That is the dream. And it happens just often enough to a handful of writers, adrift in a sea of hope, to encourage the dream. And every once in a millennium, it happens so unexpectedly and spectacularly that a whole new level of hope is generated.
That’s what happened to Bill Lobdell.
You may recognize the name. He was an editor of this newspaper for nearly a decade, the editor who hired me eight years ago to do this column.
He was also one of my first nonfiction writing students at UCI. If you think that adds up to nepotism, so do I. And so be it.
Bill gave up his editor post at the Pilot to join the mother lode at the Los Angeles Times as, first, a religion columnist, then reporter.
For eight years, he wallowed in the detritus of organized religion — the cover-up of Roman Catholic priests who sexually abused so many of the young people who looked to them as spiritual models, the fundamentalist Christian pastors who lived a quite different life than they preached, the big business of religion that measured success by money and power rather than souls saved.
And it all ate away at Bill’s own faith, which had been for many years a strong and active — if sometimes confusing — part of his life, especially since he departed St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church to study Catholicism.
Finally, two years ago, his emotional dam broke. He was burned out on bad religion, unable to cope with one more example.
So he asked for a change of pace at work to clear his head and the doubt that was building up about his own faith. And having removed that hat, he put on a new one as a personal essayist, a role reporters seldom get to enjoy. And then he vented.
