Essay #2

I just got home from three days in one of our favorite spots: the Mazama Ranch House in Eastern Washington, where we can cross-country ski (or bike, depending on the season) right from our front porch, or we can sit and quietly contemplate the mountain scenery.  I got an e-mail from the Secretary for Vocations just before I left and it looks like it will be roughly two more weeks before I get an answer from the bishop.  I'm feeling a bit impatient! 
I'm posting another of my recent essays, and this one requires a bit of intro:  the constraints for this one limited me to two double-spaced pages with a minimum 11 pt. font size.  I want you to look at the question and try to imagine how much I had to leave out to fit that space!  I think at one point in the process, this was a six page document...

Describe the development of your spiritual life.  Identify events, experiences, and human associations that have influenced your journey and reflect upon those influences.  Describe the rule you follow in you devotional life.  Give a brief statement of faith and answer Jesus' question, "Who do you say that I am?"
    In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life..."  Some people believe that he most likely never said this, which, in my mind, only intensifies the veracity of the statement.  I find, in Jesus, the best historic example of a life well-lived and a faith carried to a real and whole end.  Jesus gave us a pattern for what the reconciling work of God might look like when given elbows and hair, and what's more, in giving himself as a person to be crushed under the wheels of a vast, ruling empire, he jump-started a new chapter in the reconciliation and restoration of our world.  Paul put it best when he called Jesus "the author and perfector of our faith."  I believe that Christianity is based upon the example of Jesus Christ: a life of sacrificial, reconciling love.  We are called as a people to live out that love in all its various iterations of family, community, vocation, and political life through giving, service, teaching, praying, working and celebrating in our entire lives.  I believe that God is persistently and joyfully working to bring about the redemption of all of Creation, and always willing to give us a role in that work when we make ourselves available.
    I have not always held such views.  I was born into spiritual heritage where Jesus was first and foremost  "my personal Lord and Savior:" a bloody, anguished, atoning sacrifice to hide the stain of my personal sin and failure from an angry and demanding God.  I took to church early on, was baptized at the age of nine, and participated in most every offering the church proferred in some capacity or another.  During these years, my mother acutely remembers me telling her that I would become an ordained minister.  My entire adolescence was more or less spent in a religious fervor trying to convince everyone I met of the Bible's inerrant truths, and waiting for the Rapture to happen so that everyone would know I was right...  (I find myself still waiting on both counts.)
    Since those early days, my spirituality has changed dramatically.  Finding God in community, whether on a job site, family relationship, or group setting has been the primary catalyst for my spiritual transformation.  I started questioning my original assumptions almost as soon as I began to attend college.  In watching people live and work around me, I learned quickly that religion and worldview are not a one-size-fits-all proposition, and that what works well for one can be downright torture for another.  By seeking out many conversations with a wide variety of people during the intervening years, as well as reading volumes about spirituality, my ideas about God have become much more mystical and less definite, and I have learned that the experience of God can differ widely from one person to another.
    This daily education of working in the world, side by side with all sorts of people in many different settings is an on-going transformative force in my spiritual formation.  I worked for a year with at-risk boys in a residential school in Northern New Hampshire.  Seeing these young men in such broken and violent states showed me  that, contrary to the beliefs of my upbringing, life is not simple.  I saw that much of my theology about sin and judgement could only do harm in these complex stories of abuse and neglect.  Add to this the hearbreak of the faceless and commercialized system created to treat them, and my eyes were truly opened to how our society fails people on the margins.  In Washington, I became a carpenter within a small company that focuses on quality and customer relations above all else.  A side benefit to building houses in the Northwest has been the practiced perserverance that comes with getting up day after day in the rain to do the inglorious but necessary work that will feed my family.  My coworkers in our small company have done much to hone and improve my work ethic and responsibility on the job.
    Getting married and becoming a parent have had the most dramatic effect on my whole life of any circumstances I've faced.  In sharing every part of my life with another, I became quickly disabused of any theoretical notions about how love should or should not work.  I have learned much about the depth and effects of sin in my life, as well as how easy it can be to delude myself about my shortcomings.  These relationships have taught me how to help and to accept help, as well as the realistic limits of what I have to offer another person.  Above all, marriage and fatherhood have created in me a deep celebration of the differences of others and the value of diversity in viewpoints.
    The elders in my family and church community have been an essential and cherished facet of my spiritual development.  Many churches I've been to over the years have separated people by demographic, but this is not so at St. Paul's.  In my interactions with many of our older parishoners, I have been awed by the way some have learned to gracefully accept - and thrive within - the limitations forced upon them by age.  I see people who know deep in their bones that all of the small moments of life are worth celebrating.  My elders have been the most encouraging set throughout my discernment process.
    My devotional life is both private and communal.  I make a deliberate practice of being intentional, whether in my daily work of carpentry and chores or my relationship with my wife and children.  I study church history, current church issues, and religion and culture.  I start each morning early with silence and solitude to prepare myself for what the day might bring.  I regularly practice the daily office and read the lectionary.  Aside from the time I volunteer in my church community on Sunday mornings or Wednesday evenings, I attend the early morning eucharist mid-week, where I sit quietly with those who have faithfully attended the same hour, often for decades.  My rule of life is to do those things which encourage, embolden, and enable me to go forth and do the work God has called me to do through the example of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.