My childhood included a family tradition of going for long rides on Saturday afternoons.
You could fill your gas tank for $4 and there were no more costs for the trip unless you happened to come across an Isely’s Ice Cream Store, where you might get a cone.
My memory of our rides includes hours and hours of time in the car, standing up in the back seat, breathing grape gum into my parents’ ears, and avoiding the hot cigarette ashes that frequently flew in the back windows. Despite those ashes, I loved going for family rides in the car.
We rarely had a destination in mind. The whole point was to see what we would see and to enjoy what was to be enjoyed.
One day we went south. I remember this as a long journey, and had long ago decided we had gone to West Virginia. West Virginia could be really fun, because we found tiny towns populated by shoeless children and men and women with no teeth who smoked corncob pipes. But the truth was, we didn’t go to West Virginia at all. We rode only about 15 miles away from our suburban neighborhood to Forward Township, Pennsylvania, where we found ourselves on Pangburn Hollow Road.
I don’t remember much about Pangburn Hollow Road. It was summer, so we had the cigarette ashes coming in the windows. It was cooler there because we were surrounded by forest. We peered for deer or for people, but we didn’t see either. We saw only the trees and the sun coming through them down to the forest floor.
Until we hit a dead end. There was no warning, no sign saying “no through street”. Just a road that ended in a large area of dirt. A “yard” of sorts, in front of a roughly built cabin about thirty feet away from us. We sat there in the car for a few minutes, trying to figure out what had happened to the road. Then a man in overalls came out: no shoes, no shirt, just bibbed dungarees, and a shotgun. Aimed. At our car. “Don’t get out, Paul!” my mom hissed. “Close the door!” she cried, realizing this was not an opportunity for my dad to strike up a conversation. The overalled man stepped forward and aimed again at our car.
That journey included a man with a shotgun. Jesus’ boat journey included a vicious storm. Not all of our journeys go smoothly, whether on a lake or on Pangburn Hollow Road or on the spiritual journey we travel day in and day out: the journey for meaning; the journey toward God.
My spiritual journey has had plenty of moments of sunshine sparkling on the forest floor and of shotgun surprises. I had a particularly good spiritual send-off in my childhood life. I loved the drama of church services first, then their meaning.
I was three weeks old when I was baptized, made my first confession and communion at seven, and was confirmed at nine. I attended religious schools and our faith was the center of our family life. It included community, introspection appropriate to my age, and just plain fun and play and laughter. I was completely unprepared for an abrupt and complete loss of faith. I limped into church for a while after that, hoping to find something I had once had, but leaving empty.
My career bloomed and grew. I loved my work and the people I knew and how I spent my time outside of work. But something was missing, and that missing piece gradually wore me down and emptied me out. I tried to fill that emptiness in many ways, including exploring Judaism, the Mormon Church, and a Unity Church, where some people spoke in tongues. It wasn’t until I found a 12-Step Program and began a new way of living and thinking that gradually rewarded my waning hope with a new-found faith. I grew to be a full spiritual being with the opportunity to continue a living spiritual journey, shotgun free.
I slowly came to want the best of my childhood faith without the barbed wire teachings that excluded and condemned me. I wanted to be a faithful person with every cell of my being. My lack of catechism faith worried me – Would a church reject me? – but I decided to take a chance. And that is when I found the Episcopal Church on the internet, and located the nearest parish. Hesitant at first (hesitant? – I was downright scared!) I gradually found my place in the church – in classes, in the choir, at a regular weekly dinner, in a small study group. I was home. I could worship and question my faith as part, at last, of the body of Christ.
And one Sunday, we learned that the bishop was coming a month later. This was the opportunity for people to be confirmed or received in this church as freshly minted and intentional Episcopalians. Should I be confirmed? Or received? Why were there two choices? Did I want to go that far? What was the point of doing something so publicly? Shouldn’t I just do what I was doing?
But, oh, I knew. I knew that stepping forward to say, “Yes, this is where I want to continue a spiritual journey that has been both verdant and arid, that has been personal and yet opened me to others, where I knew that God – whatever that meant – could be found and embraced. I felt as if I were risking getting out of the car that day on Pangburn Hollow Road, but I decided to step out in trust and make a commitment I had never made as a child. I wanted my adult relationship with God to happen in this place, with a liturgy that touched me, sacraments that deepened me, teachings that allowed me, and people who welcomed me and invited me to share our very personal pilgrimages of the soul.
I told my Rector I was ready to make it official. I was ready for an important new leg of the journey without destination. When the Bishop received me that day, I felt the movement of the spirit as I had never felt it before, and knew I was home.
I invite you all to support those who confirm their journey in the body of Christ.
I invite you to consider if this is your time to be confirmed or received. I invite you home.