On Retreat

I attended church all my growing up life. Wake Forest Baptist Church was the name of the church that me and my two brothers and I attended with my parents. The seed planted in that place came to full bloom, though, in 1997. It took 24 years for the ripe fruit of Christ to finally birth itself into my spirit. I was born again in 1997, in the summer of that year, at a mountain in Tennessee. I was converted in an instant, baptised in 1999, and, strangely enough, entered into the pursuit of full time ministry the next year at Duke Divinity School. Before Duke I went on a pilgrimage to Spain. It changed me. The seeds planted at church, early in life, and the seed of new birth in Christ, planted in 1997, was watered from a deep well on teh side roads of the hillsides of Spain! The richly Christian traditions tore holes in my soul, and I cannot get them out. I loved the place. I want to go back! I shared my story of pilgrimage with my church at Wake Forest Baptist church. That was the first moment that I felt my love for giving God praise from a pulpit! In 2000 I entered Divinity school at Duke. It was kinda by accident. I applied to Princeton, but I was not able to get in. My brother was there. He was in his 2nd year. But even when I went for a visit I did not like the place. I felt a intellectual coldness there that made me feel uneasy. At Duke, when I visited, I felt more warmth. The reason that I went to Duke was because of Greg Jones and Willie Jennings. The night that I met them at Reynolda House Museum of Art, I had never known Duke to have a school of divinity.

Dr. Jennings lectured on jazz as a rubric for living the Christian life. I liked his lecture because it reminded me of two things. Dr. Jennings was using his own passions to teach him about living as a Christian. And he was waxing poetic about how the Christian life is infused with the elements of the natural world. In his lecture, he described Jazz. He described how Jazz was, at first sight, complex and free flowing, but once understood, based upon years and years of training. One cannot become a Jazz player overnight, just as one cannot become a Christian overnight. This peaked my curiosity,and it made me sense that I had something to learn from this man. In fact, Willie was probably my favorite teacher at Duke. His class on a Theology of Race was profoundly challanging, and it was a wonderful class to take while I was acting as a chaplain to the homeless shelther in Raleigh, NC. I also liked that Willie was a black man, and I liked that he wore a bow tie, and I liked that he was a Baptist. I grew up baptist, and I was most comfortable within that context.

Once at Duke I met Dr. Michael Battle. Dr. Battle was an Episcopalian. Dr. Battle was trained by Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and, because of that, he has many interesting stories to tell, and he was a very wise and grounded man. Unlike most of the professors, Dr. Battle was not just a professor. He was a full time pastor at a church in Raleigh. Dr. Battle was a great blend of preacher/professor. I loved him and took three classes from him. His interest in spirituality dovetailed with my own pilgrimage in spirituality. I was a seeker.

I spent many years trying on different religions. I tried on Buddhism. I tried on Self Realization. I tried on paganism throughout high school and found it unhelpful. By paganism, I mean, simply allowing my own personal experiences and personal drives dictate the choices and decisions I made.

At Duke's end, I was asked by Father Battle to come to England and study at Canterbury Cathedral for the summer, becoming more familiar with the Anglican tradition. When I turned that down, he then asked me to become the director of a small kids camp in Western North Carolina, Camp Kanuga ( Camp Bob). I turned that down as well, and headed West with my beautiful wife to explore Portland, Oregon and its environs. I loved Portland, and I even hope to move back in that direction.

After a year of Chaplaincy at Legacy Emanuel Hospital, I felt called to enter into parish ministry. Because of my fascination with the Episcopal tradition, and because of my fascination with the liturgy ( especially the Lord's Supper), I headed back East and became the youth Director of St. Michael's Episcopal Youth Community ( EYC). After three years I was literally burned out. I went to the bishop and asked him if I could go to the Seminary of my choosing, ( such as Duke), to acquire my yera of Anglican studies certificate, in order to become a postulant to the priesthood. When he said no, it was the final nail in the coffin. He suggested that I head to New York for school, and, because I had a wife, and a daughter, I decided that this was too much.

At this point, we left the Episcopal Church and headed to Church of the Apostles. The church was the location of many of our friends, and it was a place that we truly enjoyed and truly felt kinship in our walk with Christ. Underneath all of these experiences, though, I was being drawn back to my "spiritual home." In Portland, Oregon, I met once a month with a Franciscan who focused on the formation of Friars for ordination into the priesthood. Being a Franciscan was the first great thing about him. Robert was a loving soul and was completely renovated by the heart of Christ. Every time I would show up to his home, he would give me a large bear hug. It felt so comfortable, and so loving. In its own way, it was a "Welcome Home" invitation at every turn. Once in his house, there was no rush, no hurry, and no bustle. Instead, there was the stillness of meditation, and the adoration of every day living in a place. Robert gave me two hours of his time. This, within itself, was a blessing. And he said something that will always stay with me, "Be what you recieve." What does that mean?

Be what you recieve?