Nineteen years: A Life of Faith

My call to ordination came after much soul searching on my part. I had received permission from my then Bishop (Frank Griswold) and my parish priest to start seminary before I went through the formal discernment process with the parish and the diocese. My sense of call was to hospital chaplaincy and in those days one did not need to be ordained to be a hospital chaplain, one only needed approval for chaplaincy by the leaders of one’s denomination, which I had. Of course the tide was changing even in late 1994, with all signs pointing toward ordination as the preferred credential for chaplains. 

 In the years leading up to seminary I worked as a massage therapist with a volunteer ministry giving massages to parents of sick children on the Pediatric unit, PICU, and NICU. I also had a small private practice as a massage therapist. But, it was the volunteer work that really challenged me to think about hospital chaplaincy. I researched to find the kind of education I needed and stumbled upon a dual degree for an M.Div-MSW offered between Loyola University’s Graduate School of Social Work and local seminaries in the Chicagoland area. It instantly struck me as the perfect approach to my sense of wanting to work with stressed out parents in the hospital - I’d have the spiritual and psychological and the physical healing approaches all in one. 

(Practicing massage with my daughter as the recipient of the treatment)

Sadly the seminary I wanted to attend, Seabury-Western, did not participate in the dual degree program, so my thought was to attend a different seminary and just take classes at Seabury for the Anglican portion. Then I attended a “Discerning Your Vocation” weekend at Seabury in the spring of 1995 and found myself in conversation with Tim Sedgewick about my interest in a dual degree. We were upstairs in Seabury Hall, at the campus in Evanston, and I recall Tim looking at me as I explained my hope, then he looked across the room and called out to Paula Barker, then dean of students. “Hey Paula,” he said, “We could arrange a dual degree M.Div-MSW with Loyola, couldn’t we?” And Paula said, “Sure, I don’t see why not.” And that was that. I applied to Seabury and to Loyola, was accepted in both schools and began my formal education. 

It was a challenge for me to listen deeply to my real sense of call while being in seminary with people who had already discerned their call. I did not want to just follow suit and be like all the rest. I wanted to have a real sense of what God was calling forth in me. I remember taking long walks outside to wonder and listen and be attentive. It took awhile, but eventually I came to accept the idea that God was calling me to ordination. A parish discernment committee was started which affirmed my call. A diocesan discernment weekend also affirmed the call, although by the time I was on that weekend I was almost finished with seminary, but I did have one more year at Loyola for the MSW and I was living on campus at Seabury - plenty fo time for the COM (Commission on Ordained Ministry) to give me direction. 

I was still working on my dual degree but I decided to graduate with the M.Div portion of the degree in June, 1998. I took GOE’s my last year, January 1999, and after finishing some additional work for the COM, was granted permission for ordination in late Nov. 1999. Bishop Persell and my sponsoring priest, Tom Joyce, agreed to a December 28,1999 ordination. 

I was ordained at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Byron Ave. in Chicago, my sponsoring parish. It was a cold snowy night. The church was filled with poinsettias and the fellowship hall was decorated with flowers and strands of Christmas tree lights. I remember Tom preaching, telling the history of St. John’s and me and how I was the first person ordained in that church in its one hundred plus year history. (Others have followed). 

St. John's Chicago

Bishop Persell, me, Ton Joyce (rector, St. John's, now retired)

Fellowship Hall at St. John's following the ordination

I had the sense that all would be well. That I would find a job and have a wonderful vocation. That I’d be a kind and loving priest and I’d journey with people across the landmarks of life, from birth to graduations, to marriages, more births, and death. That life would be marked by the rituals of faith and community. In many ways this has been the case.

However no one knew, on that cold snowy night in December, that our world, the world of people in this country, would be drastically changed and challenged by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But we have been. And in the years I’ve been a parish priest I have encountered heightened anxiety and increased conflict as society slipped further and further into regression (Societal Regression is one aspect of Bowen's Family Systems Theory). I have worked harder than I ever imagined, challenging myself to be the healthiest priest I could be, to learn from my mistakes, and to grow wiser and more mature with each new learning opportunity. 

Back in 1999, before I was ordained there was a priest in the diocese who was challenging my call, who took issue with the MSW part of my education believing that it was unnecessary and possibly even harmful to my vocation as a parish priest. He was challenging the change in my sense of call from hospital chaplaincy to parish ministry. I remember sitting in a meeting with him as looked at me, with a deep sense of despair, and challenged my hope that parish ministry would be about joy as I journeyed with people through their lives. He said, not without a degree of bitterness, “and what kind of joy will you feel when you are the one shoveling sidewalks and dealing with plumbing and leaky roofs?” I heard him loud and clear, parish ministry was about a whole lot more than “lovely little family moments.” It was about hard hard work that came unexpectedly. I remember leaving that meeting and saying to my mentor, “I hope that no matter how hard ministry is I never lose my sense of joy for it.” 

Over the years I have had moments where there was no joy, where the life had been drained from me for one reason or another. However, I think those moments are the rare ones, the ones that call me to dig deeper and work more intentionally at remembering what I am doing and why. This call is about God’s work in the world. True, I did not need to be ordained to do God’s work in the world. I might have saved myself a lot of money in student loan debt if I had discerned another sense of call. But this is the call I heard and followed, and it is what I believe God has called me to do. To do my best to help people see God in their lives and in the world around them, to mentor young clergy and help them as others helped me. To be as real and human and authentic as I can be. 

Graduation for Loyola's Graduate School of Social Work, June 1999

And while I ended up serving as a parish priest and didn’t really “need” the MSW, it has served me well over the years. My MSW degree focused on Family Systems for Congregations and I have spent many hours in continuing ed developing a deeper understanding of family systems and how the principles of that theory can help clergy and congregations, or at least how they have helped me. In this last year I have grown more, in every way, thanks to Faithwalking, a group out of Houston, Texas, who have honed principles of Bowen’s Family Systems with leadership concepts from people like Ron Heifitz, and healthy sense of self from people like Brene Brown, and combined these into courses on leadership and faith. Courses that guide one to living a fully alive life because one is clear about one’s self and one’s relationship with God. 

Faithwalking begins by helping one understand one’s “First Formation” - the influences for better or worse that formed one in one’s childhood. Our first formation might have been good and healthy or it might have been hurtful or even abusive, or perhaps some of all three. But from our first formation we make meaning of our lives, meaning which unconsciously influences how we react to life’s circumstances as adults. For better, or for worse, these unconscious influences create in us an “auto-pilot” that reacts to certain situations as we felt as children - angry, fearful, and or defensive are usual auto pilot reactions. However these reactions are rarely successful ways to approach life as adults and can even make life more difficult. Learning to recognize our first formations, the meanings we made and how they trigger automatic reactions in us can lead to healthier, more whole lives. Faithwalking believes that this is what God desires for us and what Jesus teaches us with his life. 

In all my life, I believe I have been Faith-walking, walking my faith, growing up into the stature of Christ, striving to become the kind of wise, mature, loving, person of faith that God desires for each of us. In many ways this all began on that night, 19 years ago, when I was ordained a transitional deacon. They say that ordination causes an ontological change in one, that one is never ever the same. I think there’s real truth to that, although I had no idea then just how powerful the change would be. 

(A recent photo from Advent 4, with two of the clergy I'm mentoring)