My Fellow Geeks Will Appreciate This....

Most people who know me know that much of my spiritual and theological undergirding is the direct result of the late Bishop Thomas Lanier Hoyt, Jr.  I’ve written and spoken extensively about his influence on my life, about him taking time with the weird little smart kid, about him answering all my ridiculous 10 year old questions (with examples I would remember for the rest of my life), about him following and looking after me even when I’d gone astray, and about how, upon my return to the fold, he willingly wrote a recommendation for me to attend seminary (I used him as a personal reference, not yet realizing his academic stature).  He’s always been there to encourage and shape me, both spiritually and intellectually.

So I go to seminary and I do ok.  My final GPA of 3.9 was not too shabby, especially considering it included a B+ in Hebrew.  Much more significant than my grade point average, though, were my Church History professor, Dale Irvin, and picture of a jade stele (the Nestorian Stele), which showed evidence of Christianity in China way back in the 700s.  The idea that Christianity was being embraced by the Chinese that far back (actively embraced, not a Chinese parroting of a Eurocentric story in English) – the concept was revolutionary to my mind, as was the global nature of Christianity SINCE ITS INCEPTION.  Prior to that awakening, I’d suffered from the misperception that Christianity was a religion of the West; I can’t even describe my joy in realizing that Christ really was a Christ for ALL People – and always had been!

So this Church History professor worked with me and suggested I pursue a Ph.D.  I remember this quite vividly, as it was one of few times I have intentionally been rude to a professor:  without a word of response, I turned my back and walked out of his class when he said it. Still, he labored with me, nudged me, and encouraged me.  Email was in its infancy, and we spent hours in this new medium, trading emails with all sorts of philosophical and theological conversations.  He was like mind candy!!  He introduced a group of us students to the American Academy of Religion, and in 2003 invited me to join an international group of scholars who came together to form a new, non-Eurocentric telling of the story of the Christian Movement.  This HWCM (History of the World Christian Movement) group collaborated around the country and around the world (that was how I first saw Alaska, on a trip to Malaysia in 2004).  Together the HWCM group developed a new way of telling the Christian story.  Within 10 years it become the norm for teaching church history, and through Dale, I was part of it!!  I remember how terrified I was on my first trip down to Princeton (“I’ve gotta go to a meeting with all those smart people!!”).  My fears were quickly allayed, and I actually got to meet, have personal conversations with, and count as friends some amazing scholars from all around the globe.

Fast forward a decade.  After many discussions with Bishop Hoyt regarding Church, Academy, the need to publish, and the false construct of tension between faith and intellect; and after years of serving as a teaching assistant and research fellow with Dale and in the Center for World Religion at New York Theological Seminary, I’m considering a Ph.D.  Dale suggests I talk to David, one of the members of the HWCM group.  “Oh, yes,” David responds.  “I was actually thinking of contacting you to see if you’d be interested in helping me research (the reader for HWCM) Volume 2.”  Now that right there is enough to make me do backflips, but as I was considering the opportunity, I looked up Dave’s credentials.  It appears he was recently elevated to Bishop in the denomination headed up by one of Bishop Hoyt’s classmates, Bishop Charles E. Blake, Sr.  Though I still can’t say Bishop Blake’s name without remembering how I met him at Bishop Hoyt’s sickbed, I thought on the connection and said to myself, “Wow!!” Bishop Hoyt would be really happy at this turn of events!”

And then I looked at David’s credentials a bit more, realizing that not only did Bishop Hoyt’s former classmate appoint him chair of their denomination’s Commission on Education, and not only did he serve on the National Council of Church’s Faith and Order commission like Bishop Hoyt did, but on his CV, he actually lists participation in a research project directed by Bishop Hoyt!!

I think I started dancing then.  I’m excited and grateful to have had my theological groundwork laid by the late Bishop Thomas Lanier Hoyt, Jr.  I’m excited and grateful that his recommendation helped get me into New York Theological Seminary, where I met Dale, who has continued to nudge and nurture and prune and push me. I’m ecstatic when I think about the fact that a casual comment from Dale led me to David, who is my friend and, whether or not we move forward on this project, completes the circle of Bishop Hoyt’s influence not just upon my personal life, but upon my spiritual and intellectual formation.

That is enough, but I’m bi(or tri)vocational.  My secular life involves providing housing and services for people with special needs.  Presently my Board and I are looking at three separate possibilities, any one of which would enable us to expand -- to multiply --  our services beyond the 71 families and 145 single adults we currently serve. 

I’m not sure words can do this justice.  I’m wandering around, doing oddball me, and about a week after wrestling with some issues and re-declaring to God that I’d do whatever God decided (honest, God.  I’ll be obedient this time...), all these connections started coming together.  They all sit at the intersection of faith and intellect, or of church and academy, or at the nexus of intellectual exploration and practical application.  Separately or together they seem, in my life anyway, to be evidence of the fact that God continues to smile on me, yes, and that Bishop Hoyt still has his eye on me.  Together they are still looking out for me, and still expecting great things from me.  That realization has me wanting to run and jump and scream and shout.  It gives me gratitude that is inexpressible.

In Sickness and In Health

So my lungs are on fire, it hurts to breathe, and the only way I can avoid being a mouth-breather is to keep a supply of wasabi peas nearby.  I opened my mouth to speak this morning and some guy’s gravelly voice came out.  Most cold medications, even in the correct dosage, make me high; the only thing that worked was Buckley’s and they’ve taken it off the market.  So I’m walking around with wasabi peas.

In general, I don’t do “sick.”  There was the bout with cancer over a decade ago, and I remember saying then “but I don’t even catch colds!”  I might get the sniffles if I don’t fully dry my hair after a swim, and lying down with a wet head when the temperature is under 40 gives me a kinda sore throat.  But all of that is dis-ease, the state of one’s body being out of its natural rhythm.  It does not escape me that the current dis-ease that’s come upon me is the direct result of that:  I haven’t been working out consistently, and have pretty much abandoned my largely plant-based, generally healthy diet for the typical American suicide food. 

I want to be clear here:  when I'm eating and exercising properly, I can swim 3-4 nights a week, go out into freezing weather with my wet hair stuffed under a cap, and the most that happens is I get the sniffles.  I fail to work out and eat properly for about a month, and suddenly I can't breathe through my nose, my lungs are on fire, I'm tired and achy and alternating sweats with chills.... You do the math.

Because I know what I’ve gotta do.  As a matter of fact, the first thing I did today was to go on my neighborhood stroll – I’d had a 1 pm meeting which needed to be rescheduled, then had like four mini-meetings before I got out of the house.  During my two mile stroll, I had a couple more, then I forced myself to make the rounds of some of my buildings, and now I’m in the office.  Still can’t breathe properly, but getting the body back into its natural function of movement is good.

Our organization provides services to people with mental, physical, emotional, and/or health challenges, and we serve a population that traditionally has had very limited access to healthcare.  I’m painfully aware of how dis-ease and unhealthy living impact quality and quantity of life.  No matter how sick we may be, we are in these earthen vessels, these temples of the soul, that are our bodies.  If we were to treat them (both our bodies and our souls) with the same care and reverence with which we treat, for example, our homes or our physical possessions, I can’t help but believe this world would be a better place.  If I’m eating toxic food every day, if I’m not moving my body to circulate the toxins of this industrial world out of that body, then the toxins remain and can’t help but manifest themselves in my body and, more often than not, in my spirit.

(As a side note, it just kills me to worship/fellowship/embrace a culture that says it loves God but makes no allowances for the wellbeing of the temples that house God’s Spirit among individuals.  But I’ve always been a little weird.)

I see a lot of sickness, a lot of dis-ease, in the physical and spiritual realms, all around me.  It’s been my privilege to know, work with, and/or be exposed to some visionaries who routinely lead their congregations in acts of prayer and fasting; my thought is that this should be a regular, routine, proactive measure for EVERYONE.  In the late 70s, I trained as a martial artist.  The focus was on wholistic living, integration of mind, body, and spirit.  While I lacked sufficient discipline to completely embrace the lifestyle forever, some things did stick.  I learned way back then that: human anatomy isn’t really designed for consumption or digestion of animal products; and regular fasting (2-3  days a month) can have unbelievable metabolic benefits.  Again, I did not embrace the lifestyle completely;  I’m an unapologetic omnivore, but routinely spend from 30-365 day periods abstaining from meat.  Fasting one day a month is no longer something about which I’m intentional; my body has gotten to the point where there are intervals when it simply doesn’t want food.  Thankfully, my body also knows what foods it needs, and I’ve learned that when I have odd cravings, it’s likely because there’s some sort of deficiency in my body.

Don’t get me wrong.   I’m a big believer in Western medicine.  I just think that when it’s laid atop a foundation of proper movement and healthy eating, that it becomes more effective.  Given the many unhealthy behaviors in which I’ve engaged over the years (routinely ceasing food intake, for instance, did not stop me from becoming morbidly obese), I cannot help but believe that this foundation of regularly cleansing my insides played some part in our being able to successfully fight off the cancer that later attacked.  I'm not saying wholistic living cures cancer. I'm saying that having developed a healthy baseline and adhering to it for years quite possibly made the difference between life and death, EVEN THOUGH I TEMPORARILY ABANDONED IT.

So this has kinda wandered around, but the bottom line is that we all get one body, and we get to determine how we use it.  Not everyone is physically able to do a five-mile walk, but each of us is able to challenge ourselves, to push past what we thought were our limits, and to journey on towards wholeness, and to a spiritual and physical stability that abides with us, in sickness and in health.