Abba Alonius said,
"If I had not destroyed myself completely,
I should not have been able to rebuild and shape myself again."
--The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

My father sometimes ran a charter boat on the Florida Keys, which was a lifestyle the entire family loved. Unfortunately, as much fun as such a life afforded, chartering provided inadequate income to sustain the family. Consequently, during my early years, our family moved back and forth between Florida and New York according to fortune. Life turned out to be, unintentionally, nomadic or migratory.

Perhaps it was because I spent so much time at sea that the notion of a haunting presence is familiar to me (see also, "Once Upon a Drifting Plank"). Seldom in the city or in school, did I sense "something out there." But at sea it was common. I have no doubt about why the Greeks populated their seas with Poseidon, sprites and others. Something was out there. And that something so gnawed at my imagination and curiosity that I attempted little "God experiments." Confirmation never came, yet I could not dismiss the haunted sense.

At the same time, we as a family expressed little or no interest in Christianity. I do not recall our attending church even for weddings, funerals, Christmas or Easter, except two brief periods. We were informed pantheists. Karma was the organizing principle of life. We were deeply involved in psychic experimentation, yoga, and the like. So my conversion to Christianity during high school surprised us all -- an alarming surprise to my family -- but the opening of a new world to me. Eventually most of my family would become interested in Christianity, but initially my conversion probably looked like an act of adolescent rebellion. Perhaps it was.

Looking back, my Christian conversion was not really as sudden, from out of nowhere, as it initially appeared. We had begun attending a local Methodist church seeking a positive moral influence for my teenaged hormones. It turned out several of my friends were serious Christians. Moreover, I was too inquisitive to accept our pop-pantheism without question. And Christianity, it seems, was in the air. My late-teen conversion was not unusual in those days, and later Life and Look magazines would write interesting articles about the "Jesus Movement."

I became very active in our church and very serious about Scripture. After finishing high school I entered a religious college -- to study Scripture and to try to understand the Christian faith. I majored in philosophy to explore theology, made friends who influenced me then and continue to influence me today, and engaged in endless, complex conversations about God and truth which often lasted all night and sometimes continued for days. I was very active in ministry and a leader in the student ministry organization. Soon congregations (Methodist, Congregationalist and Baptist) invited me to fill their need for a youth minister. My faculty advisor, who served as pastor for a Conservative Baptist congregation, persuaded me to become his Youth and Christian Education Minister. Jeanne -- my fiance and the daughter of another CBA pastor -- joined me in some ministry activities.

During these college years it came as a surprise to me that my studies, activism and Christian service left me so unsatisfied -- and somewhat bitter about the fundamentalist approach to Christianity. I began a long search for plausible alternatives. During this time, impressed by C.S. Lewis' description of human, romantic longing for Heaven (see especially his Pilgrim's Regress), I thought much of my dissatisfaction with Christian expressions as immature and idealistic. Though unsuccessful, I repeatedly attempted to set my deep longings aside as something that would remain necessarily unsatisfied in this life.

Jeanne and I married after college, and became active in a huge, warm and accepting, nondenominational church. I taught Sunday School, became a small group leader, and read theology at nearby Wheaton Graduate School. I tried to persuade myself that continuing to feel out of place made sense, if deep inside the human spirit there was a longing for God that could not be satisfied in this life. Yet I remained aware that Christian mystics and others seemed to experience something deeper, more rooted, than I was experiencing. So I continually read, explored, and experimented -- looking for something more.

Continuing my spiritual odyssey, I entered Dallas Theological Seminary in 1976. While there, I began lay preaching, led home Bible studies and taught adult Sunday School. Dallas Seminary made an impressive contribution both in familiarity with the Scriptures and in homiletics. At Dallas I experienced personal relationships with people of integrity, commitment, deep faith, spiritual curiosity, and humor. Dallas reinforced and solidified my sense of the unconditional love of God for all people -- grace. For these gifts I have a deep gratitude.

At the end of 1979, while still in seminary, I became pastor of a nondenominational church in Kansas. I fell in love with the people, continued my studies, completed my Th.M., and was ordained at this church. Yet, although I loved the ministry and loved the people, there seemed something terribly missing. I could not identify it, nor could I shake the uneasiness I felt. I did not know what I was looking for, but I felt certain that something was missing, and that I had not found it.

So my search continued for deeper spiritual roots, for a more complete spiritual life, for a sense of finding a spiritual home. I studied and reflected on Scripture, took continuing education courses, read constantly, and visited other pastors in many denominations and traditions. I initiated a weekly meeting of clergy for prayer and Scriptural reflection. It was in that weekly gathering that I became deeply impressed with the worship and spirituality evident in the local Episcopal Rector. Bill seemed connected, rooted, in a way that I wanted to be. When he sometimes talked about the larger Anglican communion, I began to wonder whether entering a denomination (ANY denomination) might satisfy my longing for the larger Body of Christ.

Thinking and hoping thus, in 1986 I joined the denomination where I had the most obvious entry. My father-in-law introduced me to the Conservative Baptist Association, where I became very active, doing my best to be of help both to the denomination and to my congregation. Our congregation grew spiritually, relationally, and numerically. It increased its ministry to others and improved financially. We weathered growing pains together. I met often with the State Director, gave an accounting of my life and known defects, and submitted myself to his oversight. Although we were in a nonepiscopal association, we both called him my bishop. This nascent episcopal relationship was the great benefit of becoming part of that Association, yet still I sensed I had not found my home -- while continuing to doubt there was such a place. Continually I longed for deeper and richer worship, greater structure and stability in prayer and ecclesiology, and broader spiritual community. I worked hard at these in my congregation.

Then several things happened. The more I looked at Protestantism, the more convinced I became that Sola scriptura was an experiment that had failed, that it led inevitably to the rejection of tradition and to individualism run amok. Catholicity began to make sense as I learned that Scripture had to be lived and read in community. Next, my closest friend from college surprised me by becoming an Episcopalian. We corresponded and conversed for many, many hours about that. Intrigued, I read Howard's Evangelical Is Not Enough and Webber's Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail. I reflected anew on church history, theology, worship and ecclesiology from their perspective. I had already completed 12 hours of doctoral work at Fuller Theological Seminary in church growth, but in light of what I was experiencing, I changed my focus, and took 12 hours in personal growth and then another 12 hours in Christian spirituality. These courses helped me gain insight about how my religious quest related to my personal and family issues, especially unresolved parental issues, introduced me to spiritual and mystical writers of the Anglican, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions, led me to join Al-Anon, and greatly influenced my expectations and practice of prayer. Then I developed a friendship with another Episcopal Rector, resulting in still more conversations and perspectives.

My doctoral reading in Anglican, Orthodox and Roman writers answered many old questions, but raised a whole set of new ones. So I began to read liturgical and dogmatic developments of the Early Church. I gradually became persuaded that congregationalism was inadequate for my spiritual life. I deepened in my conviction that sacramental theology, liturgical worship and episcopal ecclesiology provided a context for the spiritual life I had always sought, far more effectively than did the Anabaptist, congregationalist tradition in which I had been serving.

During my last three years as a pastor among the Baptists, I spent Mondays in retreat at St. Margaret's House, a nearby Episcopal convent. I practiced the disciplines of solitude and journal keeping, spent hours praying in their chapel, took silent meals with the Sisters, experienced the rhythms of the Daily Office, and kept the feast with them. After trying to lead the Baptists into worship on Sundays, I would come Mondays and more effectively experience worship myself. I was under the spiritual direction of their chaplain, who helped me understand my own restlessness, family background, personal history, spiritual journey, vocation, and my continuing, deliberate quest for a spiritual home. I continued to serve my congregation, yet found my own spiritual life centered in the quiet rhythms of Anglican worship and community.

Predictably, I began experiencing a sharp internal dissonance between what I both was believing and practicing, theologically, liturgically and spiritually, over against the beliefs and practices of the congregation I was trying to serve. I felt dishonest, conflicted, and unsure of myself. I felt guilt, for my evolution placed at risk the financial security of my wife and children. I feared that my church would burst into factions and conflict were they to learn how my convictions had evolved. I lost all confidence in my sense of direction and purpose. Eventually the dissonance became too painful to continue.

Baptists expect their pastors to resign should they ever fall out of sympathy with Baptist convictions. Since this clearly described me, I sought counsel from friends and mentors around the country over another six months before coming to a decision, and finally resigned in 1993. The next Sunday we joined the Episcopal Church. Grace Church warmly welcomed us, and we quickly grew to love the people and the spiritual life we found there. The Rector met often with me, and was a tremendous encouragement. And to my great surprise and joy, Jeanne and our three children embraced Anglicanism easily and wholeheartedly.

At the time that I resigned my pastorate, I had expected to live on our savings until I could find employment, for several years if necessary. However, several disasters conspired to change my expectations. First, fire destroyed our home. Second, the financial institution where I kept all my assets went belly up. We lost everything. Third, the Air Force base that formed the economic foundation of the county was closed, scuttling the local economy, making it hard for me to earn enough to sustain the family. Financially desperate, we moved to Colorado to find employment and to survive. Looking back, I believe God may have been removing systematically every remaining foundation of the life that I had so carefully built, to rebuild it in a new way. As Abba Alonius said, "If I had not destroyed myself completely, I should not have been able to rebuild and shape myself again." (Sayings of the Desert Fathers)

From August 1996 to May 1997, through the generosity of St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Ft. Collins, and the Diocese of Colorado, I was able to spend a year in Austin, immersed in Anglican studies and community life at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest and serving in ministry at Calvary Episcopal Church in nearby Bastrop, where the Rector generously invested countless hours as my mentor. After completing my study in Austin, I was ordained transitional Deacon in the Diocese of Colorado, and became Curate at Christ the King Episcopal Church, Arvada Colorado. In December I was ordained Priest. The following summer I came to the Diocese of Maryland, to once again become a parish pastor -- with the sense that I had at last and finally "come home."

In my life and ministry I combine an experience of Scripture, preaching, and church growth with an experience of deepening spirituality and community. I intend to continue integrating, in my own life and ministry, both our evangelical mission, our ancient spiritual tradition and our contemporary human experiences, insights and needs. Finally, I expect to invite many new friends and strangers to come and experience the same hospitality, grace, hope, and deepening inner life with God that Anglicanism, this place on the river, provided me and my family. The bottom line of my journey was my search for roots -- for a spiritual home. The Anglican way of worship, the Anglican concept of Church, provides that in a way I've never experienced elsewhere. One way this is true is symbolized by the little, metal sign that hangs out in front of many Episcopal churches. It reminds me of a welcome mat before the door to a home.

This symbol of hospitality points at something larger. For example, consider the Church's central act of worship -- a meal. Jesus infuriated the religious establishment by eating with the riffraff. The hospitality of Jesus is such that riffraff and sinners are guaranteed a place at his Table. Unfortunately, most groups of Christians have higher standards than Jesus.

For many groups of Christians the Church is less a home than a club. In a home you don't get any choice about eating with your siblings. They get to eat with you, and you have to eat with them, like it or not, because of a microscopic, invisible, unwitnessed, genetic history connecting you and them to your parents. You and your siblings both are welcome -- and there is nothing you or they can do about it. We may have high expectations for one another, but there are no standards about who is welcome.

But in a club there are standards and rules about who gets to participate. ("Jesus may have eaten with the riffraff, but WE have standards!") For some groups of Christians you are not invited to the Table unless you joined their particular institution. Other groups of Christians don't want you to come unless you're "worthy" -- whatever that means. (I have yet to meet ANYONE "worthy!") Other groups of Christians won't eat with you if you serve the same beverage Jesus served, or if you read a different translation than they read, or if you practice worship in some way they don't like, don't understand, or feel competent to judge as inadequate, or even if you find spiritual meaning in different symbolic gestures, clothing and acts than do they.

It's true that I love the liturgy, the aesthetics, the order, the reasonable approach to things, the greater freedom in worship, the freedom from fighting fundamentalists, and the wonderful centrality of the Gospel that I experience in the Episcopal Church. But the real reason why I became an Anglican was that I was looking for a spiritual home -- an ethos and a way of worship that welcomes all to the ancient and ongoing Feast of the Lamb.

Grace and Peace to you,
Rick Laribee+