Daniel J. Smitherman wrote a book

That book is called Philosophy and the Evolution of Consciousness: Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances (iUniversity Press: San Jose 2001) I had come back from one more professional development seminar with a renewed sense of what brought me into the priesthood. Important, perhaps essential, was Owen Barfield's little book.
Daniel Smitherman came to my attention via the internet. I was searching out work on Barfield. I bought his book sometime in 2002. My recollection of that reading was positive. He correlates Barfield's writing with more mainstream philosophical thought including Richard Rorty, Sartre, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend. Not a philosopher myself I found his discussion helpful and interesting, and, in the end, I thought to myself, good effort. Then I put the book on the shelf and left it sit until now.
This response had in part to do with my being a parish priest. As such I didn't have any particular way to address the main focus of Smitherman's book which is to place Barfield in and among philosophers in order to indicate (plead) that he can and should be taken seriously among them. Barfield is a worthy philosopher, a serious thinker who argues something not that many are and at the same time he comes off as a human being. But Barfield continues to get short shrift.
I put Smitherman's book on the shelf but about that time I was having fantasies of taking a sabbatical. I saw that Smitherman lived in Montana, a place I've had on my mind since I hitchhiked through it at eighteen and since I read Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It. On that sabbatical I would travel to Montana, visit that big sky and the Anaconda stack, meet Smitherman for many cups of coffee and long discussion. I needed and longed for intellectual refreshment. There is something about meeting someone who seems to get it.
As things unfolded the sabbatical plan was cut short. The parish wasn't ready for me to take off for three months. My attentions went to other writings and work. Nevertheless, Barfield was always a prominent part of that.
What Barfield did was point me to a way of thinking. He helped me learn to think. And in that urgency I found something which wasn't wearisome or a repetition of things I've already thought or things someone else has. There was a well-spring that drew me repeatedly back.
I pursued studies of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Douglas Sloan, Stanley Grenz, John Franke, the Emergent Church Movement (or Emergent Church Conversation as they preferred), Brian Mclaren, James McClendon, Nancey Murphy, George Lindbeck with a few clergy and lay friends. At the same time I was preaching to and pastoring the congregation. Throughout these years has been the fall-out from 9/11 and the relationship of Christians and Islam. In the personal sphere I've been pursuing the roots of my life as an adopted person. I've also been a helping a friend work on a website dealing with Goethean Science.
So one day I get this email from Smitherman asking me to review his book. I took it off the shelf and decided to read it again.