Tom Hemphill and Judith Watson
Sarasota FL
Tom and I met a dozen years ago, when I was just beginning my spiritual journey. It was some time before I saw any connection between the two. His professional work had been in international poverty alleviation, and I had just discovered teaching as the love of my life. Both vocations were taken from us, however, and we embarked on journeys of self-discovery and relational health that we didn't recognize or understand very well at first, and mostly resisted. What we did start to appreciate was that we at least had each other to complain to—from a safe distance most of the time.
Tom is a nephew of Dr. Franklin Loehr, who wrote The Power of Prayer on Plants, reporting on some of the early pioneer efforts to bring science and religion together. (It was an international best seller back in 1959!) Tom had worked with his uncle and had considerable background in matters spiritual. I had to catch up, attending the College of Metaphysical Studies in Clearwater, FL for eighteen months and reading virtually every author of significance in the field.
We soldiered on, generally restless, unemployed or underemployed, growing into a recognition of ourselves as potential mentors, speakers, writers and teachers, but unable to find our niche or an audience. Tom wrote two book’s worth of superb essays and articles for a small journal; you can read some of them at www.religiousresearch.org under ‘Articles from the Journal.’ I wrote the story of my own spiritual development in a book currently titled Significant Others—Transforming Life’s Key Relationships. Neither has been published yet. We’re not techies, and a website of our own never occurred to me until Teena mentioned it. So now I’m thinking about it.
We probably consider ourselves too grounded to be called New Age; the term we use most often is New Paradigm. And, yes, we resist being labeled, even as Christians, since it’s difficult to know what people mean by that any more, and we consider ourselves inclusive global citizens.
But we are also lonely, in spite of being as gloriously happy together as we look, and we long to be engaged in some meaningful way with assisting with the transformation that is surely happening. If a renewed New Age will bring us all community and empowerment, then a name everyone recognizes may well be an asset.
It is my particular dream to bring quality materials to young people to help them understand what all of us have had to learn on our own. It was in searching for a succinct and valid history of the New Age movement that I found this site. I am very pleased to be here.
