Art is an ordinary person, both physically and mentally, whose life was influenced rather dramatically by an extraordinary event. On top of his less than stellar emergence into adulthood, he was brought up to consider Christianity to belong to the foolish and naïve, causing the spiritual facet of his nature to be nonexistent. His education fared as poorly as his spirituality, nudging him away from college into the Marine Corps. The discipline he acquired there enabled him to enter college with a better attitude. He ended up graduating from Cal Berkeley with a degree in Electrical Engineering.
Along the way Art married and pursued interests appropriate to that state. As an avocation he took flying lessons, acquiring in the process commercial, instrument, multi-engine and flight instructor ratings. Spiritual matters remained outside that domain of interest for several years thereafter, all the way to the odd event that captured his attention in my mid-thirties.
The event indirectly but rather abruptly changed Art’s focus and outlook to that of a committed Christian, giving him some dramatic insights and opportunities. The nature of the event itself, as he described in his book Visitation, was the unexpected appearance of a Unidentified Flying Object, but its aftermath was by far the most important element of it. He vaguely remembers a discussion he had with the craft’s occupant, who he has since come to understand had an angelic nature. The immediate experience was a very positive one, contrary to most accounts of such events. What followed amazed him and blew away his family. He was driven to read the entire Bible, cover-to-cover. What he read astonished him further, as he was able to obtain an intimate grasp of this Word of God. What followed that experience was a series of wonderful adventures, emotionally, physically and intellectually.
Art’s new understanding of God brought him into a nursing home for the severely handicapped, where he and his wife conducted a Bible study. That experience led him to bond with an individual afflicted with cerebral palsy. Despite the severity of his affliction, this individual had a strong desire for adventure, which led Art to take him tandem on his hang glider. This activity involved some threatening moments, one of which was the individual’s unfortunate collection, upon landing, of a cow pie that challenged his ability to breathe. Art eventually fictionalized his adventures in the air in his Christian novel Buddy, which led to the follow-on series of novels Cathy, Jacob, Home, Sweet Heaven and Moira.
At a different level, the insights given to Art through his angelic encounter led to three Christian nonfiction books, Family of God, Marching to a Worthy Drummer and Uncle Art’s Bible Favorites. All of his books are listed in his website angelicufo.com.
Of particular interest to Art was the revelation, in opposition to general Church understanding but confirmed by Scripture, that the Holy Spirit is actually gendered, and in particular is feminine in nature. In his nonfiction books, Art carefully explains his viewpoint with respect to the gendered nature of God, rebutting through Scripture the numerous opposing remarks challenging that view and offering a far deeper and more loving understanding of the nature of God.
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