Kirkepiscatoid

Yeah, I know, the sign is a little corny but you see it in front of Episcopal churches everywhere. I have come to believe, though, it's absolutely true. I hope to share with you on this blog my thoughts and ruminations as I learn to become stronger in my own spirituality, in the hopes that you, the reader, can take something home for your own reflections.

A couple of ground rule basics: I'm nowhere even close to being clergy, so if my thoughts are not quite fine-tuned and erudite in a theological sense, well...I'm just one of the great unwashed, ok?

--I will admit to having a "thing" for taking things I have a hard time understanding and using animal behavior and scientific metaphors to explain them in my own mind. So if you don't want to hear about horses, mules, donkeys, dogs, sheep, etc. don't read my stuff!

--I, like a lot of New Wave Episcopalians, am a refugee from another faith tradition (Mo. Synod Lutheran) so my theological thought patterns sometimes lean into my Lutheran roots as I learn about my own new Anglican understandings. My path to the ECUSA is definitely a "blue highway"--it is a combination of two very good friends at work continually telling me "You'd like this place" for over 5 years, what I learned from my mentor 20 years ago who happened to be an old school True Blue Episcopalian, and even some careful reading of (gasp!) Bishop Spong. (Yeah, sometimes he is even a bit over the top for me, but he still gets my attention.) But what really impressed me about the ECUSA is that such a diverse set of thought goes on and somehow they all, for the most part, agree to get along despite it. When you go off in your way, and I go off in mine, we are all pretty okay with it.

--You may get a glimpse of what goes on at Trinity Episcopal Church now and then. It is a mission church and Oasis Congregation in the Diocese of Missouri. Since Kirksville is a college town of about 17,000, home of Truman State University and the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine at A.T. Still University, our congregation is probably a little heavy on "academic types" but we have some very cool and interesting "townies" also. We are ALL a little quirky in our own way, but that is the "Kirksville way of life." We often joke that "Quirksville" would be a perfectly good name for our town. But if you ever came here, once you got over "Nomall syndrome" (No mall within 70 miles), you would learn this place is a warm and goofy home for a lot of us.

What I am learning, though, is that the Episcopal way of thinking is a very liberating experience, and I hope my joy in that shows through now and then. One aside, though: I am very much a rural (yet educated) stoic northeast Missouri type, so we really don't put too much joy on our sleeves. It might be a little on the subdued side!

Enough of the intro...I'll get down to thinking and sharing next...