The extraordinary life path of Episcopal priest Ernest W. Cockrell has influenced his insightful storytelling. Having grown up in South Eastern Oklahoma, he attended Harvard Divinity School where he was taught by renowned biblical archaeologists. Religion and reality were crucially linked by that discovery. He served for 25 years as the pastor of St. Gabriel's Episcopal Church in Marion, Massachusetts, following his ordination at Church of the Redeemer in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. He was appointed summer vicar of a church in Hertfordshire, England, in 1969. He was appointed rector of Saratoga, California's St. Andrew's Episcopal church and school in 1992.