I don’t fit within the broad Episcopal milieu

While browsing last night I came across an article that was reporting on an Episcopal priest in the Seattle area who claimed to be both a Christian and a Muslim. (Her diocese suspended her for a period of time to allow her to reflect upon her actions.) For those who might be interested such a claim is logically inconsistent (if logic would matter to her): a tenet of Muslim belief is that both Jesus and Mohammad are prophets of God (Allah) thus Jesus is merely a prophet and not God as He claimed. So by one professing to be a Muslim one is denying the fundamental teaching of Christianity. Be that she is inconsistent or not the story got me to reflect upon my past periodic dalliances with Episcopal church.

 

It was a nice place to be baptized in. While I certainly don’t remember mine (infant baptism) I do have a vague recollection of Lura’s, my younger sister. The church, in Longview, was not large and seemed to me to be a little dark and/or gloomy. The service was at the back of the church and the font was carved and made of wood. My parents were there as were her godparents, the Bennets. My mother was holding her through the part of the service that I remember. I think that my maternal grandmother was also there.

 

Speaking of my maternal grandmother it was she that made sure that I went to Sunday school when I was staying with her in the summers (I could write about that church in Navasota or describe how I would walk the last block to the church balancing on a stone wall – and driving my grandmother crazy, but that is for another time, maybe) and it was she that taught me to prayer before going to bed.

Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep if I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take. God Bless, mother, father, etc. (cf Psalm 3:5 “I laid me down and slept…KJV”

 

By the fifth grade I was going to church on Sundays with my mother and became an acolyte. Father Westerford insisted that we have practice every Saturday was followed by some games, usually tag or the like. I was there every Saturday and Sunday although frequently my mother would drop me off and come back after the services to pick me up. For one Christmas eve service I remember fainting during the service (I had been standing with my knees locked) and having to be helped out of the sanctuary. Learning to stand without locking one’s knees stood me in good standing when I was in the Marine Corp. Anyway it was during this time that I learned some of the basic teachings of protestant Christianity. I was too young to question the Rector about his theology (and the young didn’t question their elders at that time.) In the late eighties I call Father Westerford out of the blue and he still remembered me and remembered my father as the pretty good golfer!

 

Fast forward about thirty years. While in seminary I became disillusioned with Baptist (and fundamental Christian) theology and was searching. For a while we attended a couple Episcopal churches, one pastored by a nut case of an evangelical Episcopal priest. It was while attending that church that I made application to be ordained a priest. (For life of me I can’t recall my thinking or my motives for this. ) Anyway after submitting the application I (along with Pam) had to under go an interview. For this we drove to Colorado Springs (from Denver) one Saturday morning and met with a woman priest. It became obvious fairly fast in the interview that since I wasn’t a transsexual or at least a homosexual or a woman and because I had gone to a conservative Baptist seminary I wasn’t going to make it. In my rejection I was told that “I didn’t fit into the broad Episcopal milieu.”

 

Now, in part because of this experience, no one can convince me that God ever gives us more than we can handle.