Ian Morgan Cron - Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir...of Sorts

Ian Cron walks us through the drama of his life, making us laugh and cry with him every step of the way. His memoir is filled with everything from boyhood stories of celebrating communion in the woods with chipmunks and blue jays, to poignant reflections about growing up with an alcoholic father. Ians honesty, vulnerability, and humor will bring a measure of healing to all who go on the journey with him.

J IM W ALLIS , president of Sojourners,
best-selling author of Gods Politics
and Rediscovering Values

I like stories. And this is a good one. Ian Cron has a ton to teach the world, and hes gentle as he does it. Here it is: The Gospel of Ian not in the top four gospels, but its pretty magnificent. And its sure evidence that God continues to tell the extraordinary story of grace through the lives of ordinary people.

S HANE C LAIBORNE , author, activist,
and co-compiler of Common Prayer

Ian Cron writes with astonishing energy and freshness; his metaphors stick fast in the imagination. This is neither a simple memoir of hurt endured, nor a tidy story of reconciliation and resolution. It is rather like Augustines Confessionsa testimony to the unfinished business of grace. The deeply painful reality of trying to discover how to love a parent who has hidden away, in a number of ways, from responsibility and vulnerability is not softened but explored with clear-sighted empathy. And somehow, the new possibility comes into focusthe possibility of offering to another the grace received, and of finding both love and truthfulness in that moment.

The Archbishop of Canterbury,
D R . R OWAN W ILLIAMS

Ian Cron has the gift of making his human journey a parable for all of our journeys. Read this profound book and be well fed, and freed.

F R . R ICHARD R OHR , author of
Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

Ian Morgan Crons story is a compelling one . Each turn of the page will draw you closer to God.

C RAIG G ROESCHEL ,
author of The Christian Atheist

Ian Morgan Cron is a brilliant writer. This is the kind of book that you dont just read. It reads you.

M ARK B ATTERSON , author of
In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day:
How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars

Ian Morgan Crons daring writing lays bare the human journey with grace and wit. His confessional words combat despair and illuminate the path toward forgiveness and redemption we are all searching for.

M AKOTO F UJIMURA ,
artist, author, and founder of
International Arts Movement

Simply the best memoir I have read in years. It is engaging, clever, heartbreaking, and God-drenched in all the right ways.

P HYLLIS T ICKLE , author of The Great Emergence:
How Christianity Is Changing and Why

There are some books you have to readtheyre important for your work or required so you can be up on whats happening. There are other books you want to read. These books humanize you, deepen your soul and your insight, help you see the world through the eyes of another. They move you to tears and to smiles and delight you with the craft of the author. This is one of those want-to-read books, a portal that transports you into the struggles of childhood, the agony of alcoholism, the joys of coming of age, the terror and hope of parenthood, and the mystery of faith. Enthusiastically recommended.

B RIAN M C L AREN , author of
Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words

At once touching and profound, poignant and full of grace, this is compelling writing of the highest order. I cant imagine anyone not being drawn deeper into the momentum of Gods healing Spirit.

J EREMY B EGBIE , musician and
Thomas A. Langford Research Professor of Theology,
Duke University Divinity School; author of
Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music

J ESUS ,
M Y F ATHER,
THE CIA,
AND ME
a memoir of sorts

J ESUS ,
M Y FATHER,
THE CIA,
AND M E
a memoir of sorts

IAN MORGAN CRON

2011 by Ian Morgan Cron

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920. www.alivecommunications.com

Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

In some instances, names, dates, locations, and other details have been purposely changed to protect the identities and privacy of those discussed in this book.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cron, Ian Morgan, 1960-
Jesus, my father, the CIA, and me : a memoirof sorts / Ian Morgan Cron.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8499-4610-3 (pbk.)
1. Cron, Ian Morgan, 19602. Episcopal ChurchClergyBiography. I. Title.
BX5995.C74A3 2011
283.092dc22 [B]

2011003723

Printed in the United States of America

11 12 13 14 RRD 5 4 3 2 1

When going back makes sense, you are going ahead.

W ENDELL B ERRY

R OBERT L AX

I was rummaging around for a pen in my mothers apartment when I found a grainy black-and-white photo stuck to the back of a drawer in her desk. It was taken of me as a toddler at the beach near our home in Greenwich, Connecticut. Stamped on the white, decoratively scalloped border is the year, 1962. That year, riots broke out when African-American student Phillip Meredith tried to enroll at the University of Mississippi, two members of the high-wire circus act the Flying Wallendas were killed when their seven-person pyramid collapsed during a performance in Detroit, and the United States and the Soviet Union came within a cats whisker of incinerating each other when our military discovered that the Soviets had placed nuclear missiles ninety miles off the coast of Florida in Cuba. It was also the year in which an unsuspecting black bear named Yogi was volunteered by the air force to participate in an escape capsule test. He was ejected from a supersonic aircraft flying at 870 mph at an altitude of thirty-five thousand feet, landing safely on the earth seven minutes and forty-nine seconds later.

It was a stressful year for everybody.

The photo of me at the beach suggests that young children are more conscious of whats happening in their environment than developmental psychologists once believed. I knew that civilization was teetering on the precipice of annihilation, and I was ready.

I am sitting in a lifeboat.

The picture was taken with my mothers camera, a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, a perfect cube of black plastic with a gray knob on the side that you wound to advance the film. To take a picture, you had to hunch over the camera, looking at your subject through a small square viewfinder. The owners manual claimed the lens could take sharp pictures from 5 feet to infinity. Thats a whole lot of camera for five dollars and fifty cents. Later, when my mother bought a new camera, the Brownie ended up in my toy chest. The knob made an awful grinding noise when I turned it because of the grit and sand lodged in the gears of the film spool. For a year it went with me everywhere.