Father Eric Williams: A Life in the Priesthood

Today we'll hear from Father Eric Williams, the priest of St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Rochester. He's going tell us about his journey being an Episcopal priest. This interview is more of a conversation, so you'll hear a lot more of me in this interview, and it's a longer interview than most of my others.

So, I hope you enjoy this episode, and you get a lot out of it.

Thank you for joining me today.

#bible #biblestudy #priest #religious #retreat #prayer #god #jesus #meditation #podcast #love

For more information about me and my work, please visit www.brianneturczynski.com or www.lovingtheimperfect.com

Transcript

Intro: 

Welcome to Loving the Imperfect Podcast, a show for seekers of deeper contemplation. I'm Brianne Turczynski. For 10 years I've been studying offerings from holy teachers and holy texts. I'm a journalist who has listened to the stories of many people throughout the years, and I continue to be captivated by the stories of how God nudges and directs us, either by closing doors or opening them. 

So, join me as we listen to these extraordinary stories and become witnesses to the truth of love Hello and welcome to Loving the Imperfect.

Today we'll hear from Father Eric Williams, the priest of St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Rochester. He's going tell us about his journey being a priest. This interview is more of a conversation, so you'll hear a lot more of me in this interview, and it's a longer interview than most of my others.

So, I hope you enjoy this episode, and you get a lot out of it. 

Thank you for joining me today.

Brianne: Thank you, Father Eric, for joining me today.

Fr. Eric: It's a great pleasure. 

Brianne: I always wonder this about priests. What was the first time that you realized you wanted to be a priest? 
 
 

Fr. Eric: Sure. So, I grew up in Los Angeles at the church that my parents joined. That church also started a parochial school. So, just before I started kindergarten, they started an elementary school through the parish. And so when I was ready for kindergarten, I went to the church school. So, I was baptized in an Episcopal church. I was born in an Episcopal hospital in Los Angeles—that's a whole other long story—baptized at this Episcopal church that my parents attended the rest of their lives until they died. 

I went to school at that church school. The rector of the church was the headmaster of the school. His wife was the librarian. They were given an apartment building that they kind of rehabbed into a school, and each year they would add on another grade level.

So, the first year there was kindergarten, and then when I joined the kindergarten, they had a kindergarten and a first grade all the way up to sixth grade. That school is still flourishing. They built their own building and got more property and are doing great. 
 
 

I was immersed in the Episcopal church.

We had church every Sunday, and then every day we had our assembly at the school where we would recite the 23rd Psalm, the hundredth Psalm, the Lord's Prayer. Maybe the Apostles Creed, I can't remember. We would march over to the church for a lesson once a week with the rector. I was an acolyte.

I sang in the men and boys’ choir at that church. And so, I was thoroughly steeped in the church. And I remember round about the time I was in maybe seventh grade, sixth grade, I remember talking to the assistant, minister at our church, a priest by the name of Michael Engles. I remember his name, and I asked him, I said, how do you know if God is calling you to be a priest? And he smiled at me, and he said, well, kind of patted me on the head, I think, and said, you don't have to worry about it right now, but that was really the first time I remember thinking that I might be called to be a priest, was right around sixth grade or so.

And then I had another time of discernment. As you prepare to graduate high school, you go through all these exercises like, what do you want do with your life? And I remember at my high school, which was another Episcopal school, so I went through Episcopal school from kindergarten through 12th grade. I was, I mean, really indoctrinated. But you do all these tests and then they had a career day, right? We're going to send out the kids to see what they might like to do. And so, I listed three things I might like to do as a profession. And so, this was maybe 11th grade, this is what I was thinking.

I want to either be a priest or a teacher or a journalist. And so, the school looked at that and probably thought, well, that's terrible. And so, they sent me to EF Hutton to shadow a guy who was at an investment banker. I think they were trying to cure me. They figured I was already getting lots of connection with clergy and teachers. And they probably didn't have a journalist, but I always thought that was funny that their solution for me was to go to investment banking. 

But that's when I was also thinking about priesthood, going to college, and then I thought about it again through college. When I was graduating from college, I had an interview, to meet with the bishop of Los Angeles, Robert Rusack. And this was close to when I was graduating from college. I think I was home for spring break or something, made an appointment just to see what the process was like.
 I had an appointment, I was getting ready to go out the door and the secretary called from the bishop's office and said, the bishop's not feeling well today. He'll have to reschedule. Well, I read in the paper the next day that he died. So, I thought I have killed the bishop. The very thought of me going into the priesthood has finished off this wonderful bishop. So, instead I talked to my priest in Massachusetts. I was in college in Massachusetts, and I had worked at the Diocesan summer camp and met with the bishop there and decided that I'd like to take a few years to try something else.

He said, if you can do something else, you should do something else. And so, I taught in a boarding school for three years, still discerning. Those three years really confirmed that what I felt called to do was go to seminary. That's an incredibly long answer to a short question, but it was a persistent sense of call that started when I was around sixth grade, and it was renewed in high school and then in college. Then after college, that's when I decided to, to go through with it and go to seminary. And I was sponsored by, not Los Angeles where I was from, but Western Massachusetts, where I had been living and working and had relationships there. And that turned out to be great. Mm-hmm. 

Brianne: So, was there any difference once you got into that profession, of like, wait, this is different than what I thought?

Fr. Eric: Oh, of course. I had, no idea what being a priest was like when I first felt these inklings, I was surrounded by priests all the way through from my parish. All the different clergy we had, some were great, some were not so great. But I was always impressed with their way of life and their attitude.

Like they just tended to be people that I felt comfortable with, the clergy that I got to know working at the Diocesan summer camp in Massachusetts, the priest at the college where I was at the parish church there, I got to have relationships with all kinds of clergy for years and years.

And they were people that I thought, hey, those are really cool people. They're, there's something about them that I find compelling and attractive. I think it was more that than any sense of like, what's the job description of a priest? I don't think I had any clue about that. I think it was more like this is the kind of person I want to be and these are the people that are closest to that.

I had teachers like that. There were lots of other people. 

My dad, I'm sure would've loved it if I had followed him into medicine. But I just did not have much aptitude or interest in medicine or in science or biology. There were some great people in every field, but it just seemed like the ones I was most interested in modeling myself on were other clergy, 
 
 Brianne: Because they spoke your language, they were part of the community that you wanted to be in? 
 
 Fr. Eric: Yeah. Something even more sort of ineffable, I guess. It was just a quality that they had, and I've thought a lot since then about that. And it's a life where you're really connected to people and people's concerns.

There's also a kind of academic piece where you're studying, and they tended to be very sort of learned and wise people. They had a quirky sense of humor, a lot of them. So, it was all of those things I think that were very compelling to me.
 Brianne: And do you think that you were different than the other kids that you went to school with, maybe, that weren't so attracted to… 
 
 

Fr. Eric: Oh, yeah. I was, I was an oddball, I think all the time. I did sports and I didn't all the normal kid stuff, but I loved reading, and I loved fantasy and science fiction novels, and I was always kind of living in my own little world. So, I was always a little bit out of step, I think with some of the “normal” kid activities that people were doing and interested in. 
 
 

We were strange. It was Los Angeles, right? And all the culture of surfing and Hollywood and image and all that. And I had friends who were really into all that stuff. And I was in this weird little enclave. My parents were easterners, my dad had been born in Great Britain and Wales but had grown up in New York. My mom was from Buffalo, New York, so, and we went to this Episcopal church and we kind of lived an east coast bubble within Los Angeles. And I found that kind of interesting too. So, I felt like I was always a little fish out of water no matter where I was. When I went to college in Massachusetts, I was a fish out of water again, because I was a California kid in Massachusetts, but when I was in LA I didn't feel like a LA person. I didn't click with the, the whole attitude and culture of la I've had more time on the East Coast for sure too. 

I haven't lived in California since I left home at 17. I've been a easterner, and now I'm gradually making my way west here in Michigan. 
 
 

Brianne: That's true. Is there anyone that has influenced you, like a theologian that you really followed or, someone in your life that influenced you growing up? 
 
 

Fr. Eric: So, yes, as I mentioned, I had all these wonderful clergy that influenced me. The chaplain at my high school was a wonderful guy.

He was a huge influence on me. John Gill, he passed away, I don't know, a decade or so ago, but, just a lovely man, really interested in history and he never married. He was a short man, and he had these giant Great Dane dogs. If you know the story Goodbye, Mr. Chips. 
 
Brianne: I read the book. Yeah. 

Fr. Eric: It's a great story about a school and this is Mr. Chips who's kind of like the soul, the heart and soul of the school. Father Gil was the heart and soul of our high school. He'd been there forever, and he'd given his life basically to that institution.

And so, he was a huge influence when I was in college. Now for anyone who's not part of St. Philips, it won't make any difference. But a parishioner here, his uncle was the organist at the Episcopal Church where I went to college, and he was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the college.

He was a great big influence, because I loved music, and he was a great teacher of sort of the great tradition of Anglican Episcopal music. I sang in his choir for seven years. I was there for four years of college. Plus, after college, I taught nearby at the school while I was preparing to go to seminary.

And we got to be very good friends. He helped me connect to this wider world of church music, which was hugely influential. I'd grown up singing in a church choir, and so it was part of my background. Then when I was in seminary, as an Episcopalian, we hear the Bible read a lot in church, but I had never studied the Bible and I didn't really understand the Bible, and I found the Bible confusing and even a little off-putting.

What attracted me to church was the music and the community. It wasn't the scriptures or the preaching. We had a priest when I was growing up who was very learned, but also boring. Long, long intellectual sermons every Sunday that I found almost intolerable.

So, it was a revelation to me when I went to seminary to be introduced to the Bible in a way where it began to make sense, to learn how it was written, to learn the history of it, to learn to really delve into it. I studied Greek so I could read the New Testament in the original language. I studied Hebrew so I could read the Old Testament in the original language.

And I just fell in love with the Bible. So that was a huge turning point for me in my spiritual life and pays dividends to this day. I love studying and teaching about the Bible. It's my absolute favorite thing to do. 

And the last person I would mention, in seminary I took a course—I was at General Seminary in New York City, but there was a Protestant seminary just up the road by Columbia University called, Union Seminary.

And I took a couple courses there, one on Irenaeus of Lyon, who was a second century theologian. That was a phenomenal course. And at the same time, I took a course on a 20th century, theologian named Karl Barth, who was a reformed theologian in Switzerland, and not someone most Episcopalians connect with.

But I found the theology of Karl Barth Breathtaking. He wrote a huge series called The Church Dogmatics, in which he tried to basically cover all Christian theology. And what he did, and he was a pastor at the time, I don't know how he did this, he's like in a little church writing, the church dogmatics.

But he would go through all these different topics like, what do we really believe about God? What do we believe about Jesus? What do we believe about salvation, about creation? And then he would go through and in the footnotes were two thirds of each page. And the footnotes were: this is what the early church father said, this is what Martin Luther said, or Augustine said, this is what Calvin said. It was a history. Reading his church Dogmatics was a course in the history on Christian theology. And the guy who taught it was a Methodist who attended an Episcopal church. Fascinating guy. But I loved that. For the first time I found systematic theology breathtaking. 

I had a wonderful semester where I would make a whole pot of coffee. And have a whole packet of peppered farm cookies. And I would just read Karl Barth's theology, drink coffee, and eat cookies. It was absolutely phenomenal. And so, I fell in love with theology through that experience. 

Brianne: Was it so compelling to you because you were able to connect the dots for the first time through history maybe, or…
 
 

Fr. Eric: Yeah. I approach everything through history. I was a history major in college. I tend to think of things historically, even when I teach about the Bible. I'm looking at it historically more than anything else. And I liked that the church dogmatics was historical, but it also gave me, an idea about, okay, what is it that we believe about God and one of the topics that Karl Barth really delves into is this idea that we want God to conform to our preconceived ideas, right? So, Catholics want a Catholic God and Protestants want a Protestant God, and Muslims want a Muslim God. We all want God to be basically agreeing with us. And he really wrote about the freedom of God to be God.

And then our job was to essentially give glory and honor to God without trying to impose ourselves on God. Anyway, I don't know, I'm not describing it very well, and a true Barth scholar would be aghast at what I'm saying. But I found it really for the first time liberating, because I hadn't thought about that.

I only grew up with the God that I knew from Sunday school classes and from, you know, reading and so forth. So I found that really helpful. 

Brianne: So to be detached from your idea? Is that what it was? 

Fr. Eric: Kind of. Yeah, yeah, stepping back and, and really trying to analyze why do I believe the things that I believe. I guess that's what I would say. Oh, it helped me reflect on what had I grown up believing and is that true? And what's that grounded in and how does the scripture really inform that? And what are other ideas that have been held through history? There's this Jewish tradition of wrestling with the Bible and theology, and I love that because that's what I was doing in seminary.

I was wrestling, with these ideas. So much so that I was taking a systematic theology class in seminary, and the professor hated Barth. He was a totally opposite person. And so, I would sit through these, the systematic theology classes, and I really struggled with everything the guy was saying and so he asked me to be a teaching assistant the next year for this class. And I was like, I literally cannot, I can't do it. Because I was arguing with every paper I wrote, I was arguing with what the professor was saying, and that was somehow liberating that there was room to have these kinds of different ideas.

Brianne: Yeah. He must have liked you though, to ask you to be [his teaching assistant]. 

Fr. Eric: Oh yeah. I was pleasant and I was a good student. So, yeah, seminary was fascinating because there were a variety of people from lots of walks of life. So, I met my wife in seminary, at the time women had only recently been ordained in the Episcopal church.

It'd been a decade or so, but there was still a pent-up demand. So, a lot of older women who had been blocked from ordination were finally getting to go to seminary and they were coming in with a lot of life experience, but pretty far removed from their college experience. My wife and I and other students in our class were kind of a strange group, because we were mostly younger and more recently in college and much more sort of academically fresh, I would say.

Some of the older students were really intimidated about being back in school and having to write papers and it was all scary. We were like, we've been doing this for a while. My wife and I had gone to very rigorous colleges, academically, and so seminary wasn't a challenge in that way. It was fun. 

So that was the other part, I get to be a full-time student, focused on the things that matter the most to me, like discovering the Bible, discovering theology. Church history, it was a really magical time for me.

A couple other people in childhood that were theological influences that I don't want to forget about and those were fiction writers, one was Madeleine L’Engle, who was a lifelong Episcopalian and wrote A Wrinkle in Time, was her most famous book, but wrote a lot of books and her books are steeped in spirituality. That was incredibly formative to me, her ideas about God framed in kind of a fantastical way. The other was CS Lewis who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia as a kind of allegory of the Christian faith, so those were really, powerful. And then the Lord of the Rings trilogy by Tolkien, who was a devout Roman Catholic he and CS Lewis were friends, but he didn't like how CS Lewis made things so allegorical, so transparently, Christian, the Lord of the Rings is much more a saga in which there is spirituality, but it's much more under the surface. So all of those books, I would say were incredibly formative in my spiritual life too. 

Brianne: Yeah, that's good. And I think you mentioned once in a sermon your grandmother, who had the Bible and her fingers… [had worn through the pages of her prayerbook].

Fr. Eric: Yep. Two women were incredibly formative. My grandmother, my father's Welsh mother who had come from Wales and her love of singing, I could still see her in church all dressed up with her hair net. And very singing very properly and singing with this warble in her voice. These great Welsh hymns. So that love of music and the spirituality of music.

And then my mother's Roman Catholic, great aunt from Buffalo was the one who said her rosary every day. She prayed for everyone in the family every day. And her prayer book, the pages had been worn through by her fingers. 

Brianne: Gosh, that was so crazy. 

Fr. Eric: Which is a, a powerful image to me of a spiritual life of the daily faithfulness of her prayers. 

Brianne: Yeah, I think the imagery of that stuck in my memory. That would make a good series of photographs for an art gallery or something. 

Fr. Eric: I wish I still had that prayer book. I don't know what happened to it. I kept some of her things. I have one of her rosaries, but I don't know what happened to that prayer book.

Brianne: Have you ever had, any mystical experiences yourself? 

Fr. Eric: Yes, and I will say I believe everybody has mystical experiences. I believe it's part of the human condition. We just don't know how to deal with them in our very rational Western culture. I think other cultures may be better at figuring out how to integrate them into life, but, yes, I've had several over the years that I can identify. Some I'm not so sure about. You know, there's times where you're like, was it a mystical experience or was it something else? Was it a dream? 

One of the powerful times for me was my actual confirmation. I was at the cathedral in Los Angeles, which is now destroyed. There was an earthquake that damaged it, so they tore it down. I actually have one piece of wood from the organ screen from that, cathedral somewhere in my house.

I had been going to the confirmation classes. I think we had a very sort of perfunctory class. Our rector, the same guy who preached these like 45 minute intellectual sermons. He taught the class. It was several board teenagers and me who was like into it. It was not a great class, I will say that.

But at the end, we all were presented. We went down to the cathedral with hundreds. In those days, hundreds of kids were confirmed together from various parishes all at the cathedral. It was an amazing experience. The bishop, who was the guy that later I was supposed to have the interview with for ordination.

He's also the one who gave me my high school diploma. Oh wow. Um, he was confirming. And so I went up and when he laid hands on me and I'm there with hundreds and hundreds of people, when he laid hands on me, something changed inside me. And I just remember this powerful, overwhelming experience of suddenly realizing that the God I had been talking about in Sunday school and confirmation class, praying to, for years and years as a child, that this God was a real, being a real person, that this God knew me and cared about me was a life-changing experience.

And in my memory it happened right when I was confirmed, which is kind of cool. Very sacramental. So that was one that I point to as a really mystical experience. 

When I was in college, I spent a year in Wales, I wanted to learn more about my father's heritage. And so I spent a year at the University of Wales, and the first couple months I was there, I was very lonely.

I eventually made wonderful friends, lifelong friends, but I remember one night I was just feeling utterly alone. There were, you know, I couldn't really call my parents. There was a payphone, but you had to put these 10 pence pieces in it, you know, so you'd throw coins in it and you'd get like one minute of conversation, it was very awkward.

I was just feeling utterly alone and I was lying in bed and I just felt, what seemed to me, and maybe this is too poetic or whatever, but it just felt like I was surrounded by wings. And enfolded in the loving embrace of God. And I felt or heard or experienced the words that I was gonna be okay.

I felt it and knew it in that moment that I wasn't alone, that I was gonna be okay. Right. That was a powerful experience, again, of the reality. I think that's what mystical experiences are, these experiences of being suddenly in the presence of God in a powerful and immediate and even tangible way.

It's not just an idea or a concept, but it's the real person that we're in contact with. And then I would say other times, I made my first personal confession. You know, in the Episcopal Church we have the general confession during our Sunday Eucharist. But there's also the opportunity, if you wish to have private personal confession with a priest.

And so I worked with a spiritual director in seminary, over a period of months and eventually made my confession to him. And I had basically worked through a book that he had given me and I made like life patterns all the times I felt like I'd been separated from God. And there was some stuff in there that was really hard to say out loud to another person. 

And it was holy week when I made my confession. And I remember just this incredible feeling of liberation and freedom. I felt like I was a hundred pounds lighter when I finished that, and he pronounced the absolution, so that was amazing. And then the other time I would say is any time I am singing sacred music.

So, I do it hymns in church anthems. I've sung in a variety of choirs from childhood through college, through community choirs. I sing now with the choir at Christ church Gross Points. They have a community choir that I sing with, and when I'm in a concert, even sometimes in rehearsal, and my body and my mind and my soul are all focused on this sacred text or music.

It's overwhelming. It's just that I'm outside my body. I am in the presence of God in a different way. Music unlocks those mystical experiences for me more consistently than anything else. Like nature can, right? A beautiful sunset or something, but for me it's music that really gets me in touch with that mystical side. 

Brianne: Have you ever sung anything by Hildegard? I've heard that singing her music especially is like, whoa. 

Fr Eric: She's amazing, because she's one of those people that was brilliant in so many ways. [She was] a theologian leading this monastery composing poetry. She just did it all. 

Brianne: Yeah. I'm reading a book about her by Matthew Fox. He has another book about sacred masculinity that I wanted to check out. 

Fr. Eric: I met Matthew Fox. I went to a workshop with him many years ago in Buffalo. He had us getting in touch with the earth. He is all at the Creation spirituality. We had to take our shoes off and parade…we were at a hospice campus and all these, middle aged Episcopals are taking our shoes off and doing circle dances in the field next to this place. It was really funny. 

Brianne: So obviously like everybody, you have a lot to do here. Being a priest, you have a lot on your plate all the time, and you have to keep with your own spirituality at the same time. That’s very hard. What do you do to keep yourself filled up when you are giving so much? 

Fr. Eric: That's a great question. I've been through periods of my life. I think the way you phrased it in the email was about spiritual dryness. And I was thinking about that when I was, ordained.

I was an assistant in a big church and learning the ropes for a couple of years. Then I was vicar of a mission church, which means I was the only priest, but in a small church; all wonderful experiences. And then I got called with Susan to a bigger sort of program size church with an endowment and a staff, and very busy.

And I started becoming a workaholic, trying to keep up with everything, but really trying to do everything and was really on the edge of burnout, whatever burnout is. You know, there's a lot of debate about that. But I was getting there, and I went very fortuitously. I was invited to a retreat that the Episcopal Church offers for clergy.

To try to keep them from burning out. It was called CREDO. And they ask, they take you away for a week with other clergy and mentors and you focus on your basically rule of life and you look at your financial, spiritual, vocational, and physical health and try to develop a plan for yourself. And that was revolutionary for me.

One of the things I learned through that was I had been neglecting my physical health. I had been putting on a lot of weight. I was not exercising. I don't have time for that, you know, I've gotta do all this other stuff. And the key to my spiritual health, ironically, was not praying more, but it was attending to my own physical health.

So I joined the Y, which was right across the street. One of my parishioners led a spin class, so I got into bicycling. And that led me on a journey towards really getting in touch with my physical health. And I found something, the more time I put into my own physical health, the more energy I had for my actual ministry. 

It was a weird sort of counterintuitive discovery that the key to my spiritual health was focusing on physical. Because we're all, holistic, right? The body, mind, and spirit are connected, which, duh. But I hadn't figured that out, so, that was a huge piece for me and I've tried to hold onto that.

I've tried to go back. So, singing I mentioned was a way that I connect to the mystical side. So singing and physical activity are the two keys that keep me spiritually rejuvenated. There are other practices. Of Bible study. I love, you know, I still love to read the Bible of some kinds of centering prayer.

I'm not always good about that, but I do find I'm, I keep my even keel, keep things in balance and I'm much more spiritually grounded if I am attending to, those aspects of my life. So, a little unusual, but yeah. 

Brianne: And I think you mentioned one time to me that you like to do centering prayer as you're exercising.

Fr. Eric: Yes, that's exactly right. It keeps my body occupied. Yeah. Because I get fidgety, right. If I'm just sitting and praying, like I go on retreat and I'm like, I need to go for a walk or ride my bike or, and then my mind is free. My spirit is free to, to pray in a different way. So yeah, I would say for me that is connected.

And I sometimes ruin that by listening to podcasts or multitasking. I'm working out and doing that and I should just be in the moment. 

Brianne: That's really hard because it's sometimes boring for me on the elliptical. 

Fr. Eric: It's like we live in our minds too much. So one of the struggles I have with my spiritual life is how to quiet my mind to allow the practice of the presence of God, right? That's this idea of really allowing myself to just rest in the presence of God and my mind's always racing into something else. So how do I manage that?

Sometimes music helps to tune out one part of my mind and free the rest or exercise, but I've really tried different strategies for allowing myself to just be present. Because it's not easy. I think it's getting easier as I get older, but I wouldn't say it's still a challenge.

And I get bored with my own thoughts sometimes. I'll be like, okay, I'm just going to reflect and, I start going round, like, the hamster wheel goes round and round and I feel like I'm not getting anywhere. 

Brianne: Sometimes I'll listen to a podcast and if I hear someone else talking about something that I'm kind of working through, then it helps me work through that. So I'll tune them out. They'll be going, but I'll be tuning them out and working through my own problem. 

Fr. Eric: So this is funny too. Our preaching professor said, “What you don't realize when you're preaching is that people are preaching their own sermons in their own heads. You'll say something and then it'll trigger something for them, and they're no longer listening to you. They're off on another tangent”. I find I do that sometimes too. I've come to a place where I've stopped thinking I have to be something that I'm not, I'm coming to more acceptance, this is the way it's working for me.

I think this is part of the aging process. I'm okay with things working out the way they work out. You know, if I don't have to do everything in a cookie cutter way or experience things in the same way, it's okay. 

Brianne: That's good to be sort of detached from expectations. 

Fr. Eric: Yes. That’s a really good way to put it. Expectations are often the source of so much stress and suffering and so letting go of that I think in this phase of my life. Part of my spiritual task is how do I just come to a place of acceptance of other people. I'm not going to change them. 

I'm running out of time to suddenly become this heroic person I maybe imagined I could be when I was 16. Right. So maybe I ought to be happy with who I am right now. What would that look like? 

There's something about the dying to self. Father John has talked a lot about this, but it's really deep in the Christian spiritual tradition.

There's a dying to self that has to happen before we can truly be reborn in Christ. Yeah. And for me it's wrestling with expectations, with this desire to please other people with this desire to be something or achieve something and once we kind of can get to the point of letting go, and I don't think it can really happen until you reach a certain age. Maybe some people are just naturally gifted, but for me anyway, it's been like, okay, I'm kind of exhausted from trying to prove myself to everybody. So what if I just didn't? I'm a lot happier. 

I can experience God a little bit different. There is something magical about that, letting go of this, need to be something else or achieve something or prove something. Right. 

Brianne: I hope I get to that point.

Fr. Eric: Well, me too. It's probably a lifelong process.

You know what used to push my buttons was getting my college alumni magazine and I would read about all the achievements of my classmates. And I was like, wow, I am crap. Like I'm not doing anything. And then I was into comparison and competition and that pulled me into a very bad spiritual space.

What helped me was going to my 20th college reunion. Susan was at General Convention, so I brought the two kids and I was going like, it'll be fun, but I'm kind of intimidated to see all these impressive people. And everyone's like, you're a priest. That is fantastic. 

We had all come to the place where what seemed important 20 years before was flipped on its head. Now people were like, I want a life that has meaning and purpose and connectedness. I was like, well, maybe I haven't been on the wrong track. Maybe this was okay after all. 

Brianne: Yeah. It's hard, because as I'm like submitting work and stuff and then I get a rejection and that's the comparison. I'm always comparing myself to the people that did get into that magazine that did get into something.

Fr. Eric: I think it's hard in the creative pursuits. Yeah. because you're constantly being judged. Yeah. You know, if you're an actor, you didn't get the role, someone else got it. Or, you know, your poem got chosen, or your piece of writing or your music. Like, there's so much constant judgment and rejection. 

So, here's the paradox: We need ego health. We need to be so secure in ourselves because we have a sense of ego, healthy sense of ego, but then we also need to let go of our ego in order to make room for God. So, balancing that I think is really one of the secrets to spiritual life and to happiness and to fulfillment.

Can I be at peace with who I am and accept the rejections of life with a sense of I'm fine. How do we get to that point of peace? 

Brianne: I hope I get there someday with that. I know that my writing is good. I'm confident that I did my best here and hopefully someday somebody will read it and enjoy it. I don't get paid. I was looking at my bio, I was reading it to my son and he's like, that sounds pretty impressive, mom. And I'm like, yeah, and I didn't get paid for any of this.

Fr. Eric: In our culture, money is the sign of everything. That's what apparently seems to matter. Now we know deep down that's not the case. Money's important to pay for the essentials of life, but it shouldn't be the measure of our worth. And yet we elevate billionaires to this cult godlike status, which is absurd, even though the scriptures tell us that's exactly wrong. It’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a billionaire to enter the kingdom of heaven.

And yet you and I still measure ourselves partly by money. Because that's all around us and it's toxic. 

Brianne: It really is. I just feel bad because I feel like I'm not contributing, but I've spent all this time doing all this stuff, but I didn't contribute to my household, but I did. You know what I mean? But you're thinking of it in a monetary way…

Fr. Eric: That's right. 

Brianne: Not in the love I've given and what my kids can look back on and say, my mom did this, that's what they'll remember. Not the paycheck I brought home. 

Fr. Eric: Right. But we only figured this out at funerals, sadly.

Brianne: Exactly. 

Fr. Eric: It's like, oh. Well, that makes sense now. Duh. Right? 

Brianne: Yeah, exactly. What is your favorite Bible verse or story? 

Fr. Eric: This is really hard because at various times, there's so many great passages. One of the passages I come back to over and over is Romans chapter 8. Now, the whole of chapter eight is phenomenal. It's some of St. Paul's best theology and best writing. It's where he talks about nothing can separate us from the love of God. Neither death nor life. But the part that speaks to me is earlier in that chapter where he says:
 
 For all who are led by the spirit of God, our children of God, for you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you've received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, Abba, Daddy, father, it is that spirit bearing witness that we are children of God. And if children then heirs. Heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. 

Now why that speaks to me so deeply is because I'm adopted. Recently, this is a whole long story, which I won't go into in this podcast, but I was found by my birth mother about eight years ago.

And that was a whole journey to really understand her process of giving me up for adoption, which was a beautiful and very healing story, but in this case, I was really thinking about my adoptive parents who adopted me when I was an infant. So, I never knew any other parents. And this, when I read this, it just spoke to me so deeply of our relationship with God, that part of the theology of baptism is that God is formally adopting us and making us heirs with Christ.

So think about that. If Christ is the son of God, sitting at the right hand of God, right, with all the. Glory, everything under his feet, right? The ruler of the whole cosmos. We become brothers and sisters, the adopted brothers and sisters of Christ, given that same glory, which is an incredible thing. 

And I thought about being chosen by my parents to be adopted into their family. And I was given a wonderful life. They were wonderful parents and gave me every opportunity. I got to go to these wonderful Episcopal schools, travel and they were wonderful role models of a really positive life.

My dad was a physician, but a physician who really transformed the lives of people around him. And worked as a volunteer every Saturday at a clinic for poor children in South Central LA, just wonderful people. So this idea of the adoption as a key to our understanding of our relationship with God just touched me very deeply, as an adopted person. I get this. This is awesome.
 
 So I always come back to that one. And then the priest I worked for first when I was an assistant pastor, he shared this scripture with me as a kind of symbol of his approach to being a pastor, of being a priest. And that stuck with me in its 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, where Paul was talking about his own role as an apostle. And he says:
 
 Our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel. So, we speak not to please human beings, but to please God who tests our hearts, as you know, and as God as our witness, we never came with words of flattery, or with a pretext for greed, nor did we seek praise from other people, whether from you or from others. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you, that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us. 

There's something so tender—and Paul was an irascible guy, like I'm sure he was very difficult to get along with—but as he talks about his relationship with these churches, with the Thessalonians, with others, he's like, I wanted to share the gospel and myself, and the priest I worked for did that.

And that's kind of become an image for me, an icon for me of what I should be doing as a priest, sharing the gospel, but also sharing myself, it's probably why I tell a lot of personal stories in sermons and try to relate, my goal is to relate to people not as someone on high, giving wisdom down to lay people. I've never wanted to do that. What I've tried to do is say, Hey, we're in this together. And I want to share with you part of my journey and hope that's helpful. 
 
 So, I found this really, compelling. 

Brianne: I love your sermons. I think they are so relatable. I’ve been here since I was baptized as a baby, so I've heard a lot of sermons, and I like yours because they are like storytelling. 

And I love stories obviously. 

Fr. Eric: So, well, I think as I was sharing, you know, Madeleine Lel, CS Lewis, JR Tolkien, they're communicating through story. And I think it's the most effective way to communicate. I think we're wired as people, as human beings, we're wired for story. 

Brianne: And Matthew Fox, I was reading his introduction, the other day, and he said, you can't teach spirituality without experience. So experience helps us to teach it and talk about it, but experience helps us also to connect with people and that experience. 

Fr. Eric: So I'll give you another example of that because I think that's exactly right, when I was first ordained, I was trained in seminary to write out all my sermons. They even told us how to do it so you could read it and still kind of make eye contact. And so, when I was first ordained, that's what I did. Every Sunday I'd get up and read my sermon from the pulpit, and then I went to this little mission church in Lakeview, New York. And I was asking him, after a few months, I'm like, Hey, I'm new with this. you got to help me out. You know, what do you like, what do you don't like? I don't want to be going down the wrong path because it's the first time I'd been the priest in charge. And they're like, well it's all great, you know, we really like you. It's just one thing. Our old pastor used to just stand in the middle of the church of a very small mission church, just stand in the middle of the aisle and just talk to us during the sermon. 

And I went, oh crap. Yeah, I don't know how to do that. Like, I'm terrified to get up there with no notes. So, I said, well, I appreciate that. I'm going to try. And so, I kind of weaned myself off of preaching from a text. I would write out these index cards, and at first, I was like I'll just do an outline, kind of keep myself on track. But then I kept writing smaller and smaller because I really wanted to write it all in. I was holding this index card. And then I remember one Sunday I thought, heck with it. I'm going to try. So I stood up and I had worked through in my mind basically what the sermon was, but I just got up and preached and that was 30 years ago. 

Brianne: I don't know how you do it. 

Fr. Eric: And I've been trying it ever since. And it's really good for better or worse, right? A couple of times here I've read my sermon when I really wanted to get the wording just right. And there were a couple times when you get to Easter and I was just exhausted from Holy Week and I'm like, I don't think I got the brain power to do this, so I'm going to write it out. But for the most part, almost every Sunday I preach with no notes. 

Brianne: I can't believe you do that. It's crazy. I mean. I don't know. But that's the whole thing about like letting go of your expectations. 

Fr. Eric: Letting go. Right. It's not going to be as crafted. Right. You're a writer. You know that there's a lot of effort that goes into crafting language; [It] takes a lot of work. So, I had to let go of that and my need to get it right because the trade off in preaching is the connectedness, I think was one of the words you used. And so, what that little mission church people, what they were telling me was, we miss the connectedness. When you stand in the pulpit and read, we feel disconnected.

When you stand in the aisle, even if what you're saying isn't as polished, you know, erudite, we feel the connection and that's what we value. Okay. And so I think what's, what's really shifted in church life is that. I look back to the 19th century, you read some of these sermons, they're long. They're like my rector growing up. They're very intellectual. They're essays more than sermons. That's what people wanted then. They were expecting that. They like that. What people want today is connectedness. They want someone who can connect the world of the Bible with their real lives in a way that feels grounded and connected.

Brianne: I was wondering if you could offer a prayer to the listeners.

Fr. Eric: Sure. Well, let us pray. Gracious God, we thank you for all the blessings that you have bestowed upon us for this beautiful earth. All the people within it. We thank you for this community that Brianne is building through the technology of casting and for the deep and amazing privilege of sharing one another's stories, of grappling with the question of what it means to be a human being and especially to be a human being seeking a relationship with you.

Lord, thank you for all those who are listening to this podcast, that in some way the stories that they hear today and in other episodes will touch something in their lives, will bring about a moment of aha, or lead into a curiosity about a different path. We pray for those, Lord, in this world right now who are going through really hard times for the people we know in our lives who are ill or struggling with relationships with conflict. 

We pray for people in areas of the world that are in deep insecurity for the people of Ukraine, the people of Palestine and Gaza, for people in Africa and throughout the world who are dealing with political and food insecurity, economic vulnerability. Pray for the chaos of our political moment, praying, Lord, that your wisdom and your grace and your love will find their way into each person's heart and enable us to truly build a society and a community that is based on mutual respect, love, and a desire to build up rather than to tear down. 

So as we, turn off the podcast and go back to the rest of our lives, we pray for your grace, Lord, to be with us, to sustain us, to help us to speak and to act always grounded in your love, in Jesus Christ our savior. Amen. 

Brianne: Thank you. 

Fr. Eric: Thanks Brianne. 

Outro:

Thank you for joining me on Loving the Imperfect. Next time we'll hear from Terry Gonda, 

a devout Catholic who was fired from her position at a local Catholic church because of her marriage to a woman. We're going to hear from her about how an experience like that can enrich a person's spiritual life. So, I hope that you'll join me then. Thank you for joining me this time. Bye-bye.