These are entries from the journals I kept while I was in the Church of Bible Understanding.
The journals are a pretty good record of what it was like to live in COBU during 1991 through 1993, which were my last 3 years there. (I came to COBU in 1980, when I was 22 years old, leaving almost 14 years later at 36.)
In these journals I recorded a lot of conversations, meetings and daily life. I was able to write quickly, capturing conversations as they took place because I had developed a kind of shorthand whose original purpose had been to conceal what I had written from others. But it also had the added benefit of enabling me to write down conversations as they were taking place, because I could write in this abbreviated form of writing very quickly.
I like to read back on these, although I am sometimes embarrassed by some of the content and of what it says about me. A passage I copied from John Hersey’s book, The Wall (which I read when I still lived in COBU) is:
“The rule I set for myself long ago that I should never destroy anything from this record: the principle value of these jottings for later use will be as a guide to reactions of the moment and I cannot help it if they remind me and embarrass me.”
This is a quote by a fictional character in book, Noach Levinson. He kept a daily journal during the last days of the Warsaw Ghetto, recording events and conversations and meetings. (It’s through the device of this character’s diary that the story is told.) When I read the quote, I identified with it and wanted to do the same, or rather, to continue to do the same. I sometimes felt that later I would want to know what I thought at the time and that there might be some use for this later.
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