Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Through a glass darkly

20 Years from now

3 principal ministries:

  1. Priest in congregation

Liturgical design and leadership

Teaching

Preaching

Spiritual direction of community and individuals

The mission of this parish would be congruent with, but not limited to, my two “outside” ministries.

  1. Christian Spirituality teacher and retreat leader

Leading retreats for laity and clergy in retreat centers, seminaries, and parishes.

Writing poetry, books and articles on Christian prayer and life from catholic Episcopal-Anglican perspective.

Participant in ecumenical, interfaith and interdisciplinary conferences and dialogues on topics such as: Sacred Text and Silence, Chant and Meditation, Prayer and Social Action, Spiritual Anthropology and Cosmology, Universal Religion and Local Practice, Embodiment—Personal, Cultural and Ecological.

  1. Spiritual Advisor, Public Thinker, and Organizer for decentralized, cooperative and inter-institutional network focused on local/regional sustainable economic development and cultural revitalization.

This effort would have no distinct institutional boundaries, so would be potentially global in scope of mission, but would focus on several nodes of connection and organizing:

    • Revitalizing the public sector and grassroots democracy.
    • Regional environmental planning and design based on principles of subsidiarity, sufficiency, precaution, human-scale and appropriate technology.
    • Rural revitalization and land reform.
    • Incubating worker-owned cooperative enterprises in agriculture, industry, housing, transportation and the service sector.
    • Demilitarization and disarmament of state and society.
    • Nonviolent civil action for structural change.
    • Penal reform.
    • Redefining state sovereignty for global cooperation, local and regional empowerment, and effectiveness and transparency of state institutions.
    • Renewal of public education system.
    • Fostering a new American ethos of non-violent global leadership, mixed ownership, ecological economics and restoration, integral personality education, community responsibility, multi-polar historical consciousness, unity in diversity, and focus on human needs, especially of the most vulnerable.

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About Me

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Petaluma, California, United States
I am a priest in the Episcopal Church, and have been (among other things) an organic farmer and gardener, and a Zen monk. I have a lifelong interest in social and spiritual renewal on the basis of contemplative discipline, creative nonviolence, and ecological practice. In recent years my work has focused intensely on the responsibility of pastoral ministry in the humanistic, evangelical, and catholic branch of Christianity known as Anglicanism. I'm married with a daughter, and have three brothers and two parents.