Unexpected Biblical Wisdom from a Former Jesuit, Teacher, and Fisher of Men
This book tells the story of a young boy who spends a third of a life time crawling under and then throwing off the smothering canvas of Paul's distortions of Genesis and the Jesus story, in order to penetrate as deeply as he can as a Jesuit into reading the bible as literature: and then, while living to be 80, under refreshed gospel guidance, finds loving women and working the earth, star gazing, and fishing as Jesus instructs his disciples to do. Standing in cold running water, at the end, he reminisces about those death has taken from him and weeps without rancor. Like Jesus's, his is a comic story.
Praise for "Beyond Belief"
Jan Wojcik left the Jesuit order, yet still became a holy father. In this charming memoir, refusing to weaponize fear as many books with religious themes, he finds different paths lead to God, even Beyond Belief.
Along the way, he fishes, prays in colors and sometimes dodges bullets.
I wish I could have spent more time with him. Some of his passages resonated so deeply that I found myself returning to them over and over.
- Becky Hepinstall, coauthor of "Sisters of Shiloh"
A spiritual journey that reads like a novel……Jan Wojcik lays his soul bare with an honesty that we can only admire and a depth that resonates long after the book is closed. A compelling work, posing the questions that we all must ask ourselves, worthy of a slow, digestive read and the consideration of where our souls, our hearts and our intellects come together.
- Greg Fields, author of "Through the Waters and theWild," "The Arc of the Comet," and the forthcoming "The Bright Freight of Memory"
A candid and charming - often funny - memoir of a boy whose earthly sense of integrity compels him to become a Jesuit and, later, requires him to leave the order for the same reasons he joined it - to keep questioning the biblical literature about God - even as doing that might push him beyond belief. He can't stop anywhere along the line - or, in other words, he can't put a good book down. Neither could I his.
- James Ritts
A man withdraws from the Society of Jesus where he had been in training for the priesthood - withdraws without pronouncement or denunciation, or resentment, and as it happens withdraws into the lovely arms of a woman with whom he has two children.
Prevailing against resistance is a recurrent subtext of Beyond Belief .The author and his wife, both fulltime teachers, also manage to cultivate an active and productive farm in the hard-scrapple soil of the very northern reaches of New York State, providing the community with produce, animal meat, and an extraordinary array of cut flowers.
The trajectory of the author’s massive journey finds a fitting resting place in the author’s later years - as a fisher of students. And the reader will very likely endorse with great pleasure the arc of this life.- Lee Perron, author of "Pocket Poems" and "Celtic Light”
