Spirituality

Because I worked in AIDS ministry during the 1980s, I've experienced firsthand the darkness institutional forms of religion can carry.  I have been fortunate also to know the beauty and goodness of religion.  I try to hold that tension, trusting something deep and ancient (and maybe new) might emerge.

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My adult spiritual journey began decisively in 1979, when I was 28 and the voice of a newly elected pope prompted a textbook religious conversion.  That moment upended the good life I had been living, leading me into (and later out of) Roman Catholicism, which with all its flaws I still love; then into the Episcopal Church, where I probably belonged all along and in which I was ordained a priest in 1994.  
 
It is an abiding paradox that I owe so much to John Paul II, whose voice entered my heart and changed my life one Saturday morning -- yet whose understanding of our shared Christian tradition is quite different from mine.  
 
I’ve been doing the work of spiritual companioning since the late 1990s, when two priest colleagues and a bishop began referring people to me (the ministry picked me; I did not choose it).  I work with people lay and ordained, from many backgrounds -- Episcopal and Roman Catholic to be sure, but also Buddhist, shamanic, Mormon, mainstream Protestant, Jewish, evangelical, spiritual-but-not-religious….

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Ignatian, Benedictine, liturgical, and shamanic spiritualities have been especially important to me, although today my principal form of prayer and contemplation is centered in my dream life and practices related to it.. 

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I share this brief history to help you assess whether I might be a potential spiritual companion.  For those unfamiliar with this term, the Jesuit William Barry described it best as the art of assisting Creature to encounter Creator.