The Heart Wants What It Wants

Thinking this morning of days long past, during my religious phase. And boy was I religious.

My call story covers a lifetime--I struggled with my relationship with God from the time I was old enough to recognize a power beyond my parents, was horrified and fascinated with the whole Easter story as an awkward teen finding out about love and loss, found myself musing on the vastness and sanctity of creation while sitting in a cockpit on the dark edges of outer space. I think most people are wired a little that way, and I was more than most.

My religious period really began in earnest when I returned to Panama City from two years as a law professor in Charleston. I was despondent and rudderless, and found myself through a sort of avocational accretion spending more and more time in the Episcopal Church. I taught Sunday School. I was a chalice bearer and lay reader. I started a food bank for underfed kids.

But the program that captured my interest more than any other was Education for Ministry, a nondegree program sponsored by the School of Theology at Sewanee.

EfM was a four year course of study that featured both an educational and a spiritual development component. On the education side of the ledger, it entailed a year of the Hebrew Bible, another of New Testament, another of church history, and a final year of systematic theology. I encountered all of these again at seminary, and EfM in many ways did a better job of teaching them than the classes for future priests. When I took and passed the General Ordination Exam years later, I used my EfM books, rather than my seminary textbooks, as study guides.

The other side of the pedagogical ledger was a process called theological reflection. Most folks in the program had a certain disdain for it, but I grew to appreciate the process over time. The goal was to discern God's presence in all facets of our daily existence, and not just when we were at church, by running our lives as a group through the filters of scripture, culture, personal experience, and our own ever-developing personal value systems. My inner Jesuit was drawn to the structured, systematic approach to applying one's faith in the world. And it actually works if you stick with it.

Joining EfM is a major commitment for one with a busy life--in a group of maybe 7-12 folks, we would meet once a week over the course of an academic year. We gathered for a devotional from the Book of Common Prayer or another Anglican prayer book, maybe from some place like New Zealand. Then we'd have supper together (with plenty of jug wine to lubricate the conversation), go over everyone's readings (we'd typically have folks in all four years of the program, so the Year One crew got to hear a little theology from the Year Four crew, and maybe the Year Three New Testament discussion about Paul's Letter to the Galatians would spur comments from those studying church history), and then embark on 45 minutes to an hour's worth of theological reflection. This last part of the evening was often deeply personal as we talked about our lives, our disappointments, our struggle to align our will with what God or fate laid before us. I've never grown closer to a group of people than during those evenings.

So one unsurprising, recurring story over the forty years or so that EfM has been in existence involves two participants falling in love. Indeed, the founders of the program, one of whom was ordained, ended up getting divorced, marrying each other, and spending the rest of their lives together. All that love and trust and emotional interconnectedness has to spill out somewhere.

By 2013 I was a mentor in the program, basically a group leader, helping my close friend Father Tom run a busy EfM group at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church. One Sunday morning in June I announced during the service that we were enrolling new members for the fall, and invited folks to come see me afterwards if anyone was interested.

As the sanctuary was clearing after the recessional, a tall woman with enormous, tired eyes and the posture of one used to being in charge strode up to me.

"I want to join EfM."

"I don't think I know you. How long have you been coming to church here?"

"My name is Peggy Bowen. Not long. Where do I sign up for EfM?"

"Well now, let's talk about this. EfM isn't Bible study. It's pretty involved. You'll be tied up for three hours or so, once a week, for four years."

"Perfect."

"It's also expensive--$350.00 for the year."

"I'll write you a check right here."

And she did. Turns out Peg had her reasons for not wanting to hang around her condo, and soon she was signed up for pretty much everything the parish had to offer. She was also fabulously gifted in EfM, bringing a vision and a skillset that were beyond me. I'm more religious than spiritual, a little sarcastic at times, and back then didn't have much of an antenna for feelings, or at least those of other people.

I know what you're thinking--how was this surprising in an old fighter pilot?

Peg was quite the opposite, the Franciscan to my Jesuit. She was artistic, creative, and a natural empath without coming off as mawkish. I saw a natural complement to my approach to the program, and a little more than two years after our initial encounter at church, I asked her to co-mentor the program with me. She protested her lack of qualifications, but finally relented and said she'd do it.

Mentor training involves traveling to Sewanee on a Friday for what amounts to a weekend retreat in the EfM offices adjoining the seminary. We drove up together for that first session, and the seven hours in the car were like an extended theological reflection and shared spiritual autobiography all rolled into one. We talked about everything.

Once we got there, I drove her out to the ridgeline at the edge of campus to see Sewanee's famous cross.

And the daffodils were blooming. Being a horticultural cretin, I couldn't have told you what they were back then, but Peg-, having grown up on a farm just a couple hours north, identified them for me.

Once Peg was a mentor in her own right, she would travel up to Sewanee without me for the recertification training that was required from time-to-time. Here she is in early 2017 or thereabouts, on one of her solo trips, leading a group of mentors through a theological reflection.

Beautiful, isn't she?

During our last trip up there together, we led our EfM group from Panama City on a pilgrimage of sorts, seeing the sights at Sewanee, eating too much, and attending services in the seminary's Chapel of the Apostles and at All Saints Chapel, a spectacular piece of gothic architecture that is the physical and spiritual hub of the campus.

That's us on that trip, standing next to the big white cross up on the ridge, in a photo snapped by our dear friend Dr. Dan.

I reckon it doesn't take an empath to see in those faces what was happening in our hearts. At some point I fell in love with this woman, and realized I could not bear the thought of spending a day without her. Living into that new life together brought pain the likes of which I've never felt, and don't want ever to feel again. But those days were all worth it for mornings like this one, when I roll over in the predawn glow and see outlined the profile on the next pillow of someone I could never have imagined in my life when I first showed up for an EfM session over a decade ago, and now can't imagine my life without. We wouldn't be here if God in all his habitual messiness hadn't brought us together all those years ago, first as the best of friends, and then as an inseparable couple.

And God and I agreed, it was very good. Very good indeed.