Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir...of Sorts

182 Pages·2011·0.91 MB·English

by  Ian Morgan Cron

PRAISE FOR JESUS, MY FATHER, THE CIA,

AND ME
“Ian Cron walks us through the drama of his life, making us laugh and cry with
him every step of the way. His memoir is filled with everything from boyhood
stories of celebrating communion in the woods with chipmunks and blue jays, to
poignant reflections about growing up with an alcoholic father. Ian’s honesty,
vulnerability, and humor will bring a measure of healing to all who go on the
journey with him.”
JIM WALLIS, president of Sojourners,
best-selling author of God’s Politics
and Rediscovering Values “I like stories. And this is a good one. Ian Cron has a
ton to teach the world, and he’s gentle as he does it. Here it is: The Gospel of Ian
… not in the top four gospels, but it’s pretty magnificent. And it’s sure evidence
that God continues to tell the extraordinary story of grace through the lives of
ordinary people.”
SHANE CLAIBORNE, author, activist,
and co-compiler of Common Prayer “Ian Cron writes with astonishing energy
and freshness; his metaphors stick fast in the imagination. This is neither a
simple memoir of hurt endured, nor a tidy story of reconciliation and resolution.
It is— rather like Augustine’s Confessions—a testimony to the unfinished
business of grace. The deeply painful reality of trying to discover how to love a
parent who has hidden away, in a number of ways, from responsibility and
vulnerability is not softened but explored with clear-sighted empathy. And
somehow, the new possibility comes into focus—the possibility of offering to
another the grace received, and of finding both love and truthfulness in that
moment.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury,
DR. ROWAN WILLIAMS
“Ian Cron has the gift of making his human journey a parable for all of our
journeys. Read this profound book and be well fed, and freed.”
FR. RICHARD ROHR, author of
Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer “Ian Morgan Cron’s story
is a compelling one… . Each turn of the page will draw you closer to God.”
CRAIG GROESCHEL,
author of The Christian Atheist “Ian Morgan Cron is a brilliant writer. This is the
kind of book that you don’t just read. It reads you.”
MARK BATTERSON, author of
In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day:
How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars “Ian Morgan Cron’s daring
writing lays bare the human journey with grace and wit. His confessional words
combat despair and illuminate the path toward forgiveness and redemption we
are all searching for.”
MAKOTO FUJIMURA,
artist, author, and founder of
International Arts Movement “Simply the best memoir I have read in years. It is
engaging, clever, heartbreaking, and God-drenched in all the right ways.”
PHYLLIS TICKLE, author of The Great Emergence:
How Christianity Is Changing and Why “There are some books you have to read
—they’re important for your work or required so you can be ‘up’ on what’s
happening. There are other books you want to read. These books humanize you,
deepen your soul and your insight, help you see the world through the eyes of
another. They move you to tears and to smiles and delight you with the craft of
the author. This is one of those want-to-read books, a portal that transports you
into the struggles of childhood, the agony of alcoholism, the joys of coming of
age, the terror and hope of parenthood, and the mystery of faith. Enthusiastically
recommended.”
BRIAN MCLAREN, author of
Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words “At once touching and
profound, poignant and full of grace, this is compelling writing of the highest
order. I can’t imagine anyone not being drawn deeper into the momentum of
God’s healing Spirit.”
JEREMY BEGBIE, musician and
Thomas A. Langford Research Professor of Theology,
Duke University Divinity School; author of
Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music
JESUS,
MY FATHER,
THE CIA,
AND ME
a memoir … of sorts
J ,
ESUS
M
Y FATHER,
CIA,
THE

AND ME
a memoir … of sorts
IAN MORGAN CRON
© 2011 by Ian Morgan Cron All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy,
recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas
Nelson, Inc.
Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street,
Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920. www.alivecommunications.com
Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales
promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].
In some instances, names, dates, locations, and other details have been purposely changed to protect the
identities and privacy of those discussed in this book.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cron, Ian Morgan, 1960-
Jesus, my father, the CIA, and me : a memoir—of sorts / Ian Morgan Cron.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8499-4610-3 (pbk.)
1. Cron, Ian Morgan, 1960–2. Episcopal Church—Clergy—Biography. I. Title.
BX5995.C74A3 2011
283.092—dc22 [B]
2011003723
Printed in the United States of America
11 12 13 14 RRD 5 4 3 2 1
For my mother
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
When going back makes sense, you are going ahead.
—WENDELL BERRY
1
Sometimes we go on a search for something and do not know what we are looking for until we
come again to our beginning.
—ROBERT LAX
I
was rummaging around for a pen in my mother’s apartment when I found a
grainy black-and-white photo stuck to the back of a drawer in her desk. It was
taken of me as a toddler at the beach near our home in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Stamped on the white, decoratively scalloped border is the year, 1962. That year,
riots broke out when African-American student Phillip Meredith tried to enroll at
the University of Mississippi, two members of the high-wire circus act the
Flying Wallendas were killed when their seven-person pyramid collapsed during
a performance in Detroit, and the United States and the Soviet Union came
within a cat’s whisker of incinerating each other when our military discovered
that the Soviets had placed nuclear missiles ninety miles off the coast of Florida
in Cuba. It was also the year in which an unsuspecting black bear named Yogi
was volunteered by the air force to participate in an escape capsule test. He was
ejected from a supersonic aircraft flying at 870 mph at an altitude of thirty-five
thousand feet, landing safely on the earth seven minutes and forty-nine seconds
later.
It was a stressful year for everybody.
The photo of me at the beach suggests that young children are more conscious
of what’s happening in their environment than developmental psychologists once
believed. I knew that civilization was teetering on the precipice of annihilation,
and I was ready.
I am sitting in a lifeboat.
The picture was taken with my mother’s camera, a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye,
a perfect cube of black plastic with a gray knob on the side that you wound to
advance the film. To take a picture, you had to hunch over the camera, looking at
your subject through a small square viewfinder. The owner’s manual claimed the
lens could take sharp pictures from “5 feet to infinity.” That’s a whole lot of
camera for five dollars and fifty cents. Later, when my mother bought a new