While ministering to his congregation, Joseph Sedlak, then a Catholic priest in Lake County, also learned many other skills.

"My life in the church taught me many managerial skills," says Sedlak who now lives in Raleigh, N. C., but who, after leaving the church where he spent his career in Hammond, East Chicago, Gary, Cedar Lake and Michigan City including doing parish work and chaplaincy at the Indiana State Prison as well as teaching at Bishop Noll and LaLumiere, first moved to Washington, D.C.

There he used the skills he had learned as a priest doing battle with Du Pont in Indiana Harbor and what he calls polluters in Cedar Lake, to work as an aide to a congressman, be a lobbyist and to found such organizations as National Appropriate Technology Assistance Service and Appropriate Technology Assistance Service to Rural Areas.

Sedlak, who grew up in Hammond, has written about his life in the recently published autobiography "Life Here or Hereafter."

"I had an interesting life in the church and then after I left, my life became even more interesting," says Sedlak, who though now officially retired still is active and does work in the area of sustainable agriculture.

"My career in the church began to change when the church began to change in the 1960s. I became a leader in the change and when the church began to change back, I couldn't go back."

Instead, he went forward. And his book about that journey makes fascinating reading.

FYI: "Life Here or Hereafter" by Joseph Sedlak (PublishAmerica 2008); available online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and PublishAmerica.