Having an experience that
includes the Holy Spirit is very rare. I have heard people talk about how the
Spirit did this, or the Spirit did that, but I have always found myself a bit
skeptical when I have heard them, when generally the telling of the experience
always seemed to be more about the teller than the Spirit.
I have had very few encounters like this. I remember once when I was a freshman in
college, late at night walking beside a pond when I was driven to my knees by a
strange presence that I couldn’t define.
I knew that it was a holy moment, but I got no clear direction at that time,
nothing beyond the experience. I didn’t
tell anyone about it, there being in my mind nothing to tell. But I have never forgotten about it either.
As my life went on from there, I went from one thing to
another. College didn’t work out very
well for me, so I took a course in radio and television and got a job as a disc
jockey at a radio station, married my beautiful Rosie and the two of us went
off to Texas where I worked at a couple of other stations on what I thought was
my way up in the radio industry. I got
drafted into the army, served two years and when I was discharged tried to
return to radio, but I discovered that radio had changed drastically in the
time that I was away. Instead, I got a
job at a television station and continued a career in a new form of
broadcasting for me. After a number of
years at this, I found myself working for a station that ran out of money, went
bankrupt and I was out of work.
While we had lived in Texas, I had joined an Episcopal
church in Midland, St. Nicholas Church, with a dynamic rector who influenced me
greatly about my faith. This continued
when we came back east, when I met another great priest, who continued my
training and drew me into a solid faith and knowledge of what religion could
mean for my life.
After the station went bankrupt, I called my current
rector and told him that I thought I wanted to enter the ministry. He was very helpful, got me an appointment
with my bishop, who agreed with me and got me enrolled in Virginia Seminary
that fall. I had been taking courses at
Pitt while I was working and this was enough to satisfy the seminary. Rosie, my three kids and I went off to
Alexandria, Virginia for me to continue my education.
Seminary went well enough, Rosie worked, I studied and
the kids went to different schools, but we all survived. I graduated, was ordained and began a career
as an Episcopal priest that turned out to be probably the most fantastic
experience of my life. I loved every
minute of it and would gladly do it again.
After I retired, I went on to take three interim positions in churches
that were between rectors.
The reason that I am relating all of this is to go back
to that moment on the shore of the pond when I was in college. I know that something touched me in that
encounter, and made itself known to me later in my life. I believe it was the Holy Spirit touching
my life and drawing me in. When I look
back on my life, things seem to almost have been orchestrated to have drawn me
to my ministry.
I have also felt the presence of the Spirit at times when
I have been preaching. I have strangely
found myself feeling that I was outside myself, listening to my own words that
came from a source beyond me. I can’t
explain that, except to wonder at it myself.
I read the
words of John’s Gospel when Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to leave
them, but will send them an Advocate who will be with them. He calls this the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot
receive, because it doesn’t know him, but Jesus says: you know
him because he abides with you and is in you. I’m not so sure of the gender designation that
Jesus uses, but that is really a process that only involves the biblical writers.
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