Knocking on the Academy's Door

This fall the Diocese is holding the first class of a new local initiative. It is the Academy for Formation and Mission and will be used to provide training to potential Deacons and Priests as well as lay people. This blog has already done me an incredible service by serving as a place to work our ideas and statements that needed to be included on my application essay. This essay is below and though it is really a condensation of things previously posted I include because of the sheer amount that it reveals about me in so short a space (I was limited to one page).

Thank you.

Timothy/Kevin

*****


In 2008, I was confirmed at Trinity Cathedral and entered its Cornerstone Benedictine Community. Both of these events are quite important to me as I now consider my primary spiritual identity as a Benedictine in the Anglican Tradition. In many ways I feel that I have been welcomed home to a place where I can share my whole spiritual journey and join in those of others without being fragmented. Just after my college years, I definitively left the Presbyterian Church after a moratorium on discussion regarding the ministry of gays and lesbians was imposed. I knew that I did not have a place there. My spiritual pursuits had already broadened into less orthodox areas. While retaining the core of my Christianity I explored Rosicrucian mysticism, Kabbalah, and Druidry. For about 15 years, I focused considerable energy into these paths. In 2007, I came to a bit of a crisis point with my mystical studies. I was leading a group in Seattle that was collapsing due to shrinking attendance and facilities issues while my own sense of the numinous all but extinguished. I was to attend a worldwide conference of the Order in Berlin, the week after I resigned my position heading the lodge in Seattle. I knew that I was still called to Berlin but that I needed to let the conference go. It was an excellent time for reflection in a brand new environment. I found myself repeatedly drawn to churches. Upon my return, I became very ill which brought me even further to a halt and a point from which to reflect. There too I found Christian influence. A close friend offered a laying on of hands while I was staying in the hospital. That was probably the first prayer in Jesus name in which I participated for some time (though I had actually attended Trinity regularly for about a year in 2003). This prayer was an axis upon which I turned. I realized two things in that place of non-movement: the need for community and a call back to the church. Slow and steady steps led me to the two events I mentioned at the outset.
All of the bits and pieces, threads and links above contribute to what I hope for in studying with the Academy and the ministry to which it can lead, whether it be lay or ordained, in an intentional community or at work in the world. Even if ordained, I know that the church has need for those of mixed vocations and varying income sources. Form is obviously undefined. That is a major reason that I wish to participate in this educational opportunity under the guidance of the diocese. I trust that the where and how to serve will become clearer in the years ahead. In my return to the church I have been particularly inspired by those working as emergents and how that may provide ways to blossom in a rapidly changing environment. I attended the two Emerging Christianity conferences sponsored by Richard Rohr’s Center. This has inspired a few adult education opportunities at Trinity last year and for the coming year. Using these new understandings, I believe that reaching out and networking to a variety of communities will become increasingly important. Given my attachment to the City of Portland (having come to attend Reed College and feeling called to stay), I hope that I might be a link of mutual understanding between the church and the gay community as well as the “spiritual but not religious.” One thing I know from my esoteric forays is that this identification covers a wide variety of very distinctive stories and religious experiences. We will need Christians who understand the paths they have walked. Priests are called to minister to the whole church and wider community, but evangelism often and effectively involves a bit of specialization. I hope that I might put mine to use in service to God and neighbor in thanksgiving for the blessing it has brought me. Many others may be waiting for an invitation to return or to find a new home.

Kevin Day (kevin7day@gmail.com)
Feast of St. Mary Magdalene 2010

Connecting with the Kingdom

My experiences at the Episcopal Village conference and in reading Dwight Friesen's "Thy Kingdom Connected" keep reverberating. I find more and more examples and experiences of network ecclesiology and missiology. Recently I've found myself connecting through all sorts of ways to Christians in other places and bringing those more distant or weak connections into my primary Christ clusters. From the says the hours with folks at Anglican Cathedral and St. Matthew's by the Sea in Second Life (an framework for creating virtual worlds), following the Presbyterian General Assembly on Twitter, Facebook friending new connections met at a face to face conference to get behind the movement to Believe Out Loud, and bringing these conversations back into my weekly benedictine group meeting. Virtual and Physical; Far and Near; New and Deepening connections: a very Mixed Economy indeed.

And all of this in the past two weeks. This seems like a holy fire worth stoking to see how it may burn bright for the kingdom.

Blessings on the summer road!