Join James as he tells his riveting life story. Listen as he tells how God brought a young man, son of a butcher shop owner, through the hippie experience and many travels to the knowledge of the truth. Find out what a vegetarian restaurant, an organic farm in Italy and a Spanish missionary in Tennessee have in common! 

<p>Join James as he tells his riveting life story. Listen as he tells how God brought a young man, son of a butcher shop owner, through the hippie experience and many travels to the knowledge of the truth. Find out what a vegetarian restaurant, an organic farm in Italy and a Spanish missionary in Tennessee have in common! </p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Lay Institute for Global Health Training (LIGHT)

James Hartley

Butcher Shares Life

I just want to welcome especially those that are new at the Wildwood.

It wasn't it amazing to see that they're coming from the 4 corners of the earth here, China and Belgium and all over.

It's just 1 thing I really like about Wildwood.

Saints gathered from all around the world.

That's what heaven's going to be like, right?

This is a place that's very meaningful to me.

I first came here in January of 2000, and I know everyone's got different paths of how the Lord brought you here, a different story.

And I want to share a little bit about my story this evening.

You know, when I was a kid, I was very inquisitive.

I was raised a Roman Catholic, and I remember quizzing my professors.

And there was different priests that we called them fathers that would come in and try to teach us, even though we often were not very interested.

And I remember 1 time asking him, father, why is it that we go to church on Sunday when the Jews go on Saturday and Jesus was a Jew?" And he was stunned by that question.

I was in fourth grade, I remember asking him, he didn't really know what to say.

He's like, well, Jesus rolled on Sunday, so we go to church on Sunday." I was like, okay, all right.

So, and I would, I was inquisitive enough that I found enough holes in the, in the, in the Roman faith that I was losing confidence as the years went on.

And By the time I was 16, I had lost all confidence in that church I was raised in, and I didn't want to go anymore.

And so thankfully, I was quickly able to get my driver's license.

And I'd like to go Sunday afternoon at 3 o'clock." And they said, well, because I was usually out late on Saturday night and I didn't want to wake up in the morning and so they said, okay.

I would go in, 03:00, I'd grab the, don't get any ideas here young people, I'd get the Bulletin and I'd come on and say I was there.

I mean there wasn't really much of a sermon in the Catholic service It was pretty easy to say what was going on.

Well, we read a couple of Psalms and got the Eucharist and went home.

Sermons were about 10 minutes long, so they never asked me what the sermons were.

Anyway, when I finished high school, I was through with Christianity.

I saw inconsistencies all through the faith and I saw a people that were living much in contrary to what is what I would think would be in the Bible.

It seems very contradictory and when I look on television I never met a Protestant before so understand I grew up and I graduated high school without ever meeting a Protestant and I didn't know what they were.

I didn't know the, I didn't understand the history of the reformation.

I thought like most Catholics I guess just a bunch of rebellious people that left the mother church or something like that Yeah, that are kind of weird and you see them on television You know falling down and you know doing all sorts of things speaking in tongues, and I thought the Protestant world seemed pretty crazy to me, so I don't want any part of that.

And I'm pretty through with this Catholic business here, so I'm done.

So I was leaving high school, leaving my parents, going off to college with an open mind to experiment and try anything that was out there.

And so I was reading books and doing different things and I got into drugs and I was getting into psychedelics and hanging out with hippie crowds and going to concerts and all sorts of things.

Got really into music, started playing music.

And my life was a pretty average college kid, I guess, in the US, pretty worldly life.

I got very deeply into, I guess we would call it spiritualism.

I wasn't really aware of that type of term or new age.

I wasn't aware of that really, but those were probably concepts I was into, more Eastern religions.

I thought, well, maybe there's something there.

And through the psychedelics and the hippie crowds and these different experiences that I was having at concerts and so forth, which was at times out of body experiences and very different things that were undeniably spiritually powerful and things that I had never experienced before.

I started to wonder maybe there's truth in this and there's a direction here.

So I started getting more and more in depth with it, reading books on Eastern religions.

But to be honest, the more I read, the more confused I got.

And I read, I read, I don't know if you've ever looked at the Bhagavad Gita, But this is the book of the Hare Krishnas and it's quite confusing.

I tried reading it and I thought, you know, I don't really get it, to be honest with you.

And the more I searched, the more, you know, it just seemed very ambiguous and nothing very concrete.

And so Inside my heart I knew that I really didn't know anything and I wasn't getting any answers in any Eastern religions.

But through this experience of mine of just at least being open-minded, it did open some doors for me to reconsider Christianity.

He played in a lot of bands in Madison, the University of Wisconsin.

I was good friends with his younger brother.

We got this geodesic dome out in the country with no running water.

And we started living out in the country.

The first time I went on this property and met this guy, He had clay smeared all over his stomach, and he hadn't eaten in 3 days And he was you know like on the spiritual high right and and and so we were we were doing all sorts of you know Spiritualistic things you know trying to forecast the future and all I was I was writing astrology charts, and I was all over the place.

And we were playing music and having parties out there and everything.

And I was, I had, I was a non, I would consider myself a non-conformist to the regular way of life.

I dropped out of college because I didn't really see a career path that I was very interested in.

And I just wanted to play music and live in the country and do drugs.

To be honest, that was probably the direction of my life.

And I still have friends that are doing the exact same thing, the ones that are still around.

And so, Delson was really the leader of our group and we were starting a band and so forth, But he was getting some mental imbalances, and it was growing apparent.

Another friend of ours was in drug rehab.

And I was watching all of this, and I started thinking, you know, drugs really aren't the answer to life.

And to depend on that seems quite like a crutch.

So, Delson left to, you know, suddenly he vanished.

He went to the West Coast 1 time and then the whole thing just started crumbling apart.

And 1 time he says, you know what, I'm through with all of this.

And he started hitchhiking around Europe, following this band around and doing different things.

I was back playing video games, playing basketball, and working a job.

Suddenly he comes knocking on, opening up my friend's apartment door, and I'll never forget the day, because he had long hair down his back, kind of like white man's dreadlocks.

He hadn't washed his hair in probably 3, 4 years.

And he had cut off that hair and was holding a King James Bible in his hand.

And Delson was regarded by me as an extremist.

He was really into everything and he was always the extreme on everything.

So I didn't know him in these days, but I know when he first went to college, he was like a Republican that would wear like a suit and carry a briefcase to class.

Then he became a hippie and did the other extreme and just totally changed.

Now he's got his hair cut off and I thought, okay, Delson has finally lost his mind.

I thought, What on earth has he come up with here?

So he, I was talking like this probably, what happened?

And he's, so he looks at us, and we were just in there playing video games and so forth.

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Butcher Shares Life

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