What is Success?



Recently, a friend and former protege - someone whom I'd met as a collegian of great promise and had watched mature into an exemplary adult - passed on a few months before his 43rd birthday.  I was stunned by the news.  It had never occurred to me that someone so exceptional would be gone so/too soon.  And, yet, he was....

 

His passing led me to do quite a bit of reflection, both on his life and on my own.  With respect to his life, I was moved to compose a tribute to him, which I share below.  With respect to my life, I share the following:

 

Rationally, we all know that we will die some time and that none of us knows when.  But virtually all of us live as if that transition time is far in the future.  The vast majority of us act everyday as if tomorrow is promised to us.  And yet (we know that) it isn't.

 

This is mostly because acknowledging our mortality is difficult and scary.  What comes beyond our physical death?  Even those of us with great faith in an afterlife have to acknowledge that we really don't know.  Further, for the most part, we prefer the life that we do have - however we may quibble with our circumstances in any given moment - to one hereafter that we can't define for sure.  Very few (if any) of us are looking to die to find out what's on 'the other side', so to speak.  (Or, if we are eager to leave this life - absent any debilitating and/or eventually fatal illness - we are actually considered psychologically unwell.)

 

In short, even though we know intellectually that we must die at some time (and that that some time may be sooner than we would want), we don't process this emotionally so that it doesn't show up in our behavior.  We take life for granted and do not live fully in the here and now, often postponing meaningful experiences until an assumed better time in our future.  We do not, as the great 20th century theologian and sage Abraham Joshua Heschel suggested, "get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted" and thus "live life in radical amazement."  Mostly, we are consumed by temporal and ephemeral concerns as we tell ourselves that the future will be better for us and those we love.  And yet, we all 'know' (intellectually, that is) that we can't assume the future....

 

What my friend's passing did was to remind me that I must fight zealously against the human nature that would lead me to look to a better future and thereby live less fully today.  What his life - far too short in duration for any of us who knew and loved him - taught me is to be mindful of and motivated by my/our mortality always.  It sounds a bit morbid, perhaps, but, in reality, if death has any lesson to teach us in life, it's that we must live life to the fullest now.  In the words of the incomparable Bishop John Shelby Spong, we must “live fully, love wastefully and be all that (we) can be.”

 

So, today, I will make a better effort to live fully and in the moment, including by composing this blog post, an idea that's been rattling around in my soul for a couple of days now.  It's the best way that I can pay tribute to my friend and to live the lesson that his passing and those of the other saints in my life whom I've had the good fortune to know have taught me: to live (more) fully now and, in so doing, to encourage others to do so.  As Marianne Williamson reminded us, "as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same."

 

In this spirit, I hope that you come to know my dear friend Ramsey Rycraw and find in this tribute some inspiration to live more fully in this moment and all others....

 

A Tribute to Ramsey Rycraw

 

(Saturday, January 25^th, 2013)

 

In 1904, in response to a contest sponsored by Brown Book Magazine to answer the question “What is Success?”, Elisabeth-Anne “Bessie” Stanley of Lincoln, Kansas, wrote:

 

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;

Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children,

Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;

Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;

Who has left the world better than he found it,

Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;

Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;

Whose life was an inspiration;

Whose memory a benediction.

 

When I heard the heartbreaking news of my fellow SEO alumnus and former protégé Ramsey Rycraw’s passing, I thought of this poem … and realized that it was a great way to begin to deal with the grief of losing a fine young man gone too soon.  So I have to begin by acknowledging reality: if you knew him, you’re hurting, because life with Ramsey seems far better than the prospect thereof without him.  And yet, to paraphrase some wise person (who was not actually Dr. Seuss) who observed long ago that we should not cry because his earthly life is over, but smile because it happened.

 

And it’s in this spirit of gratitude for the gift of Ramsey Rycraw and of beginning a new chapter in our individual and collective journeys that I share some thoughts and memories today.  Simply put, Ramsey was one of my SEO “golden children,” a star in every sense of the word.  SEO, or Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, is a small non-profit that has been doing good work and changing young people’s lives for more than a half-century now.  We had the good fortune to select a young man of promise to join our career internship program in 1992 and he lived up to and beyond that promise in our eyes then and has ever since.

 

Why?  Because he was so unique.  I have had the privilege of working with thousands of young people in my more than three decades with SEO, and I have to admit that because of my middle age and their number (now approaching five figures), I can’t remember them all.  Most faces I can recognize, but, truth be told, the names are long forgotten (even if they graduated from high school or interned with one of our partner organizations just last year).  But Ramsey Rycraw I remember vividly these two decades on.

 

I remember the intern Ramsey: a polite, well-manned and intelligent young man who had an engagingly sunny disposition, mad skills and a positive attitude that drew others to him and led them to follow his example.  In short, Ramsey was a dream intern: he was open to the wisdom that we shared, played the game as we asked, did outstanding work and represented the organization and himself well and helped others along the way.  As anyone who works with young people (especially large groups of them) knows, you pray for young leaders by example like this, for someone to point to and guide the less leadership-receptive to emulate.  Everyone who met Ramsey then was impressed by his humility, his capability and that broad smile that could and did light up a room.  It was not uncommon to have a couple of hundred college interns per year in our programs at that time, and I used to wish that every one of them could be like Ramsey Rycraw.  With all due respect to Number 23, I didn’t want them to be like Mike, I wanted them to be like Ramsey.

 

And even after his intern summer, Ramsey continued to lead by example and give back to his communities, including to his new SEO family.  Many of his peers remember him fondly from his work trying to organize our alumni back in the day or from his time mentoring high school students.  And, of course, he led by example in his education (by obtaining admission to and graduating with honors from the outstanding Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania), in his career in various financial services-related (et. al.) pursuits and in his family and community.  In fact, as an adult, Ramsey was the very embodiment of SEO’s mission statement at the time:

 

To develop young people of color to become leaders by example in their families, communities and careers

 

Whenever we needed to convince a prospective partner to join us in our work of access and uplift, we would point to our stars, which meant that we often pointed to Ramsey.  It’s why, in preparation for an historic fundraising campaign over a decade ago, SEO commissioned a book entitled Stories from the Street: The SEO Career Program, A Portfolio of Success – the “Street” being Wall Street, of course – in order to profile our alumni and to make the case for why we were asking for millions of dollars to fund our programs and to buy a first-ever permanent home for our then 40-year old organization.  Radiating warmly from page 18 of this “portfolio” is the smiling visage of Ramsey Rycraw.  (In no small part due to the legacy of success that Ramsey and others helped us to create, we were able to raise over $13 million and to purchase – without a mortgage – a permanent home for SEO for the first time in its history at 55 Exchange Place in downtown Manhattan, just steps from Wall Street and literally across the street from the New York Stock Exchange.)

 

Truth be told, I hadn’t been in as close contact with Ramsey in recent years.  It’s something that I’ve come to accept over the years: when you have as many “SEO kids” as I have been fortunate to know – now numbering close to ten thousand – and they, too, reach a certain stage in life – one in which their primary foci are their families and their careers – you accept that you don’t see them as much … but you savor every bit of good news that filters in and continue to celebrate their successes and their contributions to their own and to SEO’s legacy.  So I would see Ramsey occasionally and hear about his continuing and unsurprising success and be inspired to work ever more diligently at developing the next generation at SEO, the next generation of Ramseys.

 

And that’s the lesson that I learned from Ramsey Rycraw: that as much as I was a mentor to and leader for him at one time in his life, he has been an inspiration to and for me throughout the time that I’ve known him and thereby enabled me to touch thousands of other young people’s lives spurred on by his example.  The prospect of creating more Ramsey Rycraws has always gotten me out of bed early in the morning to make yet another breakfast meeting with a prospective partner and driven me to set up yet another fundraising lunch meeting and motivated me to commit to making yet another long drive home at night from an SEO event.  I never thanked him enough for this inspiration during his lifetime – so this I do regret – but I will always be mindful of this as I continue in my work with this special little organization that changes lives every day in profound ways.  Simply put, if it were possible, I wish that every SEO student or intern could be a Ramsey Rycraw.  There’s no doubt that this world would be a much better place were this to be the case.

 

So, in tribute to my former protégé and friend, I thank him and his family for his contributions to SEO and to me personally.  As I reflect on my own life, much of what I have contributed and will contribute to SEO has been inspired by special people like Ramsey Rycraw, who’ve added so much to my life and to those of countless others.  In this spirit of gratitude and appreciation, then, I close where I began with the words and wisdom of Bessie Anderson Stanley:  Ramsey Rycraw was indeed successful, supremely so, because he lived well, laughed often and loved much, and thus his life is truly an inspiration to and his memory a benediction for us all.

 

Godspeed, Ramsey.  Thank you for what you have done in your earthly life and in advance for what you will do in your eternal one as we go forward in our lives inspired by the gift of you….

 

May God comfort and keep all of us – especially Ramsey’s family – at this time as we ache, but may we thank Him always when, soon, we will again be able to smile, which, appropriately, will be those big, room-enlightening and spirit-lifting Ramsey Rycraw smiles….

Does the God of Love Hate?

Chapters 18 and 20 of Leviticus, which form part of the Holiness Code of the Jewish Torah and the Christian Old Testament, contain the following verses:

• Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. (Leviticus 18:22 KJV)

• If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. (Leviticus 20:13 KJV)

These two verses have historically been interpreted by literalist, fundamentalist or self-described conservative Jews and Christians as clear, blanket prohibitions against homosexuality.

In the Christian New Testament, the Apostle Paul writes:

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. (Romans 1:26–27 KJV)

Elsewhere in the Bible, we confront situations of God-committed and/or -sponsored genocide - as with the story of Noah and the Flood (Genesis), the overnight killing of the Egyptian firstborn which led to the Jews being freed/cast out of Egypt (Exodus), the destruction of the Amelekites (1 Samuel), etc. - and the endorsement of slavery - whether that enslavement was due to war (Deuteronomy) or sexual in nature (as in being sold into a marriage/being a wife) (Exodus) or similar to that for which instruction was given in the New Testament, especially both the genuine and attributed Epistles of the Apostle Paul, including Colossians, Ephesians and most of all Philemon (which is in essence instruction about the necessity of reconciliation between a runaway Christian slave and his former Christian master), etc.  And, according to their ancient authors, there are numerous passages in the Bible that can be construed as God approving of capital punishment (Exodus, Leviticus, Acts, Romans, etc.).  Further, there are a plethora of other examples in the Bible of behavior attributed to and/or inspired by God that strike us today as ungodly and inhumane.  In sum, the Bible is rife with examples of an unloving and indeed hateful God.

Which raises the question, can the God of Love hate?

Well, let's start with why God could or perhaps should be considered as the God of Love.  Whether we prefer an Old Testament basis for conceiving of God as Love/Loving - as in Deuteronomy or Jeremiah - or a New Testament one - as in (the Epistle) 1 John or Ephesians or (the Gospel) John (as described by Jesus), etc. - there are literally hundreds of passages and verses that describe God as loving or as Love.  In fact, based on myriad references and attestations, it would be fair to say that, at least in the Christian conception, God's defining nature is that He/She/It is Love/Loving.

Mitigating this somewhat are the many passages that describe God as punishing, especially to enemies of His/Her/Its people the Israelites and/or to members of those Chosen People themselves who do not obey His/Her/Its laws.  Yet, invariably, the rationale for any punishment is that it is engendered by God's love for us; in other words, God only punishes us because He/She/It loves us.  (Sounds like something that our parents used to tell us, doesn't it?)  So, whether God is giving or correcting, He/She/It is ever-loving.

So, then, can God hate?

If one does indeed see God as Love or believe that God is Love, it would seem that the answer is simple: no.  Love cannot negate itself in hate, so, logically, therefore, a God who is Love/Loving cannot hate.

And yet so many self-proclaimed Christians advocate just this, that God hates.  Leaving aside groups like the Westboro Baptist Church whose views many (if not most) consider to be extreme (and thus unrepresentative), many self-described conservative (or literalist or fundamentalist) Christians do believe that God does not love some of His/Her/Its children as much as others, as their disapproval and condemnation of these others - especially those who are different in terms of religion or sexual orientation, etc. - demonstrates.  Some/many even go so far as to say that, in the name of God, we should deny various rights to these people/groups.  For example, the contemporary 'debate' about marriage equality is (most) often framed as being in violation of God's law (presumably as encapsulated in the exemplary verses above and others) and the Judeo-Christian values that undergird our American law and society (even though, technically, our foundational documents proclaim the equality of all men - and, presumably, women - and state clearly and repeatedly that there is no official religion for the country and that church and state should, in fact, be separated).

Conceptually part of the problem of God-endorsed hate can be attributed to our humanity in that we tend to read our holy scriptures selectively - if at all - and thereby value the parts that we like and/or align with our views more than those that do not.  For example, if we choose to behave in a strictly biblical way, we would endorse and practice slavery today, an option that is universally rejected as morally repugnant and unacceptable now.  And heterosexual women would be the property of their husbands (who would also be allowed to have many of them simultaneously) and children who are disrespectful to their parents and adulterers would be put to death and men could not get haircuts or trim their beards and no one could eat non-fish seafood and, well, you get the picture....

Simply put, if we claim that our interpretation of God's desires is scripturally based, then we have to deal with the myriad gray areas and outright contradictions contained therein, because, as we have seen, God has been described as both Love/Loving and vengeful/hateful/hate-filled in the Bible.  At a minimum, for example, this would complicate the so-called marriage equality debate - which is really about whether homosexuals and others of alternative sexuality should have their humanity recognized fully and thereby be allowed to exercise all of their societal rights - because if the (both Old and New Testament) biblical prohibitions of homosexuality are taken into account, so, too, must the reality that Jesus, the ostensible Patron of the religion that bears his name, is not recorded as having said anything about the subject.  And Jesus was a big God-is/as-Love guy....

In the interest of brevity, I'll confess that I tire of this 'debate' about the nature of God, as so much of it strikes me as the virtually constant human attempt to project one's own beliefs in the name of God.  I can't pretend to know what God thinks - which is in itself likely an anthropomorphically inappropriate construction - but I can glean that He/She/It leans more heavily toward Love, which we might characterize as the positive/good/beautiful/growth/etc. in life, rather than its opposite.  To me, this is demonstrated in the ever-forward evolution of our humanity and our discovery of new and meaningful ways to be human/experience our humanity fully.  (Along the way, of course, this has led to our parallel and simultaneous discovery of our almost equally great human capacity for the opposite of these - i.e., the negative/bad/ugly/inhumane/deadly/etc.)  And in this gift of life, we discover that Love is better than its opposite and that we profess it constantly and practice it less consistently (because, being human, we fail at this practice regularly).  (By contrast, think of how few of us openly profess, celebrate and practice love's opposite as well as consider how the vast majority of us react in horror whenever we become aware of such behavior.)

Following from this, then, I think that the answer to this whole question is quite simple:  God is Love and thus cannot hate.  And since God has created all of us human beings, it follows that we are all Children of God, beloved in His/Her/Its sight.  Therefore, each of us should be allowed to love ourselves and each other in ways that are beneficial to us and yet do not infringe upon others' enjoyment of their experience and pursuit of Love as they define it.

Accordingly, this invalidates every "-ism": racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, religiocentrism, heterosexism, etc.  We will accept and celebrate that no religion has exclusive claim to the Divine, that no sexual orientation is superior and more acceptable than another in the context of a loving relationship and that no person of whatever race, ethnicity, gender or nationality is inherently better than another.

Perhaps another way to look at this question is via the guidance of Jesus, who, for Christians, is our ostensible Patron.  In the Gospel of Matthew, in response to a question as to the greatest of the Commandments, Jesus responded:

“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40 NRSV)

Similarly, as relayed in the Gospel of John, Jesus shared a new commandment:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34-35 NRSV)

As Christians, if we do indeed love one another as Jesus loved us, then we will affirm our mutual humanity in spite of our superficial differences.  We can both acknowledge that difference challenges/scares us and yet stay true to our Patron's directive to be loving nonetheless (as He was).  When we think about how others should be treated, our question will be "How can I/we be loving?" not "What do I think that God thinks about this?"

What matters most is that we are all Children of God; the rest is just details.  And when we are loving to each other, we embody the God who created us all, the God of Love/who is Love, the God who cannot and does not hate....

The Best Christian I Ever Knew Was An Atheist....

This is the (partial) story of a wonderful man whom I believe to be an exemplar of the values that we all espouse as Christians … and yet he was a self-professed atheist.  I hope that something in what I share helps each of you in life and on your own faith journey.

Crawford Maxwell was a Scotsman, born, I believe in or around Edinburgh sometime in the early- to mid-1880s.  He led an interesting, diverse life and came into my life as "the neighbor next door" during my formative years who actually became a member of our extended family.  This is nice, of course, but not the full story or even the point of mentioning him.

What makes Mr. Maxwell so noteworthy, I believe, is the paradox that he represented for me then - and continues to represent even now - because Crawford Maxwell was the most decent, kind, ethical, supportive and loving man that I have ever known outside of my family and, one might say, an exemplar of Christian values in practice.  Except for one very big caveat:  Mr. Maxwell was a self-professed atheist (or so my beloved mother told me).

When I was growing up, Mr. Maxwell was the closest non-relative to my family and, in fact, was actually closer to us than some of our family members.  He was such a significant presence in my and our lives that, among other things, he:

• Came to a window overlooking our driveway and greeted my mother and me almost every morning as we left for school


• Was usually a guest at all family holiday gatherings at our home and was even invited to many of the ones at other relatives’ homes
• Would substitute for my mom if she were delayed at a meeting or under the weather and take me to and pick me up from school


• Was the very first customer of my grass-cutting business and paid my $3 fee for both the front and back lawns though he usually only had me do the former (to keep me away from his precious garden in the back yard, I suspect)


• Would often substitute for my father as my mother’s escort to arts or other more aesthetically-oriented events


• Cooked me many meals - I had Indian food for the first time in his home, a fantastic curry dish actually - where he also introduced me to foods that were exotic delicacies to me at the time (like beef tongue) and told me many stories of his life, including of his service as a very young man in the Second Boer War and of his time in India as an official of the British Empire.  So, as a young man, I explored the world vicariously through his life experiences.  (For example, while I’ve never been to India I still intend to go some day, and until then I’ll continue to treasure the indelibly vivid picture that Mr. Maxwell painted of it for me so many years ago.)


• Read avidly, a passion that he shared with my mother – with whom he would swap books and dish about the stories that they had read – and also influenced me to become the voracious reader that I am today

As you hopefully have an inkling by now, Crawford Maxwell was an incredibly interesting and special person.  Yet, this doesn’t begin to do the man justice.  For example, he lived in inner-city Detroit in the 1950s, 60s and 70s – a time of riots, white flight and social confusion (if not disintegration) – and was the last white person on what became an all-Black, mostly middle class block.  Yet, he never gave any evidence that this affected him.  He acted as if color were irrelevant, which, truth be told, it is and should be.  He didn’t fly with other whites because he saw his new neighbors as people, not Black.  And he was the best neighbor that any of us ever had, white or Black.

Simply put, he was also the most decent, kind, ethical, supportive and loving man that I have ever known outside of my family and, one might say, an exemplar of Christian values in practice.  In fact, he was the man I most admired other than my own namesake and maternal grandfather, Dr. Walter Ellsworth Johnson.  And he was an atheist (though I don't remember ever discussing the subject with him).

This was a huge problem for me because my rather diverse religious upbringing had taught me that no matter how good and wonderful a person he was, Mr. Maxwell could never get into heaven because he didn’t believe in our Christian God.  As I cobbled together my own unique spirituality from my Baptist upbringing, the Lutheran and Catholic theology to which I was exposed - and with which I was indoctrinated - in school and my participation in a Congregational youth group, I struggled with how to reconcile the concept that the most decent, “Christian” man that I knew was going to hell and some of the folks whom I knew from church - whose behavior outside of the sanctuary contrasted so completely with the beliefs that they supposedly professed inside of it - would be given undeserved entry into heaven for eternity.

As I turned this conundrum over in my head hundreds of times during my teenage years and early adulthood, eventually I decided that either God was not as good as we believed Him to be or that our theology must be wrong.  Accordingly, I continue to believe that the fault lies with our conception of God and His Grace, not with God Himself.*

It’s a potentially heretical view that I hold even today:  If there is a heaven, I expect to see Mr. Maxwell again, because the way he lived his life certainly qualifies him to be there (as, I hope, does the way that I am choosing to live my own).  I, for one, would rather spend all of eternity with good atheists like Crawford Maxwell than bad Christians of whom there are so many.  I would rather be in the presence of a person who was always giving and loving and kind than someone who is convinced that the Bible is an historical truth or that we Christians alone are in possession of the sole/true path to the Divine, etc.

As I’ve matured and developed into a self-described Christian heretic and spiritual eclectic, I trace a lot of what I have come to believe to my experience with Mr. Maxwell and his quiet, positive example of how a human being should conduct himself.  As far as I can tell, the only thing that he ever did wrong was to choose not to believe (which, I realize, is the biggest thing that one can get wrong from the viewpoint of most believers and churches).  Yet, he was such a good person that I named my youngest son after him, so that every day I am reminded of his incredible example that continues to furnish a model for me and my children – and for us all – to emulate.

So as you go forward this day, ask yourself if you will someday be remembered as fondly and with as much admiration as Crawford Maxwell.  If so, do you think that you deserve a place in heaven but that he doesn’t?  I think not.  And though I can’t pretend to know what God thinks, I sure do hope that She agrees with me….

*  I apologize for the use of the male pronoun to describe God, but that was how I was raised to see/understand Him/Her/It at the time.

Spiritual But Not Religious....

Like many, for much of my adult life, I considered myself "spiritual but not religious" ... and now I'm not so sure....


As a developing young person, I had what I have come to realize is a uniquely diverse religious upbringing.  I was christened in a Presbyterian church as an infant, attended a Lutheran grade school, attended a Catholic junior high and high school (during which time I considered both converting to Catholicism and becoming a priest), was baptized in the (Southern) Baptist church of my mother and maternal grandparents (in which I became an altar boy), participated in a high school youth group at a Congregational church and went to a WASPy college where many of my friends were Jewish. Oh yeah, and my next door neighbor and close family friend growing up was an elderly Scot who considered himself an atheist.


In my adult life, I was largely "unchurched" for the first half-decade after college until I married for the first time.  Reflecting a desire to share my entire life with my then-intended, I converted to being an Episcopalian.  The religious affiliation has lasted ever since (even though the marriage has not).  During this time, I have become a religious "seeker," exploring not only my own chosen faith but others as well.  So now, if anyone asks, I usually declare myself (proudly) to be an Episcopalian ... but in reality I'm more of an Episcopalian with Buddhist and Taoist leanings.


What led me to consider myself "spiritual but not religious" in my young adult life was that I enjoyed the exploration of my spirituality greatly, but didn't consider myself particularly attracted to the church as a religious institution generally and as a spiritual home/community specifically.  And then I met a charismatic Episcopalian priest who had a way of preaching that really spoke to me for the first time in my life ... so then I began to come to church a fair amount, say, two times per month.  This was a revelation for me - not only to feel welcome but enriched by a church environment - and for the first time in my life I wanted to go to church voluntarily.


By contrast, in my youth, I very much equated church with jail in the sense that I had to serve time there two to three times per month with and at the behest of my beloved mother.  And though it was my choice to be baptized - one that surprised both her and me at the time - generally I abhorred the two-hour-plus service with its roller coaster emotionality and positively stultifying moralizing. Paradoxically, it's why I became an altar boy (and, later, captain of the altar boy team): altar boys got to hang out in the basement of the church for the first hour of the service and didn't have to go into the sanctuary until just before the sermon (after which followed our recitation which was the prelude to the communion rite).  (And, I am sad to report, because we usually sat in the balcony during the service, my fellow teenage altar boys and I could get away with napping through the sermon a good deal of the time and having a little competition to see who could get the biggest piece of the Communion cracker during this solemn rite.  Shameful, I know: I'm so embarrassed that I'm glad that my late mother never fully realized this ... but I also have to admit that I think back to those times occasionally and chuckle reverently when I am receiving Communion now, especially when I involuntarily assess the size of my piece of the Bread of Life....)


What I liked about the high school youth group at the Congregational church was that it was religion-lite: we talked about issues confronting the typical teenagers whom we were and the (adult) leaders of the group 'slid' the religion into the discussion quite deftly.  I was being schooled spiritually it turned out, but so subtly that it didn't trigger my natural teenage tendency toward cynicism and impenetrability.  And the parties that we threw to raise money for our college tours were great: it's where I deepened my interest in music and discovered my skills as a DJ.  (What's funny to me now is that I don't remember ever going on one of those college tours!)


In college, though I had access to a liberal, inclusive spiritual home in the chapel of my university, I think that I only went there one time.  In fact, the preacher was a renowned, urbane, witty and wise biblical scholar whose ability to relate ancient scripture to modern life meaningfully was legendary.  Yet I was too immature - both in life and spiritually - to appreciate this at the time, so I saw him outside of the sanctuary more than in it.  You would think that my enjoyment of the several salon-like dinners that I attended at which he was a featured speaker would have drawn me into the church more but I remember myself at the time as too burned out from my Baptist phase to be open to more worship, even if I knew that worship to be materially different and better relative to my spiritual interests and tastes.  (In fact, this is one of the top five regrets that I have from my collegiate career.)


After college, as a young professional in New York City, I had no spiritual home and in conversations with friends and acquaintances didn't even hear of one that seemed worth investigating.  Given the plethora of outstanding spiritual centers in the City then (and now), it boggles my mind that I didn't check any of them out.  I suspect that this is a reflection of two realities: the aforementioned "Baptist burnout" and the reality of how secular my world had become.  What I remember of that period is that not only didn't I have a spiritual home but I wasn't concerned about this, either.  Until I decided to marry for the first time, that is....


So I converted to Episcopalianism.  I remember my confirmation class fondly: so many of us seemed to be becoming 'Episcopalians by default' as I saw it at the time: we weren't so much coming to the faith because of what it offered as we were running from other versions that we knew didn't work for us.  The joke in the class, first shared by a former Coptic Christian and then repeated most often by the several lapsed Catholic members, was "Episcopalianism: less guilt, more fulfilling!"  (Yes, we borrowed the formulation from a popular beer commercial of the period - how original, eh?)  For me, I liked that the faith seemed pretty loose (as in not particularly dogmatic) and diverse (as apparently a range of beliefs were not only tolerated but encouraged).  For the first time in my life, really, I felt like I may have discovered a way of being spiritual and of exploring/approaching God that worked for me.  It was a big tent, one in which I could roam around, be the natural skeptic and occasional heretic that I am and be welcomed nonetheless.  Cool.  So, at the age of 26, confirmed I was (by a crotchety old bishop who seemed far less progressive than the faith to which I was being introduced, but that's another story...).


And then, in a wonderfully coincidental way, I found that church home in the suburbs led by the charismatic and insightful priest.  It's a great story: having read the local paper incorrectly, we - my new then-wife and I - showed up late for the Sunday morning service - actually, after it - and were literally wandering on the lawn of the church trying to find an open door when the pastor found us like a shepherd reclaiming lost sheep.  I've been 'found' there ever since....


Sadly, as with so much of life, there was an unfortunate twist: a few years later that priest became embroiled in a larger scandal of which he was indeed a part and was forced to resign (both from our parish and from the priesthood, I believe).  Then our church entered what I half-cynically, half-kindly refer to as "the dark period" ... because after an interim rector/priest who was wonderful but chose to depart (too) quickly, there was a long-serving priest of uninspiring bent and then a succession of other temporary successors, a process that encompassed almost a dozen years.  During this time, though I became an usher, I went to church as little as I could, which meant only when the usher team of which I was appointed captain was obligated to serve (which was typically once a month).  The several priests who lead the church during this time of turmoil and recovery from scandal were not the most gifted preachers (with one or perhaps two exceptions), so I returned to a familiar mode in my churchgoing: serving time on Sundays - this time supposedly of my own volition - and, thankfully, at the far shorter Episcopal services in which the sermons disappointed and typically failed to inspire but did not offend me as much as the Baptist moralizing had a generation before.


So I went to church because I had to (because of my being somewhat involuntarily recruited to be an usher and then usher captain) and knew that I was supposed to: again I was "spiritual but not religious."


And then two wonderful things happened:  First, in contrast to the lack of fulfillment that I experienced in church during this period, I began to explore spirituality generally and in particular my own spirituality in earnest.  And second, our church called a new rector, a relatively young (mid-30s-ish) priest with great enthusiasm.  The former has been a continually enriching journey ever since and the latter has been a great blessing, too.


My 'new' rector, the Rev. John A. Mennell, turned out to be a 'rookie': our church, St. Luke's Episcopal, was his first assignment as the Rector/senior priest/spiritual leader and, effectively, CEO of the parish.  And it was immediately clear that he was well-suited to his calling: affable and engaging, his can-do attitude and sense of the Spirit were infectious ... and his ability to remember everyone's name and call them by it was, well, the clincher.  I became a huge fan and supporter and we have collaborated effectively and in a mutually beneficial way ever since.  And John's preaching was a great help to me on my spiritual journey as well.  He grounds his guidance in the real world application of spiritual/theological principles, so with his engaging delivery the experience is both enjoyable and enlightening.


Of particular impact was a sermon some years ago about the importance of community.  I had evolved in my churchgoing: now instead of serving as an usher at the 10:00am service - a time when my children would awake and we would celebrate a family breakfast on both days of the weekend - I became an "8 O'Clocker," a member of that small (but growing) and intrepid band of regulars at the earlier, spoken-word service.  At mid-life I had lost the ability to sleep late and found the gift of early, quiet and contemplative mornings, so the timing was right.  And the reality that I didn't have to sing - an off-key, painful experience since my vocal chords rebelled during puberty - and could be more quietly reflective during the service fit, too.  So I became a regular reader (of the non-gospel scriptural passages) at the service and eventually a Eucharistic Minister authorized to participate in the administration of the sacrament of Communion.  Finally, the environment of the service - serious and yet exploratively spiritual - and the people who were also regulars - genuinely nice, spirit-filled folks who were also friendly and contributory early risers - was right for me.  In sum, for the first time in my life I had found a true spiritual and religious home.


And yet I still thought of my spirituality as a singular pursuit, as something that I did in part in the presence of others, sort of like an adult spiritual version of a child engaged in parallel play.  Until John's* sermon, that is.  When he noted that an important aspect of our faith is that it is meant to be experienced in community and then related this to the importance of community in Jesus' work, something clicked for me for the first time: not only was it important to me that I be a person committed to reflecting the example of my Patron in my own life, but I must do it with and in the context of others/a collective, as well.  This a-ha moment is what led me to value the opportunity to develop relationships with my fellow 8 O'Clockers and to consider how to serve the church and contribute to it with my time and talents as well as financially, which  in turn has led to my service on the Vestry (i.e., in effect, the church's Board of Trustees) and to my taking a leading role in helping to evolve the Spiritual Enrichment (i.e., adult spiritual education/formation) effort for the benefit of our parish and community.  In sum, John's exhortation to value the communal aspect of my faith fully has led to a whole new dimension of the experience of it, an enriching addition that has in turn deepened my faith and strengthened my commitment to its practice in my daily life.  The relationships that I have developed in this nurturing community are truly gifts and remind me every day of His Grace....


So, now, voluntarily, I attend church three out of four weeks in a month, on average, more even than my devout Baptist mother did and more than I would ever have predicted for myself.  At (what I hope turns out to be) mid-life, I am clearly religious, in the sense that I value, support, contribute to and benefit from my participation in a church community.


And I am ever more deeply spiritual, too.  In fact, I happily consider myself to be a "Christian heretic," struggling as I do with some of the orthodoxy of the corporate church (of which, thankfully, there is far less but still some in the Episcopal subsidiary thereof) and continually re-fashioning an eclectic sense of spirituality influenced by other faiths and belief systems.  For example, as I mentioned before, I'm very attracted to the wisdom of both Buddhism and Taoism, which I see an informative of and complementary to my practice of Christianity.


And my sense and experience of the latter has evolved, too: in a way, I'm getting more historical or at least more "seriously 'old school'" in my theology and praxis.  I am less enamored with the practice of my faith as the institutional church has created it than I am with the opportunity to get back to and emulate the example of Jesus Himself.  I am intrigued by the early century "Followers of the Way," as members of the Jesus movement were known in that early period of the faith before an institutional church was formed and His wisdom and principles were converted (or, as some would say, perverted) into an orthodoxy in His name.  In sum, it seems to me that the best way for me to express my faith is to be more a Follower of Jesus (to borrow Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks' term) than a Christian (especially given what so many of our ostensible fellows of a more fundamentalist bent have done to defame this label).


Along the way, I have discovered the work of numerous theologians whose insights have both broadened and deepened my spirituality.  In a Christian context, Bishop John A.T. Robinson's revelatory tome Honest to God comes to mind immediately, as does the challenging yet enlightening work of 20th century theological titans like Reinhold Niebuhr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Tillich.  More recent work by the Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks has also been enlightening.  His gift for relating timeless spiritual principles to complex modern life is as reassuring and inspiring as it is insightful.  And the person who has had the greatest impact on my spiritual development is, it turns out, my former/now retired (Episcopal) Bishop, the Rev. John Shelby Spong.  His body of work is as voluminous as it is impressive and I have been greatly informed, challenged and elevated by his theology, which I consider to be the most reasonable and therefore believable interpretation of the life, work and message of Jesus that I have yet encountered.


I have always struggled with the aspects of Christianity that I was taught in my youth and that I had a hard time believing then (and have since) like the concepts of Original Sin, the Virgin Birth, the (physical) Resurrection, the Atonement, the inerrancy of the Bible (or the infallibility of the Pope), etc., or anything smacking of Christian literalism/fundamentalism.  So following Bishop Spong as he reassesses the tenets of Christianity and suggests an evolved construct for it has been thrilling ... and a little scary.  I admit to being unnerved that I no longer believe in concept of eternal life and Heaven that I was taught as a child, as I now understand Jesus' concept of the Kingdom of God to apply to our life on earth rather than solely after it as I was taught (or, to borrow Tolstoy's famous phrase, I believe that the Kingdom of God is indeed within us and can and should be experienced in this life/in our time on earth).  And yet there is an aspect of how we live this life that resonates eternally, which is supremely challenging and a daily struggle for me ... but this, of course, is less reassuring than that billowing-cloud-filled nirvana of a perfect Heaven where "everything is beautiful and nothing hurts" (to borrow Vonnegut's phrase) that I was taught so long ago....


And, as the Bishop suggests, I have come to agree that no religion can offer certainty in an uncertain world.  Yes, God may be absolute and supreme, but He/She/It allows us a freedom of choice that we humans have used for both good and ill - in the latter case, demonstrating shocking inhumanity throughout history made all the worse by the reality that so much of it is falsely cloaked in religious piety and attributed to being God's will - and thus the world will ever be characterized by some ugliness as well as by beauty and grace.  Bishop Spong's theology has helped me to reconcile this great paradox of humanity while deepening my faith.


And his suggestion that the proper aim of Christian life should be to live fully, love wastefully (in the sense of giving ourselves away fully in a loving way as Christ did) and being all that we can be - in other words, that being fully human is also the way to experience the Divine fully - has been a true revelation for me.  It's a high bar, to be sure, but I really can't think of a better way to 'practice what I preach' in daily life.  Emulating Jesus - being as fully human and humane, as loving and selfless, as inspirational and compassionate, etc. - is so very hard but it is also such a humbling and inspiring way to live that I continue to pursue it, failing at it every day as I do but hoping that I make progress at it over time.


All of which brings me back to where I started: as I think about it at mid-life, I no longer consider myself to be "spiritual but not religious."  I remain skeptical of the institutional church given that it is (and has proved itself to be) as flawed (and alternately wonderful) as the human beings who comprise it (myself included).  But, on a more personal level, having found a church community within which I feel valued and nurtured and to which I can contribute meaningfully, and having been so inspired by my learnings along my spiritual path, I realize that I have evolved to be both spiritual and religious and that this is a very good thing indeed for me.


In this spirit, then, I encourage those of you who may consider yourselves to be "spiritual but not religious" to reflect on my experience and see if it offers any suggestions for your own.  While I know that your journeys are and will be different, I hope that you will find that you, too, can be informed and inspired along your path by the gift of meaningful spiritual and religious experiences as I have been.  And in this vein, I encourage you to keep exploring until you find what you seek.  It may turn out to be a surprise (which simply means that you will learn meaningful things about yourself along the way).  Whatever happens, there is great value in the journey, as the effort to evolve yourself spiritually and religiously will likely pay great dividends in the long run (and provide numerous experiences to laugh about and/or to be amazed by).  Of course, it's always possible that after extended (or, preferably, continuous) exploration that you will conclude that you are indeed spiritual but not religious, but I can assure you that even if this proves to be the case, you will be greatly enriched by the journey.  Enjoy....


*  And that was another unique thing about my friend and informal spiritual director Rev. John Mennell: he asked that you call him by his given name and not an honorific, which was a first for me.  Rather than being informal, it struck me then and strikes me now as being a more symbolic invitation, to engage at a personal rather than official level, as a statement of his sense of welcoming and openness/accessibility.  I could wander off into an analogy to Buber's I-Thou construct, but to keep it real and simple, I'll just say that it has been great to be on a first-name basis with someone whom I respected, admired and followed spiritually.  And we have enjoyed what I would like to think has been a mutually beneficial and multi-faceted relationship ever since: he has been my spiritual advisor and guide, a partner now that I've joined the Vestry of the church (largely to support his efforts, as I had eschewed serving in such a capacity on numerous occasions in the past) and a friend whose perspective has been quite comforting as well as illuminating during crucial moments of my life.  In turn, I would like to think that my voracious interest in spirituality, capable leadership in my formal role as Clerk of the Vestry and my being a "good guy to grab a beer with on occasion" has benefited him, too.  He's my first and best priest-friend, a relationship with which I had no experience previously - priests and pastors were always august (spiritual) authority figures whom I knew superficially - and thus had not envisioned.  I recommend such a meaningfully personal relationship with a trusted spiritual advisor highly to all....