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Here am I? The Angel Gabriel comes unto mary and re arrangers rearranges her future with one impossibility after another and with reckless assurance, she declares, here am I on Russia Shauna, just a couple of

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weeks ago, the jewish New Year, the Takeda the binding of Isaac of genesis 22 is red Abraham . They're also says, here am I First to his son Isaac and then to God being fully present

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to both. A few weeks ago Muslims on the Hajj pilgrimage approached the kaaba in mecca, crying out loud bike, Allah homa la bike. Here am I. Oh God! Here am I. In

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a few days ago Shia Muslims did the same at the shrine of imam Hussein in Karbala in southern Iraq la bike, yeah, Hussein, la bike. Here am I here, I stand here, I

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come. God calls us forth, we assert. But what does it require to recognize in all the cacophony of life? Such a call. It is often not clarion more like the coo of a dove

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among grackles. God hides a silver chalice here and there to call us home to call us together, we have to notice, but we need help. I grew up unchurched. I needed a lot of

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help. I was properly baptized as a squalling infant by a presbyterian minister in Presby Town. That's Princeton , New Jersey. Um, perhaps a sign, to be sure, a silver chalice hidden in my

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bags to some time. Call me home or not . But that was it. Soon after I was off to the Middle East, then to Canada than to Washington in Chapel Hill, then off to school

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, back and forth. During all these moving things , I had occasional exposures to church One school had a vespers service. I think I was 12 at the time, squirming kids and uncomfortable chairs trying to

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make the hour as interesting as possible without getting demerits . I was pretty stupid. I got the demerits . I graduated from that school with the poetry prize and the second highest number of demerits in my class

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. It is possible that by the time I got to college I could have recited the Lord's prayer, but I'm not sure in college I became became involved in the campus y a service organization and that led

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me to rallies against the war in Vietnam and Civil rights marches. Many of those in the why with me were motive. I'd motivated as much by religious sensibilities as political and that was something I noticed.

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Some were working on applications for conscientious objector status. Through them. I was lured into the halls of the religion department and there I can't. These were classes, though not church. There was no there

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were no in any moments here, am I? No the bikes. But here and there were gleams of a silver chalice hidden in the laundry lisa Blackstone friend of a friend called me, Father Bodman.

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I had no idea why, and I wondered what manner of greeting this might be. I found solace in the church occasionally, but only late at night in the Episcopal Chapel. A hidden and lonely place

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and holy place for me, but only when I was alone. It was like a stolen chalice, to which I had no right. But I could have not told you why. No enemy moments there

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, just the trouble. The adolescent soul. On a pilgrimage to somewhere. one Summer I drove across Canada in my hippy truck at a campground on Prince Edward Island. I spent the evening with some evangelical

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christians and didn't even know what an evangelical christian was . But there they were, and they laid the gospel on me. They told me that if I gave myself to jesus I would feel a fire in

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my heart. Later that night I did feel a fire in my heart. But it was because of the safety matches I had left in my shirt pocket . Nevertheless there was something very appealing about their surety

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. Not that they were saved, that language had no meaning for me, but they seem to know where they stood. Something had happened to them that transformed their lives, lives into something alive. My

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bike, Houma La bike. Here am I. Oh Lord, here am I. And there they were more moving, ironically was a drunk who preached to me in a Washington D. C. Jail

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cell. Obviously I had no way of escaping his ministry. Yeah, but his slurred raving was testimony , clear testimony. This man, half out of his wits, knew something and shouted something and preach

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to me his words, chalice, just wisdom. And I'd listen. Each glint of silver left its imprint. By the end of college, I was totally sold on religion. Not on faith, mind

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you, but on religion. Faith was a mystery . Ministers were a mystery and mostly not very exciting . Though. My sample size was small. I went to maine to build boats and then, on

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the advice of former religion professors applied to divinity schools . I chose Duke because it was one of the few places where the divinity school in the Department of Religion were on speaking terms. I chose an MdF

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program because it was an all purpose program. A sample plate. I could take courses in the religion department and everything else. three years of duke was enriching. I still didn't go to church. Three

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years of divinity school and I never went to church . No one invited me. I wonder why, maybe they presume. Would you have invited me to church? I might have gone. If someone had

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thought to invite me, why don't we invite people to our churches? Why are we not the enemy ? Moment for them? Here am I? For you? I have a challenge to show you you

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might find the home you have missed. I was a member of the Lacresha Mont feminist caucus. Mostly for the right reasons. This was sorry. Yeah . This was faith for me, marching against the

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wall against the war for civil rights, running the presses of the revolution late at night, committing committed to feminism. Even if it's wisdoms confused me, it was more it was important and it was right

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and it was good. It was the religion of the prophets, but without the faith of the prophets . We were a movement. I knew how to march, but not how to stand. Where did

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I stand? I asked myself from time to time , am I a christian. Now I could talk the theology of liberation history, bible ethics and of course world religions. But what him did my soul

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sing? I mostly avoided that question. The hon any question and moved on because I didn't know how to begin to answer. After Duke, I wanted to teach religion, I came to realize that if

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I was going to teach religion, it would have to be at a secondary school and those teachers are usually called Chaplin. I needed to punch the ordination ticket. So I went through an ordination process who

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was entirely too easy. I found a nondenominational church that would take me in. The pastor was United Church of christ. That was good enough for me . If he had been american baptist, I'd be

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american baptist, he had been presbyterian, I'd be still building boats. Yeah. Mhm I became I became an ordinary, an ordained minister entirely unprepared for ministry. They did not understand what the lack of

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long church experience means, what it means for the preparation of ministry. You can't get that preparation From three years of Divinity School. Even with an spm , which I didn't have, I knew the books

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but not the bloom. Was I a christian. I had effectively declared myself to be. So I had committed myself to the church. But was I how would I know? Was I christian enough?

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No, God had called me just the wonders of the tradition. No, la bike, No, and they need, can you be a pastor without a call story? I found the perfect job as

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the chaplain of the school. It was a miserable year. I had two little useful experience. So I was called to a church by luck as an associate pastor to go through basic training there. I

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gradually lived into my ordination. I was in charge of the youth, God help them. But what I really loved was sitting at the feet of the old men and the old women whose familiarity was with

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faith and God and the language of the and thou touched my heart with envy. Can you get that without the arthritis to go with? What do I need to do? What did I need to do

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to find such as settled presence? Not just the understanding of religion, but that bone deep religion, that which makes your heart sing. When I came to interview here, there was a point where I

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met with the full faculty and I told my story expurgated version of course. And then Ellen bobinsky, who usually sits right there halfway down the right side , she asked me, so when did you become

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a christian? I said, I have no idea . I just gradually came to think of myself that way. They hired me anyways, as you can see. And that was true. I did identify

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as a christian. I moved comfortably and naturally in that circle, but the center, the standing place that was obscure, coming to christ from nothing is quite different from growing up in the church. There

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are so few reference points for most people here in this congregation. The choice has been one of the degree of piety or perhaps the denominational affiliation. For me, it was whether to venture into that weird

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and often inhospitable world of the church at all. I don't think most people of the church know how hard it is to come into a place like this from nothing, not knowing the words, the motions

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. The meanings were the reasons for anything. Someone has to stand up and say, hey nanny, here, am I your guide, your companion. Nothing actually prepared me better for the work that I

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do here now than to come from nothing. I served four years as an associate, feeling my way into the ministry. I learned how a church breathes costs and sneezes and clears its head to breathe again

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. I went on to a solo pastorate of seven years and pastored churches during graduate school after that and I still wondered from time to time if I was christian enough, if it was yet in the bones

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, if there was something deeper more that I should know. But then mother mary spoke to me, I was on a spiritual retreat at the Shelling Institute in Washington, experimenting with various different spiritual disciplines as

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we introduced ourselves. The woman next to me said she had been a congregationalist, but it recently converted to Catholicism. In my experience, it always went the other direction. Something was obviously wrong here,

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she said. It was the ritual that attracted her , the mystery and the lure of longing. We talked further. She also missed her Children back in Missoula Montana. It was the first time she had

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been so far from them. We learned to worship with icon. One evening I went down to the chapel where our Lady of Vladimir, the icon of mary in child was set up in the dark with

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candles and I sat there alone. Me and mary and jesus mary looked straight at me unblinking. She asked me with stern eyes why I, and all the rest of my human consort continue to persecute her

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son, whom she held protectively. To persecute anyone , is to persecute her son. I sat accused . She asked me with saddened eyes if I would remember her if I would remember jesus? I sat

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reminded, she asked me with commanding eyes if I would bring jesus into the world as a mother brings a child into the world. I sat commissioned, she said, I will take care of you!

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I sat humbled. I too, had questions seeking direction. Comfort, solace clarity, and she always answered. So we conversed in silence, eyes to eyes wordlessly but effortlessly. Mother mary spoke to me

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, and then my catholic friend came and sat down near me also to commune with mary. So there I was, Mother Mary in Missoula Mom. The room was charged, charged with love and care.

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Mother mary hangs on the wall by my guest, watching, waiting, comforting as the anthem you just heard in tones. Well, mother mary find us where we've fallen out of grace. Lead to lead

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us to a higher place in the dark night of the soul. Our broken hearts, you can make a whole. Oh, mother Mary come and carry us in your embrace. Let us see your gentle

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face, mary. I have lived in the circle of christ for a very long time. I did not enter that circle. It was drawn around me . It was drawn by some kids around a campfire

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, a jailhouse, drunk, lisa Blackstone and countless others who even unknowingly have been glimpse of silver signs that home is not far away and maybe I am already there, but do not yet know it?

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I kept asking, am I there yet not realizing that Gods and Amy is never absent. We never arrive. Never does neither does God. We simply learn to see where we are. But we do

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not do this journey alone. From time to time . We need that eyes to eyes encounter that in any moment those times when someone will say to us here, am I? You feel last. Oh

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! More human is the part lower we are going . Um Must me your laws. I'm in.