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Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir . . . of Sorts Kindle Edition

by Ian Morgan Cron (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 833 ratings
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A touching memoir of life with an alcoholic father who secretly works with the CIA, a dark pilgrimage through the valley of depression and addiction, and finding a faith to redeem and a strength to forgive.

"This is a record of my life as I remember it—but more importantly, as I felt it."

At the age of sixteen, Ian Morgan Cron was told by his mother that his father, a motion picture executive, worked with the CIA in Europe. This astonishing revelation, coupled with his father's dark struggle with alcoholism, upended the world of a teenager struggling to become a man.

Born into a family of privilege and power, Ian's life is populated with colorful people and stories as his father takes the family on a wild roller-coaster ride through wealth and poverty and back again.

Decades later, as he faced his own personal demons, Ian realized that the only way to find peace was to voyage back through a painful childhood marked by extremes—privilege and poverty, violence and tenderness, truth and deceit—that he’d spent years trying to escape.

  • A fast-paced, unique memoir about the power of forgiveness from the bestselling author of The Road Back to You
  • Details his father’s struggle with alcohol and Cron’s own journey from addiction to twenty-three years of sobriety
  • Encouragement to see God’s redemptive power through life’s struggles

In this surprisingly funny and forgiving memoir, Ian reminds us that no matter how different the pieces may be, in the end we are all cut from the same cloth, stitched by faith into an exquisite quilt of grace.

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  5. Publication date
    June 6, 2011
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From the Publisher

Read More by Bestselling Author Ian Morgan Cron

Ian Morgan Cron is the bestselling author of The Road Back to You, a nationally recognized speaker, Enneagram teacher, trained psychotherapist, Dove Award-winning songwriter, and Episcopal priest.

Chasing Francis Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me
Chasing Francis Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me
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See Details
Customer Reviews
4.5 out of 5 stars
1,088
4.5 out of 5 stars
833
Price $9.99 $10.44
Description What happens when the pastor of a mega church loses his faith? Join Chase on his life-changing journey with a curious group of Franciscan friars as he struggles to resolve his crisis of faith by retracing the footsteps of Francis of Assisi. A touching memoir of life with an alcoholic father who secretly works with the CIA, a dark pilgrimage through the valley of depression and addiction and finding a faith to redeem and a strength to forgive.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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 Augustine's Confessions-a testimony to the unfinished business of grace." 
-Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury


"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." 
-Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M., author of Everything Belongs

"Ian Morgan Cron's story is a compelling one… Each turn of the page will draw you closer to God." 
-Craig Groeschel, author of The Christian Atheist

From the Author

"Ian Morgan 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 Augustine's Confessions - a testimony to the unfinished business of grace."

- The Most Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams - The Archbishop of Canterbury

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0052FT38I
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thomas Nelson (June 6, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 6, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1739 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 274 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 833 ratings

About the author

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Ian Morgan Cron

Ian Morgan Cron

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Ian Morgan Cron is a bestselling author, nationally recognized speaker, Enneagram teacher, trained psychotherapist, Dove Award-winning songwriter, and Episcopal priest. His books include the novel Chasing Francis and the spiritual memoir Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me. Ian draws on an array of disciplines—from psychology to the arts, Christian spirituality and theology—to help people enter more deeply into conversation with God and the mystery of their own lives. He and his wife, Anne, live in Nashville, Tennessee.

For more information, please visit www.ianmorgancron.com.

For Speaking: World Citizen Media

Phone: 615.568.2404

Email: info@worldcitizen.media

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
833 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jeremy D. Scott
5.0 out of 5 stars Don't let the facts get in the way of the truth
Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2012
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What a great book.

It's cliche, but several times, it literally had me laughing in one moment and crying in the next. When the subjects include Jesus, alcohol, parenting, child-rearing, and a nanny, you have the foundation for some good story-telling. Cron does not disappoint.

What I really appreciated about the book was Cron's ability to say up front that the anecdotes and conversations he'd write about were obviously in the spirit of what happened, and not perfect historical accounts. This is life. I can hardly tell you in exact factual detail how an event I witnessed an hour ago went down, let alone one from my childhood. But I can tell you the truth of how I remember it. In a world that tries so hard to remember - or worse yet: create - the factuality of events past, what we really have are warped shadows of what happened, or again, worse yet: a truth full of lies, which is no truth at all.

Truth is hardly about facts. So don't let the facts get in the way of the truth. No...really. Don't. (Just to be clear, I don't mean that facts and truth are totally unrelated or mutually exclusive. And facts serve the truth. But when it comes to faith and life, the truth does not serve facts or historicity.)

So I really appreciated the way Cron approached his own life story.

I've often looked at the memory of an event in my childhood and wondered what might have "really" happened. In the end, it doesn't matter, because I grew up thinking it happened one way and my life has been profoundly shaped by that thinking. The realization that things can be so often (mis-)remembered in this way - at least in terms of fact - hopefully causes us to be gentle in how we respond to the words, stories, and remembrances of others. And so, the media, politics, and the brutality of scientific fact...these things often make me weep.

Cron is indeed a wonderful story-teller. A whole chapter on jumping into water likely sounds like a boring endeavor. But I couldn't put it down. Cron's memoirs are a wonderful picture of the spanish proverb: "Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar."

Traveller, there is no road.
The path is made by walking.
4 people found this helpful
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Pam MacArthur
5.0 out of 5 stars Another wonderful book by Fr. Ian
Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2011
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I discovered Ian Cron at St. B's Episcopal Church in Nashville, TN where he is serving as a Priest. His sweet gentle spirit and love of the Lord Jesus Christ was attractive to me and I wanted to read his book "Chasing Francis" - at that time his only published book. Ian is a brilliant writer. He is gifted w/a wonderful sense of humor and he is a master of the written word. I loved "Chasing Francis" so I couldn't wait until "Jesus, My Father, the CIA, a memoir of sorts" came out. I was able to get his new book from Amazon before the published date of release and couldn't put it down. It took a lot of courage for him to write so candidly about the abusive relationship w/his Father. He writes w/clarity and opens his heart in describing his emotional pain through the years. This book is a true example of redemption. It never ceases to amaze me how Jesus can take broken people and use that pain and brokenness for HIS service. A must read for anyone who has been touched by parental rejection, and/or addiction. This book is a true blessing!
Pam MacArthur
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Lawrence of Sarasota
4.0 out of 5 stars An enjoyable, thought provoking read
Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2012
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Now that I have retired, most of my reading is either mysteries such as Michael Palmer or religious such as Anne Catherine Emmerich (the basis for the movie by Bruce Willis, THE PASSION OF CHRIST (The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ) as well as the book (the Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary) - a fantastic book to familiarize one with a wealth of information on the Blessed Virgin, so reading this book was somewhat of a departure.

I have a netbook as well as an android smart phone with Amazon's Kindle app. I like to read at night before I go to sleep or if I wake up in the middle of the night and have difficulty going back to sleep. My smart phone app comes in handy when my wife and I go shopping and she wants to try something on or I am waiting for an appointment such as at a doctor's office.

With this book, I found myself going back a reading a passage again because it was thought provoking or insightful. This book takes the reader thru the rites of passage of a young man who had an alcoholic father and the difficulties of being this man's son while growing up.

Why not a 5? I reserve a 5 for the "out of the park" products.
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Jonathan Ford, CTS
5.0 out of 5 stars a vulnerable recollection of those places where life and faith collide
Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2011
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What can I say that the Archbishop of Canterbury or Fr. Richard Rohr have not already said better?

"This is neither a simple memoir of hurt endured, nor a tidy story of reconciliation and resolution. It is - rather like Augustine's Confessions - a testimony to the unfinished business of grace." - The Archbishop of Canterbury

"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." - Fr. Richard Rohr

I am an ordinary guy who, like Ian Cron, has found myself to be "out of true" at times. The author borrows this term from the guy at Gene's bicycle shop in Greenwich, CT. "When the tire rim is bent or one of its spokes is missing or damaged, the wheel no longer spins straight, or true. It goes cockeyed and wobbly, and if it's bad enough, riding on it becomes impossible." The definition served as an epiphany of sorts for young Ian, "That was it. I felt out of true." This book is a fascinating and gritty account of one man's journey toward Truth.

Although the direct circumstances of our upbringing could not be more different, the emotional journey, the experiences, the relationships (both familial and social) resonated very closely with me page after page. As a master communicator and skillful wordsmith, Mr. Cron gives voice to that which is ineffable to so many others. The courage that is demonstrated in sharing his own experiences so transparently emboldens the reader to look deeply into the mirror and dare to see a story waiting to be told.
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Top reviews from other countries

V Van
5.0 out of 5 stars Best memoir I have read in a long time
Reviewed in Canada on November 1, 2017
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Wow! This man has a true gift of writing. He is personable, funny, and vulnerable. He did such a great job, while honouring those in his past as best as you can in a memoir. I rarely give a 5 star, but he writes so well. If you have had a difficult home life, you will enjoy the redemptive journey. It helped me process some issues as well.
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Mark Meynell
5.0 out of 5 stars We are not enslaved to our past: Ian Cron's inspiring memoir
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 24, 2011
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It is a rare gift indeed to be able to evoke the confusions, perceptions and wonder of childhood from the perspectives of adulthood. And it is a gift that Ian Cron clearly possesses. His recent memoir (self-deprecatingly subtitled `of sorts'), Jesus, My Father, The CIA and Me, is a wonderful, life-affirming account of a deeply troubled and agonised family - but it is wonderful because it demonstrates hope in some very dark places indeed. And for that reason alone, it is a book I would thoroughly recommend.

Ian's father was at times a Hollywood big shot, a businessman, an undercover CIA agent. But most significantly for this book, he was an alcoholic. And it was that which blighted Cron's childhood from a very early stage. As one of his chapter heading quotes puts it:
"Alcoholism isn't a spectator sport. Eventually the whole family gets to play. (Joyce Rebeta-Burditt)"

And he asks near the start:
"Home is a place where you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to." That's what John Edward Pearce said. But what if your childhood was a train wreck? (p3)

Ian Cron's upbringing is tragically not an uncommon one. But his ability to write of it in poetic, inspiring and, at times, devastatingly funny, prose, is very uncommon - and despite its painful subject, I could not put it down. Occasionally, too, I was moved to tears, as with this most arresting of descriptions, referring to the anguish of having primarily negative feelings about his father:
"These kinds of experiences are not biodegradable. They float in the reservoir of memory forever." (p94)

CHANGE IS POSSIBLE
Gradually, but surely, through mundane events and friendships, God is at work, rescuing him from his past. The fact that he is not enslaved to that past when he so easily could have been (he found himself accelerating towards alcoholism himself as a young man) is evidence of a personal revolution of truly miraculous proportions. For he is all too aware of what he missed out on, as this poignant passage articulates so well:

"Frederick Buechner once wrote, "The grace of God means something like: here is your life. You might have never been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you."
To see delight in your father's eyes is to see his believe that the party of life would be a bust without you. He may not know it, but from the moment he first glimpses his baby boy's head crowning in the delivery room, a father makes a vow that with stumbling determination, he will try to get a few of these things right. Boys without fathers, or boys with fathers who for whatever reason keep their love undisclosed, begin life without a center of gravity. They float like astronauts in space, hoping to find ballast and a patch of earth where they can plant their feet and make a life. Many of us who live without these gifts that only a father can bestow go through life banging from guardrail to guardrail, trying to determine why our fathers kept their love nameless, as if ashamed.
We know each other when we meet." (p47)

GOD AT WORK
Of course, this does not mean he has found God easy to believe in, let alone trust. He writes very powerfully of his early understanding of Protestants having empty crosses in their churches (in contrast to the Catholic crucifixes of his childhood), suggesting that "the cross was empty because there was no Saviour to put up there. There was no God who loved me or my father or anyone else so much that he died for us." (p142)

But different experiences led him to doubt that despair. The most moving parts of this story come when other people help him. An elderly African American woman, or the youth leaders at Young life, or the wise words of a spiritual director/counsellor. God is at work through so many of these conversations. But the standout for me was his teenage contemporary who had the guts to say that his drinking habit was turning him more and more into his dad.
"I stopped breathing. I stared at Tyler and he at me. A gust of January wind put its shoulder to the side of the barn and tried to push it down. Instead, it found a crack in a beam and settled for making it whistle. There was no other sound - until I bowed my head and cried.
There are acts of love so subtle and delicate that the sweep of their beauty goes unseen. I know of none more miraculous and brave than that of a seventeen-year-old boy coming to his friend's side to take his tear-soaked face to his breast." (p162)

Now, I did not find myself always on the same page theologically as Cron. I do not share anything like his eucharistic focus, for example (a running theme through the book). But that didn't matter. Because this is a memoir which (more than almost any other I've read) manages to convey a sense of progress despite (and sometimes because of) pain. It is about God's redemptive power to erode despair, to free slaves and above all, to change lives. And it is something that all of us, whether in ministry or not, will do well to remember. For none of us is the finished article. We all carry baggage and blind spots. So after describing some of the psychological gymnastics he has to endure as a result of his deep insecurities, he...
"confessed this nutty practice to my spiritual director. He smiled, put his arm around my shoulder, and said, "I never trust a man without a limp." God bless him." (p27)

God bless him indeed. It gives the rest of us, his fellow-limpers, hope.
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Peter Mumford
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Australia on September 25, 2014
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Excellent read, inspiring and challenging
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful, moving, irresistible.
Reviewed in Canada on July 12, 2017
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I was completely enraptured by this book. Ian's sincerity without taking himself too seriously. His creative way with words. His flaws and successes all laid out without an agenda. I was moved with compassion and hope. I absolutely loved this book.
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Mox
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 5, 2016
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Very funny and very readable and honest about the pain.
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