that caused me to be more curious, and the pendulum began to swing away from faith to knowledge. However, by the next year when I took my one year of theology (out of four), the knowledge I was beginning to glimpse was self-knowledge. And so, you might say, I had the Biblical experience of eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and being kicked out of the Garden by what it showed me.

I realized that I would find it overwhelming on a weekly basis to have to reconcile my scholarly training, with its attendant urge to bring "The Truth about the Truth" to the uninitiated pew holders, with the basic needs of people who might politely listen to it but then continue to adhere to their time-honored Sunday School belief systems because that was the way to heaven. In fact, once I was told by one concerned congregant after a probably bewildering sermon which was 1/3 systematics and part 2/3 homiletics that he would pray for me because I didn't have a hope in hell.

That Spring the United Church of Canada came out with a Lenten Study series called "Life after Death", in which they reflected on hell as being separated from the love of God, and hence not a literal place, but rather a spiritual one. This radical reinterpretation of the most troublesome concept, that a loving God could turn his back (God was still male when I was in theology): that was a breakthrough for me.

I preached on the topic. I was so excited to be able to tell the good folk at Lake Simcoe that the eternal flames were finally quenched, because a more profound and healing truth was now available. After that service I was accosted by a woman who was steamed. "How am I supposed to raise my kids in the fear of the Lord if there's no hell?"

I was so taken aback by this reaction that I almost blurted, "How the hell should I know?" But, being a polite, timid Canadian, I said the four most important words you can say to anyone, "You could be right", but I felt the chill breath of hypocrisy on my neck even as I spake. This was hardly the time to explain that the word "fear" in King James's day now meant "respect" in ours. I came to realize how huge a task it was to mind meld with people who, in all sincerity, were clubbing the spontaneity out of their children with the holy book.

Our Lady of Nemesis reported me to their minister, for whom I was subbing, and I was not invited back for a third summer. This, incidentally was the same congregation whose choir always came out heartily on Thursday night for practice, and tape recorded their renditions. Then, it did not matter whether only three or four showed up on Sunday morning. This was cottage country. It was also the church in which a woman who likely tipped the scales at close to 400 pounds sang the unforgettable lines "When nothing else would do, love lifted me". Aria for Soprano and Unaccompanied tape recorder.

Three years after I began my trek towards ministry, I was met by an elderly man in our neighborhood, who asked me what I was going to be "when I grew up" (and I'm still asking myself that question). I told him that I was a United Church ministry student, and was planning to end up in the pastorate in about four years. He listened politely, and then asked, "Are you saved?" I replied, "I think we all are." Not a clever reply, but one that spoke more to unconditional love than retribution and judgment. He countered with John 3:16, but as my arms were full of groceries and the ice cream was melting, I made my excuses. I was just one more unbeliever consigned to the down escalator, I guess.

And so it has gone. I am now in a different place, thank the Universe, from that in which I found myself as a young, hormonally driven church student. I knew that my time as a preacher was drawing to a close when I returned from Saskatchewan to report to the home congregation, and chose as my theme these words from Jeremiah 8:20: "The harvest is past, the summer is ended and we are not saved." The irony was lost on the congregation, but the minister's ears perked up, and the truth was being disclosed, at last. It was difficult to resign, even shameful, perhaps, but I have seen too many preachers who ought to have been restrained, not ordained.

I have since been a teacher and a librarian. I respect all those who continue to struggle to interpret the meaning and place of God or Goddess in their lives. But I now find that people like Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle, and Tom Harpur of the Toronto Star are my preaching heroes. Mark's rants against the prevailing cultural and political insanities are available online usually once a week, and are so filled with common sense they make you cry even as you laugh.

As the religion editor of the Toronto Star, Tom Harpur has researched and experienced so many forms of religious belief and bigotry through the years. On his website is his vision statement which includes this definition: Every religion whose ethical core is summed up by the word "compassion" or "loving-kindness" to all other creatures without exception has a vision of the truth and is a valid "way" to Transcendence. And he was an Anglican priest before becoming a religion reporter.

A few weeks ago, I wrote to my brother, a retired Chemical Engineering professor at UWO, about Tom's book, thus:

"Tom Harpur has a new book out called "The Pagan Christ" (wasn't Harpur the author of "Honest to God" back in the day?). Anyhow, his thesis is that Jesus was a theological and propaganda creation of the early Christian church, something along the familiar lines of the earlier religions (Horus of the Egyptians is one example). He says there's no corroborating evidence for JC's existence, apart from a mention by Herodotus, which turns out to be a 4th century forgery. Even the Jesus Seminar has boiled down Jesus's words to about one doubtful sentence."

To which my brother responded:

"Yeah, a bunch of old guys is studying it at Parkminster, self included. The young don't need to - they've already left the church. Harpur has a good thesis and although the book is organized oddly with a lot of repetition, it's an eye-opener. Sadly, most of the guys with the most theological training dismiss Harpur for his poor scholarship, which he never claims - just that he's put together the distilled thought of other scholars and skeptics. Anyhow, I think most of us in the monthly seminar are convinced that Harpur is on to something that can't be ignored. No wonder the book's been on the best seller list for months now."

What I do not respect is the constant proselytizing and pressure of those who have found their truth and insist on cramming down my throat. So perhaps it is all for the best that I followed the path I chose. Heaven knows, I might have been one of them. As the bumper sticker says, "God prefers spiritual fruits to religious nuts".

The less you know, the more you believe. Thank you, Bono. I don't much care for your music, but I respect your perception of truth and what you have done with it so far. Let me close here with a cowboy song collected by the American expert in folk music, Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress. It's called, Silver Jack, and I think it makes the point that there is a considerable inverse correlation between knowledge and belief.