First of all, let me inform or remind anyone reading this other than me, that I write on this blog without the expectation of anyone else reading it.  I have found it to be the best therapy I could possibly find for myself.  I still believe that to be true.

So I started writing shortly after my stroke, which I was told was probably my second one, some 11 years ago.  I was pretty backwards at the time, and I found that writing helped me.  Yes, as I am an Anglican priest and 11 years ago was probably one for about 20 years at that point (now 30), this blog barely re-dates the stroke, and at the time I thought that I could blog in a public manner with my brilliant theological mind!  Both my hopes and my mind exited right around the same time.  So I only blogged when I was having trouble, which if you go back you can see I had trouble for over five straight years.

There has also been a hiatus.  I decided to go back to school and get a couple of extra degrees to add to my obsessive needs to over achieve.  I “retired” from parish work in 2013 shortly after I sent myself to an addiction rehabilitation center in California where I stayed for 30 days.  I have remained clean and sober for over 6 years now, but seem to be also clean and sober of parish ministry as well.  It is funny how valuable you are until you disclose a personal issue that those in ministry above you discern as a moral or character problem.  I will not deny I had a pretty serious problem, but in all honesty, no one even knew about it until I disclosed it.  I certainly did not have to.  But the problem was interfering in my life and healing in an issue totally unrelated to my addiction.  I sent myself away, not only to treat the addiction from getting worse, because it ALWAYS does, but to better be able to deal with what I needed to in my personal life, and with a clear head.

It amazes me, as when I stopped writing this blog and went back to get a couple degrees to become and addictions therapist and a mental health therapist, at how hostile the recovery community is to “organized religion.”  And I want to let you know that I totally get that.  As long as there are people in positions of authority throwing stones in the name of morality (even though I personally know most should not….and for good reason), there will always be this chasm.  Am I a drunkard or an addict?  Yes, I suppose by a lot of standards, but the judgement leaves out a lot of things, especially restoration and redemption.

I left the Diocese of the Great Lakes six years ago and transferred into the Diocese of Quincy.  I handed over the entire ministry I had help build and remained the head of the small Holy Order that built them.  I have kept the vows of my priesthood, and have kept the vows I made in that Order every single day.  A few years ago, we changed the Constitutions of the Order to accommodate each brother’s own ministry, rather than to focus on the idea of planting new congregations, which was all but given up.  Granted, we planted a lot of new works, and many still are doing good work.  But the focus left the OSM and planting.  The churches now are regular churches.

So the Order has been in a long season of furrow, which I hope to see change soon.  I still pray for all of us each day and for our ministries.  I know who we were changed and that in that change, God did not bless us at all.  We freely gave what we were freely given, but when we lost that, a lot changed.  The idea that we were not all church planters was significant.  You cannot put a square plug in a round hole.  And you can also not support a growing ministry expecting people to do so.  But per the agreement 6 years ago with the Diocese of the Great Lakes, the OSM remains ready to re-emerge from that furrow.

During this time of furrow, my life and ministry has changed drastically.  I stopped writing because I went back to school and now also work as a mental health and addictions therapist.  As I also have done extensive work in the world of revitalization, conflict, and change (my doctoral work was in this), I feel I a very well suited to help both congregations and clergy work through hard issues.   I hope to start a new parish here in central Indiana soon, and with God’s help we will, but for now it is enough to help those I can in private practice and in life.

Changing subjects, the picture at the top of the blog is of my dad, who we lost this year.  And when I say we lost him, I mean that he died, not that we misplaced him as so many may think knowing us.  He looks happy in the picture, which he is, and although I am not in the picture, so was I.  He was happy because he was heading to Noodles and Company, and I was happy because Ben, who was then 11, was pushing his chair uphill and I was not.

Quite interestingly, we held his funeral in the Episcopal Church of which I was a member for my entire life and a priest serving 18 of my 30 years.  Unlike many of my peers in the Episcopal Church, I was a conservative (meaning evil).   I retired from my ministry as an Episcopal priest on December 31, 2006.  I transferred to the Anglican Diocese of Bolivia at the point of my retirement.  So I never left the priesthood.  I also did not take a parish out, nor entered into any lawsuits, nor any of the other nonsense.  Yet later in that year the Bishop of the Diocese of Indianapolis (not the current one) held a trial for a priest that was not hers.  She “defrocked” me for abandoning the faith.  I would assert that she had it quite backwards, and she wasted a lot of time and breath.  It was funny that I never ever have stopped being a priest since I was ordained, nor have I ever worked to coerce or convince a soul from leaving the church I grew up in.  I never have nor ever will.  But I do wish to thank the Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, where my dad and family were members, for her compassion, generosity, and care for us all.

You can probably see how I might connect the treatment I have had with the church, as many struggling in recovery do, considering my experiences.  In fact I do see and feel it very strongly, but in truth I can also share my experience of how it is when it works.

The Church I know, and the one to which I belong, is always with me.  It was present to me when I was growing up, quite often in just the conversations I would have with an occasional monk or nun I would run into anywhere in the South Bend area.  I ALWAYS would say hi, and not only did they always acknowledge me, but if I went up to talk with one, they would always just talk to me.  My family, at least in my memory, was never nuclear. My experience of that which I associated with God however, was always hospitable to me.

Ironically, my Bishop is a Benedictine monk.  In fact, much of the Diocese is touched by the Benedictine way of life.  In the Diocese of Quincy we are “rooted, missional, and compassionate.” Life in Christ does not need to be complex.  It often involves just doing that next right thing.  I sometimes have worried about where I am heading, but in retrospect, God puts me in the places He wants me to be.

Back to my family to end this today.  At the beginning of the year, my dad was diagnosed with cancer and needed a lot of care, treatment, and transportation.  We all stepped in.  My relationship with my dad has not been the greatest over my life, and in fact as grouchy as he was sometimes during his treatment, I could have pushed him off a cliff in that wheel chair.  I am certain we all could have.  But we all came together and did what we were supposed to to support and care for him at the end of his earthly life.  We were all there together in the hospice center to give him the Last Rites.  I used a 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and as we all left that night but for my sister and her now husband, I told her knowing dad was going to hang around for days, “if he happens to go, then read this prayer.”  Pure to family form, she had to use that prayer less than 20 minutes later.”  We all turned around from heading home and returned.  He had left us.

I know one of my dad’s goals was to get to walk Anna down the aisle

at her wedding in October.  My Uncle Al, my dad’s oldest and last brother, did the honors.  In fact we all did our parts, together again as we had be
en the first few months of the year.  Dad would have loved it.  I know we all did.  And we did it without the fear of handing him a microphone and worrying about getting one of his colorful ad libs.

But there are a couple of extra days left in the year, and what they may bring I am not sure.  All I was sure of is that I needed to write.  I have put it off because I felt i was okay, and that was even knowing when I was not.  Hopefully I can work on being a bit more honest with myself and see some progress heading into next year.

Blessings!

Tommy+