He died peacefully, surrounded by his family…. Paul was born in New Jersey and graduated from Earlham College in Indiana. He was a loving father. He was a quiet thoughtful man who cared greatly about others. He was a birthright Quaker, and a veteran of the Korean War. He taught at North Hennepin Community College and at Hamline University. He spent many years as a technical writer for Unisys in Eagan.
Reading full notice and memories…
9 January, 1973
Dear Sue,
Hi honey. We’ve been so busy since you left that it has been too long since we wrote. May I say in writing again how nice it was to have you home over the holidays. Your going to Mother’s funeral meant something very special to me.
While you were home you asked a question which your Mom and I left hanging in the air. I found your question difficult to answer and also realized it was an immensely important one and deserved a very careful answer.
You said, “I would like to hear what your belief in God is?” I didn’t respond at the time but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I do believe and this is it at this point in my life.
Somehow, in some way, my belief involves the feeling that God lives within the heart and mind of man. I don’t mean that God is the creature of man as that statement may seem to imply but man’s heart and mind is ground on which he lives. The beauty, pattern and scope of that ground is one of the many reasons that I believe He lives. He lives not necessarily by the attentions of his hosts. The ground of the human heart has a terrain that weaves and rolls, flows down stream, forces uplifts of currents of air, and possesses cycles of rain and evaporation translated into personality characteristics that all people share. During our lifetimes we discover some of the patterns and they become less of the mystery they always will be to some more or less complete degree.
In the same sense that dreams do not come to a person on command (yet are a synthesis of that person’s experience and judgment of those experiences) so the spirit of God visits the hearts and minds of men, uncommanded, and therefore living a life of His own. To me, the existence of an uncommanded unconscious in myself (a well meaning unconscious I’ve come to find out) is proof of the spirit of God.
I have found my unconscious to be a friend. Knowing it I feel like there are two people in one going about the task of understanding myself and understanding the actions of others. Many times when I might be hurt by the actions of others, I am not because I know his or her actions are a part of his other patterns and the degree he or she understands those patterns.
Wow, anyway I got it down on paper. Perhaps by talking we can enlarge on what I say and you can ask questions so that I can know whether I have chosen the right words to communicate what I try to say.