Bob, a gentleman who was probably in his 70s, had been quiet and attentive throughout the evening. I was teaching about the story of the prodigal son. When I finished speaking, Bob was the first one out of his chair. I could tell, as he made his way to the front of the classroom, that he was upset.

“What about the bath,” he demanded. “You didn’t say anything about the bath.”

I had no idea what he was talking about and told him that I did not understand his comment. He became more agitated the longer he talked.

“You know where he had been!”

“Yes,” I said, “in the pig pen.”

“And you know what he would have smelled like and what was on him.”

“Pig poop,” I said kiddingly.

He did not think that was funny. Then he went on to explain, “The son was dirty and smelly. The father would never hug him, kiss him, or put a robe on him until the son first had a bath. Why didn’t you talk about the bath?”

I explained that a bath was not part of the story, that we can never get clean enough to go home. Instead we go home to become clean. The father receives the son as he is. He hugs him, kisses him, robes him – all without a bath. The son is immersed in love.

Bob just could not believe that, so together we read the story again. When we got to the end of the story his eyes filled with tears and he said, “All my life I thought this story said the son had to take a bath before he could go home.”

I said to him, “And all your life you have been trying to get clean enough to go home.” He simply nodded in silence, tears running down his face.

Bob’s story is not all that unusual. Each of us can probably name parts of our life and being that we have judged unacceptable and unclean. They are the parts of ourselves that we dislike, condemn, and sometimes even hate. We allow them to declare that we are not good enough to be God’s child, never have been, and never will be. We cannot imagine how anyone, let alone God, would embrace or love us. So we exile those aspects of ourselves to the distant country. We then live as fragmented, broken persons trying to get clean enough to come home. Over and over the voice of the Prodigal Son echoes in our ears, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

For all the years he spent in the distant country, Bob never did get clean enough to go home. Instead “he came to himself.” He started gathering the fragments of his life – the clean and the unclean, the acceptable and the unacceptable, things done and things left undone – all that he was and all that he had. He recognized that the unclean parts of his life were real, but they were not his final reality. In the past those parts of his life kept him from going home and exiled him to the pig pens. Now those pieces of his life would become the way home. They would become places of healing, new life, wholeness, forgiveness, and grace.

I do not know what took Bob to that distant country or what he so desperately tried to wash away, but I know that his story is my story and your story. We have been to the distant country. We have lived with the pigs. We have washed but cannot get clean. In coming to himself, Bob would ultimately have to trust the Father’s love more than he trusted the pig stink. After all, if the Father does, how can we do any less?

by The Rev. Mike Marsh, rector of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Uvalde, TX 

From Reflections magazine, Spring/Summer 2010. Produced by The Episcopal Diocese of West Texas. All rights reserved.

Read the entire spring/summer issue at http://www.dwtx.org/index.php/prayer/Reflections_Online

In a recent conversation, the Rev. Mary Earle and Sylvia Maddox – both of whom are actively involved in speaking, writing, teaching, and leading retreats on spiritual formation – talked about three stages of conversion.

“Three stages?” we said.

“Yes,” said Mary, “although it’s not linear; more like three aspects of conversion – intellectual, moral, and spiritual.”

And so our discussion began. Join in as Mary and Sylvia speak about their own experiences in living a converted life.

 Mary:  My first experience with intellectual conversion was in a junior high school chemistry class. Mr. Mickey was teaching about the periodic table of elements. All of sudden, I saw it. I saw that there is a design to the world that we humans had nothing to do with. There is an order and plan that is not of man’s making. I don’t think I talked to anyone else about it at the time, but that was a seminal moment of formation for me, and I have repeated the story many times in my adult life. 

Sylvia:  Conversion is sometimes like that – a startling encounter that knocks us over.  It can also be more of an enticing of us to go deeper. My most profound conversion was later in life and surprised me.  Coming from a strong moral and devotional formation, I thought intellectual conversion was the call.  Then one day I heard the voice of Christ say, “Let go of the things you are holding for yourself, even your ideas about faith.  Hold fast to nothing but my love.” On that day I learned the meaning of emptying, and I knew at that moment there was no turning back. Surrender was my conversion. 

Mary:  Right. And always it is initiated by God. I had not been looking for a moment close to Christ in that chemistry class. But it reoriented me. It proclaimed the greatness of the Lord rather than the greatness of me, although I am not sure I would have said it that way at the time. 

Sylvia:  Sometimes there is an aspect of disorientation in conversion. We thought we had one orientation, but then that leads to disorientation that leads to a different orientation. Conversion is a turning – it is always grace. 

Mary:  And there is always an assent aspect – a “yes, with God’s help.” So our intellect is involved. Intellect is God-given; conversions allow the intellect to flourish and be fruitful. The faithful intellect is always open to God’s movement. 

Sylvia:  The Christian life is a life of continual conversion.  Yes, Peter was called and immediately dropped his nets and followed Jesus. But we also see the many turns in Peter’s life, the falling away and coming back, the denying and repenting.  When we say yes to the call, we are opening ourselves to the ways of the Spirit.  To be mindful of the ways and places the Spirit draws our eyes,  our ears, and our hearts.  Conversion always leads to discipleship.

Mary:  And it is not a cakewalk. A friend of mine was in a group studying the psalms and they were all crooning over the loveliness and the gentleness of the psalms and my friend said, “Wait a minute. It wasn’t just lovely and gentle for me. I was convicted by a verse in this psalm, and I have to go and forgive someone.” So sometimes conversion is painful. 

Sylvia:  And that can lead to moral conversion. I think of Oscar Romero and the moral conversion he underwent when he began to learn of the abuses and injustices of the San Salvadoran government. Conversion can be a moral response to the poverty and suffering we see before us. Because it all comes from God and all belongs to God. There is a growing awareness, an obligation in the deep sense, that we are all tied together in Christ. 

Sylvia:  Conversion has been described by Sally McFague as life on the edge of a raft.  We have to be willing to make continual changes. 

Mary:  Thomas Merton says it is putting ourselves where we are willing to be willing to change.   The Prayer Book calls it “amendment of life.” 

Mary:  Eucharist is the pattern. All of life is Eucharist – taking, breaking, blessing, distributing. Where we fall short is in the distribution. When our son was very sick with cancer, he fortunately had excellent medical insurance because the medicine was very expensive. But we would go to pick up his medicine at the cancer center and watch families having to make wrenching decisions about what they would have to give up or whether they could even afford that medicine for their loved one. Conversion wakes us to the solidarity that is always there. 

Sylvia:  Conversion is when formation turns into transformation. You think you have it all down, and then one day you see it in its fullness.  At some point you say, “Now I know.” It’s not a 180-degree turn; it’s a turn on a curve, lots of turns on lots of curves, an ongoing willingness to make these little turns toward Christ. 

Mary:  In the early Church, this moral conversion was a piece of spiritual conversion. You could not be spiritual without being moral, and you could not be moral without being spiritual. Your moral theology was the gospel theology of sharing, of caring for the widows and orphans. 

Mary:  Conversion is always about community and always about some change in orientation. Look at our baptismal vows – they go from individual to cosmic. In order to be a person, we have to be more than ourselves. As Episcopalians we are given the assurance that Christ is revealed in the breaking of the bread, in the community of the faithful gathered. In the broken bread of the life of the community, the shared stories lead to conversion experiences. 

Sylvia:  The blessing is that it is always God who initiates.  The Call to conversion comes from God.  We cannot make it happen. Our part is to be open, to be willing and to put ourselves in places where we will be found. We have to be mindful of our formation by prayer, engaging with Scripture, being part of a worshipping community.  

Mary:  And at different times in our life we might feel God is calling us to something new. The way to find out is to try it on. God may be calling forth what is already within us. 

Both the Rev. Mary Earle and Sylvia Maddox are authors, speakers, teachers, and retreat leaders living in the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas. They have co-authored two books, Holy Companions: Spiritual Practices from the Celtic Saints and Praying with the Celtic Saints. 

From Reflections magazine, Spring/Summer 2010. Produced by The Episcopal Diocese of West Texas. All rights reserved.

Read the entire spring/summer issue at http://www.dwtx.org/index.php/prayer/Reflections_Online

They went fishing. The coup had failed, the revolution was over, their leader had been killed, and they had to do something, so they did what they knew how to do – they went fishing. (See John 21:3-8 for the full report.)

They spent all night at it and – more misery – caught nothing. Then this stranger showed up on the shore to give them advice: “Cast your nets on the other side of the boat.” Oh, sure.

It was John who recognized him. At some heart-level, gut-level, John knew him and proclaimed it to the others: “It is the Lord!” Peter got so excited he jumped into the sea.

Scripture does not record what Jesus looked like at that point. Had he changed his clothes? Shaved off his beard? We don’t know. We do know that they didn’t recognize him and then they did.

Why? Because (my theory) they had spent time with him. They had spent three years learning his ways, getting used to how he talked, figuring out what he meant when he said this or that.

I think of the people with whom I have been in long relationships – how we know what the other will say before the other says it. The way in which we can predict how the other will react in a certain situation. What the sigh or the smirk means – no explanation needed. We know each other because we have spent time with each other.

Every practitioner of Christianity will tell you that if you want to know God, you need to spend time with him in prayer, in study of Scripture, and as part of a worshipping community. God is available to everyone, but those who see him are likely to have been looking for him. In his book Finding the Way Again, Brian McLaren points out that the gift of God’s revelation never stops being a gift, “But the gift ‘happens’ to those who are practiced in ways it doesn’t typically happen to those who aren’t,” says McLaren. 

But notice another thing about the fishing story; notice that the disciples recognized God in their ordinary lives, doing what they ordinarily did. Christ was showing them what they were to do next ‑ take him into their commonplace, regular, day-to-day lives. The extended retreat, training, miraculous-revelation period was over; the disciples had to go back to work, although it would be a new kind of work, and they would see him there, too. As they shared a meal or walked down the streets of a dusty town, Christ would reveal himself.  And they would see him because they knew him. They would know him because they had seen him.

If we want to be showered with God’s grace, we may have to stand in the rain with the umbrella closed and our eyes fixed on heaven. We may have to feel the rain, taste the rain, get soaking wet. Immersion Christianity. But revelation is always accompanied by a call to move forward, usually right where we find ourselves in life. So we also have to come inside and dry off and get on with our lives.

Jesus revealed himself to the disciples and fed them breakfast – fish on the barbie. Then he repeated the call they had learned from him oh-so-well: follow me into the rest of your life.

Lord, help me to heed the same call, and to know  it when I hear it.

by Marjorie George, Communications Officer for the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas. 

From Reflections magazine, Spring/Summer 2010. Produced by The Episcopal Diocese of West Texas. All rights reserves.

Read the entire spring/summer issue at http://www.dwtx.org/index.php/prayer/Reflections_Online

I almost got converted at the old Majestic Theater in downtown Brownsville when I was a high school. Can’t remember how I came to be there, but it was a special screening of The Cross and the Switchblade, a true-life movie about a gang leader, Nicky Cruz, who gives his life to Jesus and becomes an evangelist. Erik “Ponch” Estrada plays Cruz, and Pat Boone plays the preacher who leads him to Christ.

When the movie ended, someone walked to the front of the theater, talked for a few minutes, and then invited us to come forward and, like Nicky, repent and give our lives to Jesus. So I’m sitting there in the dark with all these other teenagers when I get an elbow-in-the-ribs-move from the cute Baptist girl sitting next to me. (Oh, wait, NOW I remember why I was there.) So I go forward and kneel down and somebody leads me in the sinner’s prayer, and . . . well . . . nothing. Not then, anyway.

I remember feeling awkward, confused, a little embarrassed, a little manipulated. But I felt like that most days back then. I was glad the theater stayed dark. I worried that through yet another personal flaw, I’d botched my conversion. I worried that my own religious upbringing was deficient. At times, I could be Woody Allenesque in my worrying.

Born, baptized and raised in the Episcopal Church, I’d been praying the Confession since I could read, so I knew I was a sinner. (This was before the discovery of self-esteem, so I wasn’t harmed by this knowledge.) I also knew I was forgiven because Jesus died for us and for our salvation because he loves us. But I never heard anybody at Church of the Advent talk about “getting saved.” Could be I wasn’t paying attention, or it might’ve been one more thing adults talked about when the kids weren’t around.

I’ve since come to understand that “conversion” — as the Bible talks about it — is less about a powerfully emotional moment than it is about turning and reorienting, a change of direction away from sin and death and toward a restored and true relationship with God.

Conversion is the life-work of followers of Jesus. It can be prompted by a profound and distinct moment — what I missed at the Majestic — but it’s what follows that’s more important. (Now that God has gotten your attention, what are you going to do?) When St. Paul tells the Philippians to “now work out your own salvation in fear and trembling,” he’s not advocating “works righteousness,” but calling for a continual consideration of the singular, historic, saving act of Christ and its unfolding meaning in our lives. He’s calling for on-going conversion.

I know people whose lives were a living hell until, in a shattering moment, Jesus saved them. And I know people who can’t remember a time they didn’t know Jesus loves them. For all of them, conversion continues.

I said nothing happened at the Majestic. But it did. I think about that evening from time to time, and it’s apparently become part of the grit and grist of Christ’s conversion of me. And I’ve learned that the Lord of all creation who’s not too proud to send his Son, nor too huge to give us life in Bread and Wine, is also not too solemn to use the elbow of a Baptist girl to direct one more redeemed sinner home. 

by The Rt. Rev. David Reed, bishop suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas. Reed grew up an Episcopalian at Church of the Advent in Brownsville and earned a degree in journalism from The University of Texas at Austin before his call to the ordained priesthood. He served churches in Victoria and Harlingen before being ordained bishop in 2006. He lives in San Antonio.

This article from Reflections magazine, spring/summer 2010, produced by The Episcopal Diocese of West Texas. All rights reserved.

Read the entire spring/summer issue at http://www.dwtx.org/index.php/prayer/Reflections_Online

I have no idea when my “conversion” took place. Like most of us who are lifelong Episcopalians, I was baptized as an infant and have more or less gone to church my entire life – sometimes regularly for years and sometimes not at all.  From what I can tell, that part of my story is not unique.

Another part of my story is not unique. My “faith” has grown over time as friends have given themselves generously to disciple me in the ways of Christ and to help me recognize those special moments when God’s life-giving power breaks into the present time. Through my friends’ careful planting, watering, pruning, fertilizing, and nurturing, my once ever-so-tiny mustard seed of “faith” has grown into a more mature tree that signifies the present state of my life in Christ.

How does growth in “faith” take place?

“Faith” is never static. It ebbs and flows with the tides of life. In the New Testament, the English noun “faith” and the English verb “to believe” are both rooted in the important family of Greek words that begin with pist-. In the first-century world of the New Testament, this Greek word-group was closely linked with the art of rhetoric, or public persuasion. The rhetorical goal of a public speaker was to persuade people of something. The one who is persuaded by ever-mounting evidence of various types develops confidence in what the speaker is advocating. This confidence that comes through a process of persuasion is the Greek word “pistis,” usually translated as faith, trust, or belief.

When we become confident that something is true, we necessarily act upon that confidence. To have Christian “faith” is to be persuaded – to become confident over time – that living Christ’s pattern of self-giving love for others in daily life leads to many experiences of that abundant life promised by God.

How does this process of persuasion that leads to confidence or “faith” unfold?

One’s “faith” or confidence builds over time as we learn to recognize “God moments” – those particular experiences when the life-giving power of God changes our life and the lives of those around us. Let me give you an example.

Sherry was deeply concerned about whether she was going to have to dismiss a longtime employee whose quality of work had grown more and more unacceptable. She also wanted to be a faithful follower of Jesus in the way she approached the employee. So, she imagined how Jesus might start the conversation. Instead of initially confronting him with his poor performance, she asked him “Is there something happening in your life I should know about?” The employee broke down and wept, spending the next hour telling Sherry that a very challenging health situation in his immediate family meant he was only getting three hours of sleep each night. Sherry worked out a plan with the employee for him to take time off to find a long-term solution to the situation. He returned a few weeks later, and his work product improved dramatically.

To have “faith” is to have eyes to see the many ways that God changes our lives and our relationships through the ongoing ministry of Christ. These “God moments” provide persuasive evidence that there is a living God who continues to pour out on us that same life-giving power that raised Jesus from the dead. Over time, seeing these “God moments” gives us more and more confidence that walking in the footsteps of Christ leads us into abundant life.

In my life and in the lives of many of my friends, “conversion” has not been a once-for-all-time event. It has been a lifelong process of seeing the many “God moments” that build our confidence – our “faith” – in the power of God that continues to bring new life to the world through the ministry of Christ. 

by the Rev. Dr. John G. Lewis, Co-Director of The Work+Shop and an assisting priest at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, San Antonio. 

From Reflections magazine, Spring/Summer 2010. Produced by The Episcopal Diocese of West Texas. All rights reserved.

Read the entire spring/summer issue at http://www.dwtx.org/index.php/prayer/Reflections_Online