Mark Mills

I could have been The Beav as I was growing up. Where Ward Cleaver was a businessman, my dad was a minister. Where June was a housewife, my mom was my elementary school music teacher. My older sis hung out with a girl who was the female equivalent of Eddie Haskell. I had a younger sis where Theodore had no younger sibling, but he did try to get a dog in one episode. I think. The Beav hung out with a kid named Whitey and for me that was Roy Dean or Jerry Joe, take your pick. The three of us were pretty much inseparable from the first to fifth grade until my folks moved us from Missouri to Texas. That did it.

I was a churchie growing up, going to church camp every summer from when I was six years old until I graduated high school. My other interests, i.e., women and hanging out with the wrong crowd, took me away from church and any sort of spirituality for years. Then one day Ram Dass ran me over, figuratively speaking, of course. You could also say that my dogma got run over by my karma, but somebody else came up with that. I regained a spiritual path away from church, found my way back into a church after becoming a father, became a minister, got a divorce, had a falling out with organized religion but not with God, and now here I am. Spirituality isn’t about a building. That’s a rather cliche statement these days, isn’t it? Okay, so forget I said that, but your spirituality and my spirituality is about how we manifest Spirit every day. That’s the biggie. Short story version of what is undoubtedly not interesting to most everyone who will be reading this. Now I take my dad (retired minister) to church every weekend and look for ways to follow my own path during the week.

Oh, yes, my wife tells me it’s very important that I earned two masters degrees along that journey, as well. I know a lot about counseling and more than a lot about ministry, but as a result I just have more questions. Always more questions. I love to study and fill my head with knowledge. I love more to study people and fill my heart with the hearts of other people. That’s where the good stuff of life is.

I have three dogs consisting of a Golden Retriever, a Flat-Coated Retriever, and a Redbone Coonhound. They all three cultivate a deeper and more enriching relationship with our Siamese cat all of which is due to my wife’s skills as an animal whisperer/friend. She’s incredible. She gets them to eat next to each other … really! We enjoy all kinds of things that feed into my writing, not the least of which is our fascination with the paranormal. That’s not to say we have a fascination with death. I prefer to stay away from that for the time being. What we learn about the other side will no doubt help us to live better lives on this side. Oh, and I also love playing my guitar however badly on a given day. And my sax. Love my sax, though at present it is outlawed even in the basement. Please send letters to the warden asking for a pardon so I can become a saxier writer. It’s for a very good cause.

Website: http://markdmills.com
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