Norman has been writing and trying to get published from his early years. In the fourth grade at East Lynne school in Visalia, Miss Dula had the combined 3rd, 4th and 5th grade classes produce a hectographed book of stories, poems, jokes and cartoons. Norman had a thrilling story about the “Moon of Arabia” a cargo ship that got torpedoed at sea by the Nazis during World War II, published in the book as well as a poem about World War II Nazi, Japanese and Italian Axis leaders,and a visual test cartoon.
With three novels and four three act plays and dozens of short stories all sent out and rejected in his twenties it would be several years before he finally published a book, Managing Church Groups, Pflaum Publishing, Dayton, Ohio, 1975. Following that he published slightly more than forty-five articles in magazines ranging from the Pet Shop Magazine to Today’s Parish within a matter of about five years.
After that came a very long dry spell and writing took a back seat to other activities until Mary was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in 2002. At that time Norman began keeping a daily journal and when Mary died in 2004 he decided that he wanted to write a book about his experience as a caretaker and share that with people who were about to enter that new stage of their life.
Upon completing the manuscript, Alzheimer's Dreadful Journey, Mary Doesn't Liver Here Anymore, he began work on a new work, A Personal Search for the Historical Jesus. This book is based upon the class he has taught at Clovis Adult Education for the past eight years. No completion date has been set yet.
The following excerpts will give you a sense of what the book will be all about.
This is an excerpt from the introduction:
I went on after graduation to work for the Archdiocese of Baltimore for six years. I was treated well, paid well, worked with may good people and made many good friends. When I left the Archdiocese I went to work for a small company that did church related work for a few years and then moved out of church work completely.
By that time Mary and I both had stopped going to Mass and found we had no need for organized religion. In the late eighties we moved to Fresno, California and I started reading books by John Spong, John Dominic Crossen and Bob Funk and found out about the work of the Jesus Seminar.
Within two years I had read enough about the historical Jesus that I felt that I wanted to share it so I developed an outline and took it to the Clovis Adult Education School and taught my first class about the Search for the Historical Jesus.
What follows is the result of all of the above experiences. I am not a scholar, I do not speak or read Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic or Latin. I cannot claim to have come up with any new or exciting theories or concepts. Everything I write about is someone else’s idea. I will try to give credit to the originator wherever possible. The bibliography lists all my sources. Since this is not a scholarly work, I am not going to use foot notes, that would be overly tedious for my intended audience.
Before launching into this search for the historical Jesus there are several issues that I want to address. Why write an entire book about the search for the historical Jesus when all one has to do is go to the New Testament and read the four Gospels and learn all that one needs to know about Jesus? In Chapter Four we will take up this very issue but for now let me say that while there are some nuggets of the historical Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, (Mark, Matthew and Luke) what most of us learn from the Gospels is about the Christ of Faith who is a different person from the Jesus of history. That is to say, Jesus the man and the Christ of Faith turn out to be very different people as you will see as you venture through the last chapter of the book.
Second is the fact that Jesus carries a ton of baggage with him and when one starts to study everything about him critically it disturbs many individuals. Since he has been considered to be God (one of the trinity) then if one studies him critically one is examining God and calling the “truth” of God into question. Here emotional barriers are raised that prohibit rational discourse. Thus in some circles the very mention of the search for the historical Jesus brings out anger and hostility.
The following is an excerpt from a chapter the history of religion:
In the early times because the females gave birth to the children and the tribe had to have children to continue its existence then the female became the head of the tribe. As it progressed it was known as mother-right.
The earliest groups of humans were promiscuous. The female could mate with any male they desired. Since the how of human reproduction was unknown the babies who were born were simply considered their mother’s babies. Since the tribe was communal all the other women were aunts and all the men were uncles. It of course took a village to raise a child. Everyone in the tribe participated in raising each and every child because each one was of crucial importance to the future of the tribe.
Mother-right faded out when humans figured out that men having sex with a woman was what brought babies about. When men realized that if the woman could be kept away from other men then men took a giant step forward and women took a step right back into the shadows.
Several things were happening to human kind at this juncture. Men were settling down and claiming private property which they now had to have other people, be they tenants, slaves, relatives or children, work and defend for them. Private property meant they needed to be able to pass it on when they died. Thus the woman they married had to be a virgin so that she would not be carrying another man’s child. In nature this is very clearly brought out when a new male lion takes over a pride from an older male. The new male lion then drives out the old male and kills all the old male's cubs when he takes over. Human behavior is not too far behind our animal neighbors. Men now realized the the woman would have to be kept away from other men since everyone remembered back to the time when women felt free to have sex with any man they chose to.
Rome conquered a new territory or state they would bring the new Gods back to Rome and install them in the Parthenon Conquered territories could always worship their own gods as long as they promised to worship Caesar Augustus too. For most people around the Mediterranean that wasn’t a problem.
The Jews on the other hand had worked out special arrangements with Rome. They could worship their god, Yahweh, they could keep their temple, they didn’t have to work on the Sabbath, they didn’t have to worship Caesar Augustus, and they didn’t have to serve in the Roman Army. Is it any wonder that there was a fair amount of animosity toward Jews by Romans and other inhabitants of the Mediterranean?