Some of my writing of late...

This is one of the many essays I've had to write as part of my discernment process.  It is one of my favorites thus far, so I'd love to hear any comments or reflections you may have!

Reflect on transformations in your life and where you see God in the midst of them.

At age nineteen, in the middle of earning a college degree I wasn't particularly sure I wanted, and headed fast down the track to techno-geekdom, I unplugged my computer one New Year's day and walked into the woods to find God.  Much to my chagrin, God was not in the gear shops and how-to manuals I spent so much time poking my nose into, but in the silent suffering of marching uphill in the cold night air after a long day of classes, loaded down with impractical and heavy equipment.  I did not find peace and solace in the magazine articles pushing far-away exotic adventure destinations, but in the lonely familiarity of forests embarassingly close to home.  I had begun to cast off the shackles of my awkward childhood and move toward the freedom of finding my own way in the world.

      It was not long before I devoted myself to the seeking.  I volunteered as a summer ranger in the mountains of Virginia.  I spent countless hours belly-crawling in the toffee mud of Alabama caves.  I clambered up sheer rock faces and descended by rope down steep cliffs and narrow chasms.  I dragged my canoe over enough rocks to wear it thin in places.  In all this, I began to fall in love with God and be transformed through the vast wildness of the Creation.

      I began to meet people I respected, whose amorphous and wide-ranging views about life, spirituality, and God could not be contained in my narrow, rigid inherited worldview.  This dissonance worked like a slow steady drip on solid rock, freezing and thawing again and again in the cracks until I popped loose once and for all from the mental monolith of evangelical fundamentalism.  I had found the wilderness in more ways than one.  God was calling me out from my homeland.

      Luckily, as I began to fall from the hands of my angry god, I met my soul-friend along the way.  Though I was a decided loner, I could no longer envision the journey ahead without her.  We were married a scant six months after our first shared backpacking trip, three of which I spent tramping through vast Western wilderness on a National Outdoor Leadership School semester.  She and I quickly set to work hacking away at the calcified remains of a religious system that could no longer contain the God we had begun to meet together.

      We spent the next years trying out geography and communities around the country, looking for a place that honored our combination of deep awe and profound questioning.  We ate at myriad potlucks with folks from all walks of life.  We worked in National Park visitor centers, restaurants, and guest houses.  I spent a season introducing would-be canyoneers to the jagged-twisted beauty of Southern Utah by way of rope and rappel rack.  We despaired at the brittle, threadbare forms of community in a town populated by transients.  We still call this our "desert experience."

      When that lead petered out, we headed north to work with at-risk boys in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  We devoted ourselves to setting up chairs and running the sound system at a tiny church plant.  We learned to combat the dispiriting weight of a toxic work environment and no support network by a rigid discipline of study and prayer, and a rabid drive to be out in nature at every possible moment.  We knew quickly that this year's sojourn did not represent our future, but these trials highlighted our dependence on God, church community, and devotional structure.

      We came West again, this time to Washington, to learn a trade and begin a family.  Our world shifted dramatically, and now the old ways of our evangelical tradition worked even less well than before.  We collapsed into a pew in our first Episcopal church and spent a year simply watching.  We discovered liturgy.  We discovered Eucharist.  We discovered an ancient, living tradition with room for our quirky combination of ascetic practices and liberal application of faith.  We discovered a community of souls that came together not by demographic or doctrinal assent, but by shared history and open hospitality.  We discovered a home where we could wonder at the timeless, beautiful mystery of God.

      Soon that home broke apart all around us.  Our church split into two factions, arguing in circles over issues that had almost no bearing on the true dysfunction of the community.  It was a confusing and lonely time to be a new Episcopalian.  We argued, we prayed, we examined our own selves and our beliefs.  We came back to what community there still was and began the slow, arduous process of grieving a loss and picking up the pieces and moving forward.  In the months of coffee-hour and potluck conversations that followed, in listening to and watching the rebirth of a new and vibrant community, an old calling from my childhood came knocking at my door once more.  I was made for this...