Wisdom's Cry

Pentecost has always been an hard Holy Day for me.  I grew up baptist in a family of ministers.  Like them, I felt the call to ministry early.

When I was 6, the Sunday school teacher gave the call to salvation, and I knew more clearly than I ever knew anything before or since that I had to accept Christ into my life.  The call to ministry was so strong.  I would grow up and be a Baptist minister like my grandfather and great-grandfather.

Divine Intervention

My plan never included my conversion to Catholicism.  When it happened, I assumed that I would take up Holy Orders and join the priesthood.

The longer I spent in the the Roman Church, the more alienated I felt from the hierarchy and the deeper the traditions, liturgy, and theology appealed to me.  I am not going to go into all of the details regarding why I left the Roman Church, but I will simply say that I have not been able to even contemplate entering a Roman church since the death of John Paul II, of blessed memory.

Now I am in a strange place:

The Wilderness

It is difficult to be a non-Roman but still Catholic on any given Sunday.  The Holidays are harder, and Pentecost is the most difficult.

• My protestant upbringing tells me that I do not need a Priest or the Magisterium to celebrate Mass or the Sacraments.
• My catholic side sees the importance of the ordained and consecrated priesthood.

Pentecost exacerbates the problem.

The Anointing of the Holy Spirit

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.  And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.  And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.

Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.

And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, “Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans?  And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?  Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.”

And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:1-12)?

My protestant education taught me that this was the Baptism of the Holy Spirit for all believers.  My Roman Catholic instruction says that this is the chrism imparted on the Apostles passed through the priesthood.

Peter’s sermon seems to validate the Protestant reading:

But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;

And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:  And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy:  And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come: And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Acts 2:16-21).

It is clear that this passage is about all believers.  Pentecost is for all of us.  The office of the Apostles was to shepherd the flock as guides on the journey.  The old priesthood died when the temple veil ripped at the Crucifixion.  But this leads me into a strange and interesting path:

What does lay lead Catholicism look like?

That is the the heart of the question.  In the last reformation, the protestants left behind most of the Catholicism, and replaced it with new traditions, practices and confessions.

Matthew Fox has called for a new reformation, and I hear that call loudly.  The challenge is for people like me, who hear the call for reformation this time, to keep what is best about the tradition, and build on that historical foundation a new home for those called to this path.

I am not sure what that will look like, but I am committed to seeking it out.  Hopefully, some of you will come along on the journey.

Prayer

Come, Holy Spirit!  As we remember the day you broke into the world to fill the Church with your new life, guide us in the path of righteousness as we follow the path toward reformation.  Illuminate our minds and take up residence in our hearts as we seek to find our way through wilderness like the Israelites of old.  Lead us to the mountain where we might leave behind our golden calves and learn the ways of God.

Amen.

It is hard for me to talk about my faith. Not because I don’t want to, but because so often when I do, my family, and my friends assail me with their infectious doubts. Doubt is a poison to faith. It is a poison to the soul, but it can also be a spur to keep us from ever confusing our faith with certainty.

My mother is primary voice of doubt. She raised me to be a Baptist. When I converted to Catholicism, she lost that common frame of reference we used to share to discuss matters of faith.

I pray the rosary. She cannot understand why.
I pray to the saints. She cannot understand why.
I pray for the souls in purgatory. She cannot understand why.
My house is full of icons, statues, and books by people she never heard of before. She cannot understand why.

The reason I say she “cannot understand” instead of “does not understand” is because we are no longer speaking the same language. Joseph Campbell once compared religion to a computer’s operating system. Programs written for Windows will not run in OS X. That is why she cannot understand. Her operating system is Baptist, mine is Catholic.

These problems are even further exacerbated by my discovery of Creation Spirituality. She follows a fall/redemption path.

I do not think it is my job to convert her, but she feels it is her duty to convert me.

She asks me probing questions. She cannot understand why I went through so much to become Catholic, going so far that I nearly became a priest, then monk. Now, I no longer attend a Roman Catholic Church, but I still consider my self catholic.

That is the source of my doubt. I consider myself a Seraphic Christian. I live (to the best of my ability) according to the Rule of St Francis. I recite it once a month, and draw inspiration from his writings. I live my catholic faith to the best of my ability in the Seraphic Father’s path, guided by what I have learned about Creation Spirituality and through the practice of Deep Ecumenism. I feel the loss of the community. I miss the liturgy, but more than anything, I feel the loss of Holy Orders.

As a child, I wanted to be a preacher. After I converted to Catholicism, I wanted to be a priest or a monk. I pray the hours daily, and to this day, I live a very monastic life.

What do I think Holy Orders would have given me?

Authority? No, it would have given me a communion of believers who walked the same path, practiced the same rituals, and prayed the same prayers. It would have given me people to share this journey with who spoke the same language, and ran on the same operating system.

This sense of community is one of the things I miss more than anything, and it is the very thing that feeds my doubt, and makes me less likely to share my faith with others.

I have dreamed for years that I would find a community of people who believed in and practiced Creation Spirituality. Now I have found the Creation Spirituality Communities, and I hope I have found such a home.

I am going to start sharing my faith, and listening as others share theirs in hopes that I can find a community to belong to. I have read the forums for some time, and I feel like this is the time for me to open up and start participating. We are close to the start of a new year, and it is time to share with others who seek out the path Matthew Fox laid out before us. I look forward to the journey, and thank you for giving me the courage to share my voice again.

I have been reading Brian D. McLaren’s, a Generous Orthodoxy, and it has really been making me think a lot about my faith. At the end of each chapter, he asks numerous questions, and I have been learning a lot about the faith I actually believe.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be sharing with you my answers to his questions. I invite and encourage you to read the book and share your answers too. We discern the voice of the Spirit in the witness of the faithful.

McLaren begins by talking about the Many Jesuses he has known in his life. I thought I should use his labels (and one of mine) and share my own story.

The Conservative Protestant Jesus

I grew up in a Baptist home. My grandfather and great grandfather were both Baptist ministers. I used to go up to talk about the Bible with my great grandmother all the time. I would read the story and we would talk about the text. In many ways, some of my happiest and most disturbing memories of religion come from this period of my life.

The happy memories are all with my family and Brother John. The disturbing ones are memories I don’t like to dwell on for very long. I attended a Baptist school… the teachers prided themselves on scaring the children. They constantly threatened us with corporal punishment, and gruesome stories about the tortures of hell that awaited us if we did not behave exactly as we were told… The other more despicable things they did, I will not go into.

The Pentecostal/Charismatic Jesus

The next phase of my life started after we moved to Maryland and I saw Pat Robertson on the TV for the first time. I was young, and the God he talked about was God of Magic and Might. It was easy to how this cosmic Super Savior would appeal to a young kid. This Jesus is not only superheroic, but he will include you in his circle of super friends. It was like magic, and I wanted that magic so bad. There was only one problem: I am gay.

I have known this since I was about 7 or 8, but I never new what the word for it was until Pat Robertson defined the word and said that all people like that were going to hell… Imagine my horror. The Baptist school I used to go to had burned images of hell into my mind.

This initiated what was for me the worst period of self-loathing, an act I was assured made me pious. I often thought about killing myself. If God hated people like me, maybe God would reward me if I took myself out. It all seemed so natural.

One night, I decided to do it. I went into the kitchen to get a knife to do the deed, but luckily I met:

The Roman Catholic Jesus

Over the silverware drawer, I found a copy of a book my cousin gave me, The Secret of the Rosary, by St Louis de Montfort. The preface of the Black Rose promised that even the darkest sorcerer with one foot in hell could be saved if they said the Rosary faithfully. So instead of killing myself, I prayed the Rosary for the first time in my life.

It was amazing. I began to pray it everyday and read the other works by St Louis de Montfort. Soon I was asked to leave the small nondenominational church that I attended for wearing a crucifix. I started taking classes and walking to church every Sunday for Mass and Eucharistic Adoration.

I would often go up to the Shrine of St Elizabeth Anne Seton to pray.

The Charismatic Catholic Jesus

One summer, I went to live with my sister in Pennsylvania to watch my niece. While I was there I encountered the Charismatic Catholic movement. It was amazing. I will never forget the profound experiences I had that summer.

Imagine the ritualism of Catholicism and the exuberance of Pentecostalism mixed together into a single thing. This summer changed my life.

The Eastern Orthodox Jesus

By the end of the Summer I found the Philokalia and the Way of the Pilgrim. I began saying the Jesus Prayer in addition to the Rosary, and hunting down more books on the Eastern Orthodox faith.

What impressed me the most was with the way one book answered the question: if Adam and Eve had never tasted the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, would Jesus have still been crucified?

The answer was amazing to me. Yes, it is in the crucifixion that Christ was hung on the border of faith and doubt, hope and fear, life and death- at the very transit of every pair of opposites and points the way to God through it all. Wow! The Crucifixion as a love letter to humankind. How refreshing.

The Liberal Protestant Jesus

As was almost inevitable I began my own quest for the historical Jesus. I read everything I could get my hands on. The numerous gospels and works of the early church. I began studying the various expressions of the early church as it struggled to express their encounter with the Risen Christ.

I was amazed that doctrine was regional. Creeds varied so much from place to place as did the books that were considered Scripture. I began to see these expressions as a mosaic. The more disillusioned I became with the church, the more attracted I was to the God of Paul Tillich, Bishop Spong, and Marcus Borg.

The Jesus of the Oppressed

Then I discovered Matthew Fox. His writings about the Cosmic Christ and Creation Spiritually completely transformed me and my faith. In his call for a new reformation, I found my spiritual home. This Jesus speaks with the same voice as the one I meet in the gospels, and helps me to Live God into the world every day.

These are the Seven Jesuses I have known in my life. They are different from the ones McLaren met in his life, but the lessons that I took away are very similar. It left me looking for a relational Divinity who is truly present with me in my life.