My Story

 

How does my story matter to my teaching?

I am a contemplative, a teacher, and a follower of the way of Jesus. My spiritual home is in the Christian tradition, specifically in the Episcopal Church where I am currently a Postulant for Holy Orders. My story did not begin here, however. While I was raised in the church (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) from an early age, much of my experience and interaction with the sacred has taken place outside the walls of the traditional church structure and institution. Of all the stories and characters of the Bible, I have always identified most with Abraham. Like Abraham, my life has been a journey away from the land of familiarity into new places and things where the sacred is revealed.

The defining moments of my story have come from the relationships that I formed while ministering with homeless youth on the streets of Portland, New York, and San Diego. In those moments I came to understand the Gospel not as something I brought to the world, but something present and hidden in the lives of the people I met. From young “traveling kids” who rode the rails and highways across the country, I learned about companionship and community that comes with journeying together.

I also saw that as a teacher and minister, I have something to bring to the conversation, but I also have much to gain and learn from the relationship. My model of formation centers around these “faith-adjacent” spaces where discipleship is still taking place, even if it is outside the cultural norms of the church. [1] In these spaces, I work as a translator, finding ways to make the spiritual resources of my faith tradition accessible to those on the edges of the institution.

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[1] Kyle Oliver, “Toward ‘Faith-Adjacent’ Pedagogies: Reconfiguring the Roles, Spaces, and Practices of Religious Education” (Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Religious Education Association, Toronto, 2019), 1–2.