Article December 8, 2003 Issue

Finding the church without walls

By Bill Dawley

It was 1968. I'd just gotten out of the Marines. I was walking along a deserted beach on an early fall day. The air was crisp and pure, the sky a deep, beautiful blue, and the ocean a little on the rough side.

My mind was filled with infinitude. Those past few months of reading and deep thoughtfulness: Plato, Confucius, Jesus, Whitman, Kerouac, Buddha. It was as if the sky and earth opened with illumination—I was grounded in the universal truth of being. God was here—not out there. "Church" was here—and everywhere—but not elevated to institutional hierarchy.

Soon after, Science and Health came into my life. It confirmed everything I had felt that day. I had truly entered a church without walls.