Student Spiritual Biography Series

Installment 1 - Lincoln Earle-Centers

I am entering my second hybrid/remote year of the Christian Community Seminary priest training.  The first year of instruction, discipleship, fellowship, prayer, and growth on my path towards the priesthood was profound for me.  I began with an unfamiliar sense of calling; my heart yearning towards ‘a becoming’ that was mysterious and out of sight.  A call towards a deepening Christian life.  Towards being a servant of Spirit and of my wider human family.  There were so many questions and reservations; about family, work, home, this movement, and the mystery of priesthood as a vocation.  The call was strong, and I had deep trust in the unfolding, but it felt like exploring a possibility.  I finished last year with a dawning sense of purpose and resolve. I still can't see around the corner of the practicalities and details in front of me, but the sense of calling towards this vocational life feels clear. It doesn't make sense, on many practical levels, but the reservations and concerns have taken on a different character for me, where I'm curious about how they will be integrated and overcome, rather than wondering if they are the reasons this is not exactly my path.  I feel called to being a spiritual shepherd for others, to being a practitioner of our sacraments, and as an emissary of this impulse for religious renewal. 

Having said all that, I don't have the feeling that I am pursuing the outcome of becoming a Christian Community priest. I have deep faith that if I take one step at a time the results will unfold as they need to. I feel curious and interested in that direction, but my experience of leaning into a sense of calling is one of surrender, not of pursuit. Following a sense of calling is unlike any other experience or decision I have ever made. And it's interesting, that the more I feel faithful and surrendering, the more I feel a sense of empowerment and agency at the same time. Some part of me thinks that should be a contradiction.  This dynamic of the difference between going with the flow, and pursuing something with my will-forces has always been a point of internal wrestling for me. The nature of my wrestling has changed this past year.  I have found a deep peace towards submitting to God’s will, and that submission doesn’t take on the character of disappearing from my own story and getting out of my own way, but of stepping more fully than ever into my own sovereignty by desiring an alignment of my will with the will of God.

I used to think that submission meant losing agency.  I’m coming to understand that submission is a gesture towards sacrifice that opens many more doors than it shuts.  And more importantly, that the doors that are shut are actually not doors I want to enter anyway, and the doors that are opened are doors full of promise and hope.  For me, submitting to the orientation that "not my will, but Your will be done” has been towards strengthening and clarity.  I reflect on the roles in life that I have submitted myself to: parenting, marriage, work, prayer.  Each of these are anchored in steadfast commitment, and subordination of my self-centered preferences and tendencies.  The activity involved, through routine, over long periods of time, has served me and those around me well.  I have learned a lot about the difference between submission and subjugation.  More than anything I have found the line between them to have more to do with attitude than circumstance.  When I am faced with something challenging I can take it on with goodwill, and give myself over to meeting the challenge, or I can resent the hardship and bitterly or halfheartedly go through the motions.  I never gave my life over to parenting, marriage, work, or prayer; they have each fructified and enlivened my life.  Somehow I was concerned that “giving my life over to God” would mean losing something precious to me, some independence.  But I am finding, more and more, that submitting to God is not a relinquishing, but a replenishing.  I have the growing sense that “I once was lost, but now I’m found.” And the beautiful thing is that this replenishing flows not only deep into the reservoir of my own heart, but right back into the commitments that I hold so dear, of family, work, and prayer.  I am so grateful for the impulse of our movement for religious renewal, that we center our Christian convictions around freedom, and the unfolding developmental journey of humanity.  These are key for me in coming to an experience of healthy submission towards the highest orientation I can imagine.

I didn’t grow up going to church, and always identified as being spiritual but not religious. My feeling when I would occasionally find myself in church was that it was stifling. I found ritual and the idea of religious rules and dogma off-putting. I had an aversion to the idea of being God-fearing or subservient as having anything to do with reverence or devotion.  Even just worshiping indoors troubled me. I wanted to find God in the world; in nature and in other people. Many of the adults I grew up around had a similar outlook, with various forms of communing with the divine in the world. I was exposed to an eclectic collection of beliefs and practices. I felt affronted at the notion of being preached at from any sort of pulpit. “Who are you to tell me what this or that means? Who are you to judge? Who are you to interpret the great meaning and wisdom from the past?”   

I met the work of Rudolf Steiner as a young man, and resonated deeply with the cosmological framework. I felt so connected with most of what I read, though I began to feel confronted by the centrality of Christ in the material, and I kept wondering “what is this doing here?” I had hang-ups about Jesus and the Bible. Wasn’t the Bible tainted by all the bias of translation, and what to emphasize or leave out? I could relate to Christ as a spiritual being of love, and to a balancing force between the excesses of Lucifer and Ahriman. What did Christ have to do with Jesus? And what about all the problems with Christianity? Weren’t there terrible people throughout history, doing awful things in the name of Jesus, and hiding behind some front of religious righteousness? What right did anyone have to proselytize to others about truth and meaning? Weren’t people all over the world, throughout history, having Christianity pressured or coerced onto them? What about all the wisdom and truth of other spiritual traditions that were threatened by a sinister combination of evangelism and colonialism? All this stirred within me, and I resisted Christianity.

Aversion to church softened into an interest in the peace and strength others found in their religious lives of conviction, fellowship, and worship. Over the years my family and I had experience of spiritual fellowship through community celebrations of seasonal festivals, and sacred song groups. And for years we had a congregational home in the Unitarian Universalist Church, where the lack of expectations and rules appealed to my sense of spiritual autonomy. I appreciated the guiding values and principles, without a heavy hand. No condemnation for this or that; an open mind towards other spiritual paths. I enjoyed the communal sense of honoring a spiritual dimension, and of the congregation being a mix of people from different religious and non-religious backgrounds and orientations. Years ago now, a growing sense of disconnection set in. Some of this related to feeling that a consequence of being so open to all ideas and beliefs meant that there was an aversion to talking about Christ or God, and that in the process of exploring and honoring other traditions there was a loss of identity about what our own tradition was. Accompanying this was the expression of moral superiority around principles of inclusion, compassion, and tolerance actually tending towards an uncomfortable inversion for me, where a counterproductive spirit of social justice activism became prominent. I felt alienated, and drawn to a more overtly Christian worship.

It has only been in the last few years that identifying as a Christian doesn’t feel riddled with caveats.  I found points of entry through anthroposophical Holy Nights practices, and exploring different Christian churches.  After spending some time exploring a UCC congregation with my family, where the theology was still familiarly liberal, but there was an embracing of Christian identity, I came to realize that my social and political sensibilities were also shifting.  I have always identified as alternative and independent, but I was awakening to how insulated in liberal/progressive culture I was immersed in.  In the past that was a comfortable fit.  It became increasingly less so.  As I started to lose my community bearings, I became active in an organization called Braver Angels, that works to bridge social and political divides and address polarization and the descent towards animosity and contempt that partisan identity politics tends towards.  In this journey of self reflection and new friendships, I have found a new appreciation and affinity with conservative culture; including more conservative oriented Christianity.  As I have been exploring my religious life, as a guest in many diverse congregations I have come to appreciate the unique attributes that draw me towards the Christian Community.  Along with my appreciation for the emphasis on freedom in faith and the integration of a frame that considers human development, I am drawn to the liturgical service itself, and the celebrations of the calendar of the year.

I first encountered Christian Community service at 19 as a young co-worker at Camphill Village Kimberton Hills. Though intrigued, and with some feeling of connection, I found it unappealing then.  It felt overly somber and ritualistic; but a seed was planted. It was another 19 years before I re-met the service, and I immediately felt like I had come home.  It was striking that a service I had all but forgotten felt so immediately familiar and important to me.  As I have become more familiar with the service this feeling grows.

Lincoln Earle-Centers, from Vermont USA, is a student in the ‘Knowing Christ’ cohort, beginning his second year off site, in the distance learning program. Lincoln is a professional arborist, and business owner. He lives with his wife Liza, and 13 year old daughter Marissa. He has two sons who are out in the world; one a Marine serving overseas, and the other in university in Chicago.

- This is a blog entry by The Seminary of the Christian Community in North America.  These are posted weekly by the student blog team of Athena Masilungan, Nicole Reinhart, and Lincoln Earle-Centers.  For more information about our seminary, see the website: www.christiancommunityseminary.ca and for more video/audio content check out the Seminary’s Patreon page: www.patreon.com/ccseminary/posts.  

The views expressed in this blog entry are the views of its author, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Seminary, its directors, or the Christian Community.