In February of 1976, I met Therese. We were both working in a mental health center serving a culturally mixed, low-income population in Chicago. After some skirmishes and a few episodes of friendly rivalry, we discovered each other and started a relationship that would lead to 29 years of loving, learning and building as husband and wife.

Never did we doubt that we were meant for each other. Ours was really a match made in heaven. So was its undoing. Therese died during heart surgery in September of 2008, after having announced for over a year that she would not survive the surgery, no matter what assurances her doctors gave us.

She tried to prepare me for it, but there is no preparation for such an event. Even for a Christian, death is intolerable. I had to surrender to the same conclusion reached by the authors of the book of Genesis: it was not meant to be this way.

Something happened between God and mankind, something truly awful. I will leave it to the theologians to decide whether there was a time when we were not mortal. The fact is, we are mortal and this condition is intolerable. It could not have been initially intended.

I spent the last six months pealing off the onion of my faith to try to reach a solid core on which I can rely. Surprisingly, I found one. This is an onion with a core. And it is shared. That is why I started this blog. I want to share that core with you and I hope that others out there will want to share theirs with all of us, a little at a time.