Spirituality

I worked in AIDS ministry during the 1980s and experienced firsthand the way institutional forms of religion cause suffering.  I have been fortunate also to know the beauty and goodness of religion.  I try to hold the tension of these two poles, trusting something deep and ancient (and maybe new) will emerge from that tension.

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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 me that Saturday morning -- yet whose appropriation 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, but at this point 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, I think the Jesuit William Barry described it best when he said it is the art of assisting Creature to encounter Creator.