The Mystic Cave

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This is the start of my memoir about life in the church, titled, "Lost Rites: Leaving Church Land." I wrote the memoir to try to understand why, after a lifetime in the church, almost forty of those years as a parish priest, when I left, I was done. The story starts here, with an unsettling epiphany smack in the middle of a worship service.

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I begin my story with my memorable ordination as a deacon. It was a strange experience, being "raised up" to become a lowly servant. Even then, the contradictions abounded. Not like my early experience of church, where it was all about safety and security and, above all, belonging. My childhood in North Vancouver was idyllic, and my family provided a place to learn...

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My childhood, looking back, seems idyllic. Stable home, healthy church, friends and family all mixed together in one big happy tribe. But, as happens, the seeds were already being sown for the person I was to become, specifically, for the minister who was even then taking shape. Life lessons were preparing me for the road ahead, and not all of them would be easy.

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Our family's move to Montreal was as eye-opening as it was alarming. We found ourselves in the middle of a religious battle zone, where it mattered which school you attended and which church you belonged to. But I had other things to think about than my religious identity. I was entering my teens and the world was waiting for this budding performer to arrive on a new st...

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The tensions only increased as I approached my sixteenth birthday. My good and bad angels fought with each other. My brother made home life intolerable. My parents both suffered challenging health issues. I sought solace with my friends. Until we rolled it all up into another move ... and started again. But what was there to fear? In our new church I was to meet Jesus. Perso...

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Our family's move from Montreal to Toronto introduced me to a whole new group of friends. It also introduced me to Jesus. Personally. So I was brought to a classic crossroads. What did I really want to do with my weekends? Party, or pray? I was a teenager, but the answer wasn't obvious.

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Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Morriso...

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I trade in my weekend parties for weekend worship, and for a mission to evangelize the world. Heady times, full of drama, as is just about everything in the teen years. The narrow beliefs wouldn't last. But the faith would. And the importance of a "relationship" with the divine. God was becoming more real to me, but not according to any formula I'd known ...

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As Spirit-filled Jesus People, we had the light, but we didn't yet have the depth. For that, we'd need to live in our new faith for a while, testing it against what life itself wanted to teach us. And life wanted to teach me that I wasn't the only one who had God living inside me. Secular professors, a rabbi, and even a prospective new girlfriend--they all had...

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My fundamentalist beliefs delivered me into the bonds of marriage. I was certain that's what young Christian couples were supposed to do. But my new liberal beliefs were pulling me in directions I could not have foreseen, where faith meant stepping out in the absence of certainty. Life was, in fact, becoming less certain for me, a lesson in faith if ever there was one. ...

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Trinity College, at the University of Toronto, where I began my divinity training, was a magical place. But as enchanting as it was, and thrilling, not all magic is good magic. I would find that our humanity follows us everywhere we go, even to places of higher, which is not to say heavenly, education.

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Interlude: Story Logo by DDmyzik / License: Attribu...

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In every hero's quest, the sirens of waylaid distraction eventually appear, calling out, "No, over here! This way!" It's not to say we shouldn't obey them. Maybe we should go over to where the sirens are beckoning to us. Maybe, even, we need to go there, in order to rediscover where our true path lies. Anyway, that's what I  had to do on my way ...

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There's a children's song for a long car ride that begins, "Are we there yet? Not yet!" That might have been my song as I entered my third and final year at Trinity. Both graduation and ordination were being held out to me as real and tantalizing possibilities. My focus had returned. I felt ready. But was I there yet? Not yet!

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Following my graduation from Trinity, I was set adrift by my archbishop when he learned that my marriage had broken up. I wouldn't be ordained along with my classmates. But he was willing to give me something, so he sent me as the chaplain to a church camp. It proved to be just what my wounded soul needed. Then, at the end of the summer, he placed me as student-in-charg...

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I was placed as an interim minister in Dave Ward's old parish of Cookstown. My heart still needed healing. But so did theirs. So we ministered to one another, as “wounded healers.” It was a rich and grounding time, reminding me of my familial roots in North Vancouver. I might have been content to stay there. But my ambition drove me to push for an ordination date, which...

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Finally, I was ordained in the Anglican Church of Canada, both as a deacon and a year later as a priest. But it appears we can never lift ourselves too far out of the muck from which we crawled, eons ago. Odd things happen when we do, some of them laughable, some of them humiliating, to bring us back down to earth again. We are, after all, only human.

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I was a new priest. But I wasn't a new man. And no amount of holy posturing could hide that fact. I was still too young a man and too new a priest to realize that it was my humanity that God, and God's people for that matter, actually wanted of me, not my exalted ego. But, not realizing that yet, I stuck out my chin and assumed my new role with all the cockiness of...

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Even the church offers a version of life in the fast lane. It's what happens when a fresh young priest is anxious to prove himself and the church is all too happy to put him to work. It was hard work in my burgeoning parish of St. Philip's, Unionville, but rewarding as well, especially as I learned to see my parish as a family, not as an institution. As my professi...

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In my big new parish it was sink or swim, so I swam for my life. But one of the rules of the sea is "women and children first," something I hadn't heard yet. As my work life exploded, my home life all but rolled up into a ball and shrivelled away. I was burning out, with no one to blame but myself. My family history provided an answer to that, though: If you c...

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I thought I was moving up in the world. Having made a splash in my first major parish, maybe I could raise my profile even higher by moving to a new diocese. That's what my ego was saying. But just about every other part of me was saying I needed to rest, and to reconnect with my wife and family. Fortunately, Church of the Redeemer, Stoney Creek, in the Diocese of Niaga...