The Light in Every Thing
Deeper conversation on the mysteries of Christianity with Patrick Kennedy and Jonah Evans, directors of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America.
In this podcast we engage the great questions of life and do this through a spiritual approach to Christianity made possible through contemplative inquiry and the science of the spirit known as Anthroposophy.
You can support our work and gain access to more unique content if you visit our Patreon: www.patreon.com/ccseminary
The Light in Every Thing
Called Ep. 1: A Conversation with Marc Delannoy and Sean Waters
Join Seminary Director Rev. Patrick Kennedy in conversation with two seminary students as they share their journeys toward the priesthood. Sean traces his path from Baltimore to a Biodynamic farm in the Finger Lakes, and Marc reflects on his travels across Canada and the US, finding his place as a French Canadien. Together, they open up about the call they have heard, the sacraments that have shaped them, and what it means to walk this path today. This episode is the first of a new series we will return to from time to time, Called, offering glimpses into the life of the seminary of the Christian Community of North America and the living question of vocation.
We are also launching our YouTube page today @TheLightInEveryThing. Please join us there and like, subscribe, and share to support this work and help us reach more people.
The Light in Every Thing is a podcast of The Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. Learn more about the Seminary and its offerings at our website. This podcast is supported by our growing Patreon community. To learn more, go to www.patreon.com/ccseminary.
Thanks to Elliott Chamberlin who composed our theme music, “Seeking Together,” and the legacy of our original show-notes and patreon producer, Camilla Lake.
© B, emily Beynon, hi Mark, hello Patrick.
Speaker 3:Hey Sean, Hi Patrick, Hi Mark, Good to see you.
Speaker 4:Really excited and thankful that you two are willing to jump on a special episode of the Light in Everything.
Speaker 4:Usually it's just two of us, jonah and I, in conversation, but we're only going to be picking up our work next week actually with the podcast. So we thought, with you guys, at this special moment in your seminary journey, to take this opportunity to open up a window for our listeners and for the people who are our patrons on Patreon, into this special moment in the journey of a seminarian at the gate of entering preparation for ordination. And so today we'll obviously need to introduce you to the audience, the listeners, a little bit and try to see if we can jump in on some of the special moments in the course of your story that would lead you to special moments in the course of your story that would lead you to follow the calling to make yourself available to be consecrated into the priesthood in this movement for religious renewal. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, mark, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself in kind of brief brushstrokes? Where are you, where have you grown up a little bit and how did you discover the Christian community?
Speaker 2:So I'm currently living in Ottawa, ontario, canada, capital of Canada. I've been here for 30 years or so, but I grew up out west. I grew up in Manitoba, province of Manitoba, the capital city over there, and I grew up in a French-speaking family and that was very much part of my life. So I went to school in French and there was a whole story around French language rights that I a heritage with Catholicism, the Catholic Church, often acting as that rampart, if you want, against the onslaught of the modern world, to a certain effect, certainly the English speaking world, and so, for example, my grandfather uh, used to speak about English meaning.
Speaker 4:English Canadians, right, right, not the English over in England. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because there was also les Americains, yeah, americans, but les Anglais, ah, les Anglais, over in England, yeah yeah, because there was also les Américains yeah, the Americans, but les Anglais, ah, les Anglais. And often there was a. There was that hint of oh, something else is going to happen to us. So I kind of ingest this through language of some kind. Anyways, that's my background. I grew up in a Catholic church. I grew up in a Vatican II Catholic church that my grandfather also experienced. But that for me was the church, was that, that was Christianity, and I have, when I think back, nothing but warm memories for the most part of being kind of held in that cup, if you want, that milieu. But of course I left that at one point and wandered the world and eventually came to Ottawa.
Speaker 2:I was interested in anthroposophy. When I was 17, 18 or so, I went into a bookstore called Genesis Bookstore and it was a Genesis. I created a moment, looked for I was looking for astrology especially but stumbled upon anthroposophy and that led me on its own journey. But stumble upon anthroposophy, and that led me on its own journey and I ended up in Foyer Michael in France, graphically in the middle. Here I was born geographically in the middle of Canada, in Winnipeg, manitoba, in a place called St Boniface St Boniface the patron saint of Germany I learned and here I was studying Anthroposophy in France, middle geographically of France, and learning to know this other point of view, which I associated with Goethe, which I associated with German idealistic philosophy, and all of that was all very intriguing.
Speaker 2:In the middle of all that, I heard about the Christian community and went to three or four of the Eucharistic celebrations that were offered in a nearby place and I scratched my head. I was interested. It felt in hindsight, only in hindsight, like a moment, as I said to myself hmm, there's something living, there's something alive here. I like these folks, something is calling me. I'll come back to it.
Speaker 4:It wasn't the moment but there was something there, yeah, a seed.
Speaker 2:Well, I was thinking, oh, next year, next year, okay, year after. No, no, as fate would have it, I was quickly involved in family life. Kids Got involved in the wall of education and went back to Canada, didn't come to France until much, much, much. Got involved in the Waldorf education, went back to Canada, didn't come to France until much, much, much, much later I was involved in Waldorf education rather than community, and there was no, there was a bit of an impulse on Waldorf, but it was not tied to anything that I that I latched on, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it's through experiences, through World of Education that eventually led me to consider the Christian community. Through the pandemic I mean before the pandemic I was involved in a public school setting of World of Education in French.
Speaker 2:That made it so that I had to not say the word Christ in classroom, and it's a bit of a like, a little thing. Oh yeah, of course, mark, just don't talk about God or don't say Jesus Christ, don't say that word, don't say that, and you know it's, it's easy. Why would that be? Why would that be difficult? Don't say that word, don't say that, and you know it's, it's easy. Why would that be. Why would that be difficult?
Speaker 2:But it's like in the fairy tales, when the when you're told, oh, don't open that door. And life could have been just so much easier. But I, I was compelled to to look more at spirituality, my own spirituality. I was compelled to look more at spirituality, my own spirituality. I was much older, second half of life, needing to come to terms with what I had received as a gift, and now I wanted to gift back, be in a process where I could deepen my faith, deepen my faith, deepen my spirituality, and be in a movement where I could give back, as I'm looking towards the tail end of my life, as I'm looking towards the portal of death, not to be too gruesome.
Speaker 4:No, no, no. It's actually pretty healthy to think of your life in light of your dying. Yeah, yeah, obviously that's. Those are big strokes and there's there. There are wells to jump in there and depths to plumb. Um, yeah, but you took us all the way up actually to the present. So this meeting that you had then in France around 2021, you said yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was like, oh, I want to come back to this thinking next year and then it would come later. I definitely want to check in with you more about that, but let's meet Sean first. Let's bring Sean into the room. Yeah about that, but let's meet Sean first, let's bring.
Speaker 3:Sean into the room. Yeah, so I'm currently in upstate New York, about 20 miles northwest of Ithaca, New York Central state, but I was born in a town kind of right between Baltimore and Washington, the mid-Atlantic of the United States, 35 years ago, Only child. For the younger part of my life we lived in sort of the Baltimore suburbs and the DC suburbs, and then for my adolescence and teenage years we moved to Western Maryland and I lived in sort of the wild places, the rural land there, Similarly to Mark, the rural land there, Similarly to Mark. The Catholic Church was a big part of my life. Essentially, my entire family had gone to Catholic school. I was from Baltimore families, so on both sides Catholicism is deeply part of the culture there. But my parents, specifically my father, traveled a lot.
Speaker 3:When I was a kid, he got involved in international contracting around natural disasters and international conflicts and such, and so he was exposed to a lot of different things, a lot of different streams. My mother, I think, was progressively sort of feeling confined by the Catholic Church, especially in some social ways, and so they were actually kind of straying from the Catholic Church, even though much of my family, even myself, I think, as a young person, were sort of deeply appreciative of the ritual and the sacramental life of the church. At one point when I was a kid, I actually wanted to be a Catholic priest, but as my biography unfolded and my identity and my sexual orientation sort of started to become more clear to me felt so that that door had shut and so I think, largely I set Christianity aside, even though I, you know, I felt a very palpable presence from my time in the countryside. I felt that there was this being there. It wasn't necessarily specific to place, but that it was coming through the place and that it was somehow guiding my life and that being seemed to be present in many different chapters of my life. And then I guess we could fast forward a bit when I was 21 years old, that's when I met Anthroposophy, as I mentioned.
Speaker 3:I was an only child. So I had a very small immediate family and then I had a couple of people that sort of had tacked on to my immediate family in an effort to help take the village, so in an effort to help raise me up, especially as my parents were traveling and such, and I lost several of those close family members in quick succession. There were some unexpected deaths that happened Three specifically in the course of one year. So it was sort of an intense time. I was 21 years old. Due to some complicated circumstances with my father, my childhood home was foreclosed on and then they actually closed. My high school and my college went under during the financial crisis of 2008. Oh my gosh. So suddenly I was very unmoored.
Speaker 4:I knew about some of these, but wow both your high school and your college.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there was really a sense of like there's no going home again.
Speaker 3:There was suddenly all these landmarks of my life had kind of fallen away and it was a real question of you know what is going to be, what's your life going to be like, what do you want to talk about, who are going to be the characters and the players in this story here? Because it's gotten a little thin. And so, yeah, I had, you know, all through my young years, I had really sort of a palpable understanding of something happening in relation to that being that I was mentioning before, but also something that was happening within the natural world, you know. And so that's probably the entry point into Steiner's work for me was suddenly I found that there was a language around elemental beings. Me was suddenly I found that there was a language around elemental beings. Other people were having experiences that they could articulate, that they could, um, learn more about, that they could even speak to, and that launched me into the realm of steiner's work. And then the next place that I found was about how to support and work with the dead, which obviously was a very relevant thing in my, in my moment at that age. Yeah, so that's, and and so all about that time I entered into the hospitality industry, which was another, was another rich experience for me in sort of building up what I now come to see, as you know, sort of fundamentally Christian values, reintroducing me to sort of the Christian life, even though I was at that time sort of dabbling and probably not professing myself as a Christian person.
Speaker 3:And then, if we sort of fast forward, you know, through those years of studying anthroposophy and through my connection with land and the nature beings, I felt, as I moved out of hospitality, that the next most reasonable or most sensical place for me to enter and dedicate my labor was in the field of agriculture.
Speaker 3:My labor was in the field of agriculture and so I, you know I took up agriculture.
Speaker 3:I began flower farming in New Orleans first, and then I became a vegetable farmer for a number of years and then for the better part of the last, I guess for the last eight years, I've been a dairy farmer, and so that's part of what has rooted me in this region that I'm in now, and along that process I I went to the Pfeiffer center, which is a training center for biodynamic agriculture, and that's in spring Valley, new York, and in spring Valley there's a large anthroposophical community and the Christian community is a is a part of that and at the time the seminary of the Christian community is a part of that and at the time the seminary of the Christian community was a part of that, and so that was sort of how I met the Christian community. Was walking through Spring Valley and seeing these posters of open courses and information about the sacraments, the little pamphlets that they have at the church and you know things like that that's amazing, because we had never met you yet, and I was there.
Speaker 4:And to think that Sean was walking around at that time and looking at posters is really cool.
Speaker 3:We were orbiting around each other, Exactly, yeah. And so I, you know, and then for a brief time I was living in Boston and so that was where I really sort of met the service and I would say a real way. I was able to go several, you know many times and to participate in that way, and I was just, I walked in and I remember thinking like it was a moment where, you know, I don't know if you guys ever have these experiences, but it was like this will be a touchstone in some way and I was conscious of that as the memory was being made. You will come back to this moment and somehow this will unfold, that you're not just walking into a church service. Somehow this will happen.
Speaker 4:Well, this is so interesting I can see Mark nodding there Like I know what you're talking about and I think this is part of what's so difficult to talk about this mysterious word calling like the, the process in our life where what our conscious mind can wrap itself around and name and talk about, and the very clear kind of impressions that are coming from a deeper place in us, a deeper wisdom that seems to be at work in our story, and how we become aware of the presence of that guidance, its nudges, its hints, its writing in the background, or mistake it or or not.
Speaker 4:You know, I think a lot of people are really, uh, having an an interesting experience of being lost in our age, because they don't know where they should be fruitful. Where am I supposed to be within the fabric of humanity, so that what lives within me can bless other people? How do I know that I'm in the right place? So I think it's just very riveting to hear you guys describe these moments where you're like I'm in here and I'm having a kind of double experience, where I'm present in one way and then there's another part of me that's taking notes, that knows much more, probably, than I do right now. So I want to come back to some of these things, but please continue, sean.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mean I think that that you know no-transcript, but there was a really palpable experience within the Christian community where I also felt like the congregation was contributing, like there was a substance that was flowing from the people and it seemed almost sort of visible that it was like. You know, this actually could not happen in the same way if it was just the priest by themselves. And I was so enamored for much of my life with this sort of monastic picture that I could be a priest celebrated in an altar by myself, and I just felt in those moments that there was something very important about having the community of people there. And that was informative to me because, you know. So I launched into the farming realm and I came here and I live and work on a you know, I run a biodynamic dairy on a diversified biodynamic vegetable farm and I felt very palpably that this call to be a shepherd you know it was a it was a holy task in that I was serving at an altar of sorts.
Speaker 3:And called to be a shepherd on a farm, on a farm like that was that that was holy work and that there was an altar that was here that I was serving and that, you know, we were in some way transubstantiating substance and sending it out into the world for nutrition, for people, and it felt.
Speaker 3:It felt real and sacred to me. But over, I started to return to that picture that I just mentioned and I felt more and more that the work that I was doing on the farm and the way that it was being expressed in this particular iteration was very it was an altar for one I was celebrating by myself, though I think that in large part that's what brought me to the seminary. It was this real call that there is an altar, there is a way that this medicine enters consciously into the land and to steward in that way, and it's a different gesture to go and be available for people that we're seeking at an altar, and they were both very holy tasks, but one sort of called me in a clear way yeah yeah, I'd love to thank you, sean.
Speaker 4:I'd love to um to net, you know, quickest brush strokes we've. We've got a teacher and a farmer shepherd who, after finding in some ways a certain vocational calling to professional work and really unfolding your capacities in that, have had the second call. No, there's another thing that I've been shaping you for that I'd like you to consider. There's another thing that I've been shaping you for that I'd like you to consider. So in both of your stories you both grew up in the Catholic tradition, so you had a strong sacramental congregational life as a part of your childhood. Both of you had really positive experiences within those communities. Both of you and you didn't really mention it had some kind of a tug towards priesthood at some point, I think, within the Catholic church. You grew out of those boundaries.
Speaker 4:In the course of your story, mark, you described longing for I'll call it esoterica. You were. I want a spirituality that is deeper and wider than the traditional church has shown me, and you're walking into a somewhat new age bookshop looking for astrology, which you know for a good traditional Christian sounds like devil's work you were getting involved in and there you discovered anthroposophy and that was really decisive in your life. Similarly, sean, you met this thing called Anthroposophy. So let's pretend somebody discovers this video or podcast audio podcast at some point has no idea what Anthroposophy is. It's very interesting to hear how that was a first thing for you in those years of young adulthood especially, and then growing into that and then trying to express it professionally. What was it that you were seeking, yes, and what was it that you found that mattered so much to you in anthroposophy?
Speaker 1:Yes, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess I could start. For me, anthroposophy was a way of knowledge that attempted to connect heaven and earth. If I want to speak it that way, if I want to explain it that way, there was a gentleman who trained himself to be able to perceive within the world, the spiritual world, and then to try to describe it, try to bring it forth in a scientific manner. That is a kind of impartial knowledge set before oneself, so that anybody who wants to get into this training, get into these descriptions, might take something from it from a scientific standpoint. That is, you take it impartially, you work with it and see what gives is the truth here. And, yes, I was seeking something of this. So I had a kind of warmth through the Catholic tradition. No doubt I look back to it. I have an image of my, an image of the altar, of the bread, of the wine, an image of the folk soul holding me. If I want to speak of it that way, I could say the people.
Speaker 4:The French-Canadian community in Manitoba.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 4:As a loving soul in which you were embedded.
Speaker 2:Yes, with its own dialect, its own history, all of it being tied into an expression of worship towards Christ, christ coming toward.
Speaker 4:That was a beautiful, beautiful description that Mark was giving, but we he just dropped out there. Um, we hope he'll come back in Gosh. Yeah, this theme of um, the community side of things is really starting to emerge. It's so, so beautiful. Yeah, mark, you were saying you were describing Christ coming towards the community.
Speaker 2:Yes and uh, what anthroposophy gave me was a window of an individual experience, me coming through, uh, a modern way of initiation, if you want, that is, myself, with the different facts that are pertained to be facts of spiritual reality, and me grappling with it and seeing if there's something to this.
Speaker 4:Okay. So let me just stay with that for a moment, because it just feels very carefully described and well described and I want to see if I hold it a little. So there was something of this blessing of the presence of God and the presence of the Spirit that was coming as a gift. That related to you being embedded in a community and at that time in your life, where you then were seeking it, had something to do with I want to know things for myself and not just receive it through tradition, through the authorities I have trusted. How can I try to know these things and the spirit world and God for myself? That's powerful. And then you found something there that gave you something to build on and you could feel like I can grow my mind into the truths of existence also.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I felt when all of this was happening, when I was 17, 18 years old, I felt a kinship, if you want to what was happening in the Roman Catholic Church in the sense of brothers and sisters worshiping, and so I didn't perceive it as being completely split, but certainly different.
Speaker 4:Right, okay, so in the spirituality that you met in Anthroposophy, in the results of spiritual research that Rudolf Steiner presented in the path that it led you on, you didn't find a dissonance necessarily between what you had been raised in. But you knew there is something different and I'm guessing also, if you went and started you probably knew. I probably shouldn't talk too much about it in the community.
Speaker 2:Exactly and, of course, if I was thinking and I was a bit looking towards priesthood or look towards being involved with church life as it was coming towards me, I knew Catholicism. There were some groups that interested me of lay people coming together and living a community life together. So I was exploring. I didn't mention in my biography but for me when I was 10 years old, it was very formative for me to go to the States, go to America and passing by the Grand Canyon, seeing all the beauty there as an expression of the Lord. But I also passed through Salt Lake City. Along the way we were on a car right From Winnipeg. Yeah, yeah, right, you weren't flying.
Speaker 4:Look Salt Lake City. Down below, we were on a car right From Winnipeg. Yeah, yeah, right, you weren't flying. Look Salt Lake City down below.
Speaker 2:I went to Salt Lake City and going also to Santa Fe. I remember Santa Fe Church of the Dead. My grandmother was very much a Catholic and prayed the rosary and she was very much concerned to see me being so interested in other Christianities and she was the one who showed me how to pray the rosary. I remember that very well. She came up to me when I was looking at a big statue Actually I didn't find it that beautiful in Salt Lake City, but I did love the dome that was behind it and it was ours and it was the blue and the gold as it was peering up. And she did say to me Ils sont peu comme nous autres, they're not like us.
Speaker 4:They're not like us. They're not like us, the us and them experience. Yeah, that's tough and it's maybe good to know that. You know. I mean Rudolf Steiner himself, growing up in the area where he grew up with his family, was baptized in the Catholic Church and was an altar boy in the early years of his life and had very profound experiences with the Mass and the sacrament. His father was known as a freethinker, a Freidenker at the time there in Austria, and so he also didn't. He had his issues with the church, but eventually, despite many good relationships with many Catholic priests of the years, eventually in 1919, the church declared his teachings anathema, like, oh you know, you should not go near it.
Speaker 4:If you're interested in these questions, you really shouldn't go near it, and that was a decisive event to this day. So I think it's also good that our listeners know you know, if you're, if you're Catholic and you're listening, it does. It is there's a risk there. From that Catholic side it's like we don't think this is actually connected. But you, you had an inner sense. No, I, I do feel that there's nothing actually in true dissonance here. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2:It's fair to say, me as one faithful amongst others grappling with the modern world and trying to understand something of the Christ and using this for my development. Of course, it was also very evident that, as you mentioned that okay, I can't talk about this to everybody it enriches my life. I can go towards others carrying this impulse and it's fine. I can use it in order to enrich my experience of church life, but if I want to go towards a kind of leadership role within the Catholic church, well, no, so you could feel.
Speaker 4:You could feel that there, there, there's a line that is drawn. That's really powerful. It's so interesting. What I want to kind of keep in mind as we keep talking and I want to come to you, sean is you know anthroposophy as you meet it in its literature, its books, then eventually also in its gatherings and its initiatives. You guys have mentioned both educations a Waldorf education, inspired and built out of the roots and realities of anthroposophy, biodynamic agriculture, a whole renewal movement in the agricultural world, and on and on.
Speaker 4:You see this fruitfulness in the world through this worldview and method of knowledge. But it's a knowledge thing at first. Really, it's something you're thinking through, you're trying to understand reality, know the truth. It's not yet anywhere near ritual and this is what's in my background. I like this step towards ritual, towards a right, a sacred set of actions that we who are called to serve in the Christian community like. That's the heart of what we will be doing weekly, multiple times a week, and then marking special moments in life birth, death, crises, conversation, confirmation time, the transition in from childhood into youth, the marriage moment, the sacrament of ordination and so forth. These ritual, these rites, sacred acts where heaven and earth are happening in, in in a new union. That's a big step from just like. Let me try to understand reality, know the truth, and so that's let's keep that in mind as as we progress in the conversation. But I'd love to hear, mar uh sean, what were you seeking that you found in anthroposophy?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, that's interesting, patrick, and thank you for sort of seeding that thought here, because I think it's now that you've mentioned it it's deeply related to why I was seeking Anthroposophy in the first place, and I think, you know, I had, in some ways, a very happy childhood. In some ways it was very complicated. There was a lot of complicated, there were complicated figures in my life and there were certainly profound challenges. My father, my father, did end up dying of alcoholism, and so that was something that was, you know, in the realm of my biography, my whole life, and so I think that it seeded in me that, in combination with my understanding of the sacraments as I experienced them through the Catholic church, it really seeded in me, like, how does transformation happen?
Speaker 3:How how is something changed? How is somebody made well? How is a body made well? How is like, how is substance transformed? How is a body made well? How is substance transformed? And I think it was just something that was very intriguing to me.
Speaker 3:My whole childhood I was an avid sort of tinkerer with things.
Speaker 3:I would make these potions, I was always trying to alchemize things in my life and I think when I came to anthroposophy, just looking for a way, you know, I was very unmoored, as I mentioned, because of these circumstances that had that had occurred, and I was just looking for something to dig into that would speak to how things could be made well.
Speaker 3:And when I encountered all of these initiatives that you're mentioning, that that Anthroposophy gave birth to in the world, it in so many ways, you know, yes, knowledge is sort of the foundation of Anthroposophy, but there were so many living, working, will-based initiatives in the world that were about transforming substance, you know I.
Speaker 3:So I had gone to, I had gone to college for sculpture and when I left college I had entered the realm of hospitality and then I was finding myself, you know, called towards land-based agriculture. So all of these things had like a real orientation to like changing the substance of something, and I felt like I could see that in anthroposophical medicine, I could see it in biodynamic farming, and it was a way of imbuing what was, you know, the status quo, physical representation of education or agriculture, imbuing it with a spiritual substance that could make it something new. And so I guess that was kind of what I was seeking and simultaneously what I was unconsciously seeking, and then what I ended up finding through so much of that work. And I think another critical thing for me was, you know, steiner's work. His presentation, through Anthroposophy, of the realities as he understood them kind of made it okay for me to be a Christian.
Speaker 3:Okay, wait, wait, say more, say more Like that there was this sense that we were on this evolutionary path and that consciousness was evolving and that there was a human story that was unfolding, guided by Christ, and that there was no one outside of the guidance of Christ.
Speaker 4:actually, Okay, can we take a little?
Speaker 4:quick time out there, because I think this is really key. So maybe that's in the background. We need to also say what was making it not okay to associate yourself with a Christian. So there was something you felt yeah, I don't want to keep hitting the microphone Something you felt, and then that you did feel kind of called to him. But there was something else you were experiencing that was saying like I can't actually be associated with him in this world as I'm finding it, or what made it not okay.
Speaker 3:I think, in a large sense, the church, that you know that there was something about my no-transcript.
Speaker 3:I was coming into my own identity and my own sexual orientation and it felt like, even if I wasn't being told by the church that I would not be accepted Directly Directly, I was being told by people who thought that they could speak for the church or knew what the church was about, that were trying to you know, quote unquote warn me sort of preemptively, spare me the disappointment or the hurt that would come if I tried to move further along.
Speaker 3:People that cared about me were like there's there, can't be. There was a sense that there can't be a space for you here, yeah, can't be. There was a sense that there can't be a space for you here, yeah, and and so I just I think I started to doubt that being that I knew that was all about the transformation of substance that I had experienced all through my life. I think I was just starting to doubt this can't be, that being Because if no one else can see these compatibilities, how can he be speaking to me when all of these other people are warning me that this doesn't mesh?
Speaker 4:Maybe in simple words is it fair to say it's something like he's got to be bigger than the church is making him out to be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 4:His heart has got to be wider. That's exactly right. His tent is larger than the pegs that they have placed. That's exactly right.
Speaker 3:And that it encompasses sort of the whole story of humanity.
Speaker 4:Right, so that I'm assuming you're kind of pointing at, for example, it can't be that the Buddha has nothing to do with him. Be that the Buddha has nothing to do with him. It can't be that those people who've grown up or lived in a time, let's say, in ancient Egypt, that he wasn't at work within that story, or in ancient China, like he's somehow. If he's the one, he has to be something like the sun is to the earth, he has to be like our star and everybody gets his light, everybody gets his warmth. He's at work in the whole story or he's a lesser God?
Speaker 3:That's exactly right, and I don't.
Speaker 4:That's really powerful. Sorry, so that was. I just wanted to get at that, that feeling of like, what was what was causing you at that time to be like, oh, I can't, I can't actually unite myself with, even out loud, at least at all, to Christian Christ and Christianity and meeting Anthroposophy, something of its character started to show you oh no, yeah, he has been involved. That's exactly In the whole story. Yes, okay, it is that big of a tent. He does have that wide of a heart.
Speaker 3:Just the further that I was going into myself, the more that I really felt caught, like I want to serve the true thing, Like the true thing and what is the true, what is really the true thing, and it made it all of the things that we just sort of spoke about. And the picture that you gave of him working through time allowed me to sort of grab back that, like Christ is is the true thing and so I can be whatever I choose to do, whatever call I feel in my life from him. I can, I can just move freely into that because it is, it's the, it's the story for my life, you know.
Speaker 4:Gosh, that's beautiful. So in that sense then you start to experience someone, a being who is interested in a priesthood that is at work in every field of life, Correct, as you mentioned, I felt a sacred calling to be a shepherd on a farm of animals. I felt within that work on the farm his transformative healing work is also taking place, feeding people and building an organism that is a blessing in a community, a farm as a holy, nourishing communal process. And I want to pull out another thing that was so striking for me to listen to you say Kind of a little bit, is another polarity to the way you described it, Mark, Like not necessarily the knowledge side, though clearly that was important.
Speaker 4:But insofar as how does healing happen, how can the spirit not just be an abstract thing? That was important. But insofar as how does healing happen, how can the spirit not just be an abstract thing that we talk about and think about and wax poetic about, but actually come into the world and transform what is sick, broken and fallen? Can it actually become a force of transformation in this world? And so that meeting that anthroposophy seemed to have the potentiality to do so in farming, in medicine. So meeting it actually at work and truly bearing good fruit, built trust in this tree to to the tree of this wisdom.
Speaker 2:yes, is that fair to fair description beautifully said yes yeah, I would agree, and in my case it was a realization, casual realization that, as I was involved with world of education, that it was um tagged on with my family, with my kids growing up in World of Education and in the schools where I was working, and so it was like a mighty stream of abundant life. I was swimming in it, I was basking in it. It was a beautiful swim. At one point it felt that I had to move on to something else, as now my kids were men and were grown up, and I felt that my usefulness for that particular path was less so and becoming more and more less so. Less so and becoming more and more less so. I redirected, I looked for something else.
Speaker 4:Well, you also mentioned this meeting, of the pain, of a limit Like you can do your work.
Speaker 2:but you are not allowed to speak about the most important thing.
Speaker 4:Yes, you can't say God's name, you can't say, you can't do anything Christ related, which, of course, is another picture. Why does a school ever do that, except for the fact that the church has used?
Speaker 2:its has let the wolf into the sheep's clothing and people are trying to protect humans from Christianity. It's wild. It's wild. At the time it was actually very, very painful, and I mean, since that time I've come to understand that part of my task is to carry that cross, carry the cross of Christianity of the past and of the present.
Speaker 2:Yeah, christianity is carrying such life forces, of course, is bringing Christ to the world, is doing so with error, with errors that have impacted so many people, etc. So I'm mindful of carrying that too to a certain degree. I found out that I have a distant ancestor who, for one year, was involved with the Jesuit colony of Feronia in Ontario.
Speaker 4:What was?
Speaker 2:that. So there was a very strong push from the Jesuits to create in Canada, to create in North America, something like what happened in Paraguay.
Speaker 4:That is calling Like a Jesuit state.
Speaker 2:Yes, the whole impulse was of a place where there would be no evil Right A Catholic kingdom, pure yes, ded dedicated to God.
Speaker 2:Everything would be regulated, if you want, by the tinkling of bells, Wow, In order for prayer to happen and work to happen, like a kind of monastery city. Wow, and it came. It came, came that close to to happening. There was a fuller development of it in Paraguay. I mean, I don't know half as much as I would like to know about all of this, but I certainly did more research on that more recently, um, through some excellent books that are coming out.
Speaker 4:But just knowing that I have a distant ancestor who was involved with that for one year he had given himself to that before going back to Quebec City in order to marry but why did you bring that up Like as an example of how things can go sideways, or as a part of the cross of the church you were mentioning, just like some of the ways in which we who have put on the garment of Christianity have not expressed its nature, but rather caused harm and wounded in the world. And then you mentioned this story. So can you say how that relates?
Speaker 2:My relation to it is this work of healing in the world, this work of transforming the world. I see my calling as having to do also with that, with the crosses of the past.
Speaker 4:So with that, with crosses of the past, in order to go towards the future, to take in what the Christ has to offer now and fry the future. That's so beautiful. So it's a picture of actually the life of the church needs easter also like it's like it doesn't have the finished fruits of easter that it's just handing out, but it's constantly also causing. It's causing a cross experience, causing harm, casting a shadow, and is ever in need. Uh, if it's to have a future, it too needs to go through the transformative powers.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 4:That's really beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm mindful of all of that as I'm going towards the end for this ordination preparation year, yeah, for this coordination preparation year. You know I'm also continuing that research, like I know that two possibly involved with the residential schools, oh, yeah, and I have Not.
Speaker 2:everybody maybe knows although it's been in the news in the last couple of years a lot. Maybe you could just say a word about the major role in it in implementing what the state had given it to do, which was to take, if need be forcibly, children from the native population, native Canadian population, and teach them reading and writing, and setting aside the conscious idea was to set aside Indian identity in order to take up Canadian identity or white identity and for them to become citizens of Canada, to become citizens of Canada. So that was what came to the fore for about 150 years and there has been a conscious recognition from church and state that a lot of wrong, a lot of harm was done. And I'm conscious again Okay, that's a cross, another cross Right. For a long time I didn't want to even look again. Okay, that's a cross, another cross Right.
Speaker 2:For a long time I didn't want to even look at. Yeah, I didn't really look at. And coming out of my experience with this path on the seminary journey with the Christian community, I felt a new strength in order to go and do that work and met other. During the summer I met another couple who are devoted Catholics and who hesitate. I'm not saying that this is. It's understandable to a certain degree that it's understandable, yeah, to not want to look into all those dark corners, but I feel certainly a new strength as I'm feeling future forces coming through that the Christian community can offer to look into that, to realize, yes, the human heart is full of horrors, full of beauty too.
Speaker 4:And okay, going into that and in order to go towards the future, Well, maybe that connects up to then the scene that also emerged pretty clearly in both of you and connects to ritual, and you could say, well, at this moment in your lives, ultimately you could have been satisfied to just had your work lives fructified by the ideas that you're meeting in the Christian community, renewed Christianity. Hey, I can do my farm work in a different way. I can work in community in the Finger Lakes region and I'm supported by the life that streams to me in the life of the Christian community. But something of what you have met and certainly has to be something, what you have met in the ritual, in the practice of worship, to the gathering of community in some form, into a space and a shared time, gathering before an altar with seven candles behind it, an image of the crucified and the risen Christ, for about 45 minutes to an hour and to go through a kind of time, an act in time, with specific words and gestures, song and music, priests and servers who come in. They're wearing totally different clothes than everyone else is in the room. They're in specially shaped garments. Their colors change throughout the year and it's the same the next day and the next day and it goes for four weeks. If it's exactly the same For this season right now, for example, from the end of St John's until Michaelmas, it's 10 Sundays of the same liturgy, same words, not a change the whole time. It's amazing. The only change is the gospel reading is different each week in those 10 weeks, so ritual is such a different thing.
Speaker 4:What is it that you have met? Can you try to put into words what you've met there that feels important enough to you to be giving up your lives as they have existed and taking on many different? You know we haven't even gotten into what it has meant for each of you individually, the challenges really, that you've taken upon yourself to pursue this calling your feeling and to make yourself available as servants, which you certainly have, I hate to say. The audience can trust that they have. What is it that you have met and are meeting? Continuing to meet in new ways? Yeah, sean, maybe you'd be willing to start.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a beautiful question, Patrick, you know. I think for me the thing that comes immediately to mind is this of what is worldly and so much of that to me I've come to understand in my work as a farmer, in my work as a person in the world is based around the self, the sort of transforming how we meet the world, transforming our body, transforming our experience of things, transforming our memory. And in order to do that, I have a very palpable sense that Christ, again and again in my own life, in my own biography, is calling to me from the edge somewhere. He's saying you're in the castle of yourself and I'm out here, come join me. And you can see it in the gospel to some degree, like he's moving in and out of Jerusalem, he's moving in and out of these towns and doing these things. But he's always sort of at the edge and just when someone wants to grab him and say King or President Jesus, you know, he sort of flutters away and goes and does something else in the world.
Speaker 3:And the remarkable thing about the service to me is that it's and why I feel him so present there is because it is, its structure is sort of paradoxical, because it actually draws us out of ourself, that it like draws us out of the world as we understand it and draws us to his life and to his self, into his quality, so that we get to just have a moment of living at the edge and wondering where am I here?
Speaker 3:Like so often during the service, I look around and I say like what's going on here? Where am what, what am I, what am I part of here? And it's because I feel so fully in somebody else when I'm in that service that I get to just that. That does something, it heals something in myself to get to participate in the life. And then you look around and you're in line with, you know, your other communicants and you look down the row and you can just feel that everybody else is also in his life and you can just feel that everybody else is also in his life and so it's created a space in ourself for him so beautiful.
Speaker 4:Could you, could you take us a little more into that communion picture? So just so everyone can maybe imagine that in in general you know we're outwardly it's one of the least active services for for members and participants, right, that's just something to notice. If you've never been, you go in and it's pretty, pretty earnest, pretty silent, pretty quiet. We sing. Hopefully in the church that you meet in your life in the Christian community, there'll be a full-hearted song sung, but just, you know, not a lot during the service, maybe three times in a service, if you're lucky two times. Often you stand up once for the gospel, but otherwise you're pretty much in your seats over the course of that time, facing in the same direction as the priest. So everyone's kind of headed in the same direction.
Speaker 4:Until the end it culminates where the priest turns around and comes down the three steps from the altar and the congregants who feel called stand up and they meet in this in-between place, at an edge. It's like what is that magical edge of communion too? So they leave where they've been the whole time, everybody leaves their home base, and then they meet. And then you described you've been the whole time. Everybody leaves their home base and then they meet. And then you described you've been on a process individually, but then you described this moment of kind of sensing and looking, you know putting your attention on the fact that all these other individuals are also in him. Can you just say it a little bit more there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, like it's just, it's the sense or this quality that, like you know, one can sit there and take in the words and, to you know, greater or lesser degree, practice, concentration, practice following along, and then there is this moment of activity where you actually can just set down the struggle that you've been going through of trying to think those thoughts and hear those words and be yourself with it, and then you can just walk up towards the altar, up towards the altar, and you don't, and you're like simultaneously bringing obviously your whole self with you, but you're also able to sort of set aside for a moment all that has come before.
Speaker 3:It's just like this moment of, like this climax moment of okay, we're all here now, we've all gone through this process and now we can, just we can stand before a singular attention. There's like a singular focus to what we're doing and you know, through all of the service, we might be grappling with the challenges in our life or or, like I mentioned, grappling with our own attention span, or grappling with where I have to be this afternoon, but there's a moment of just putting that down and saying, okay, the reason, the thing that is animating me right now, in this moment, what is animating me to stand here is because I want somebody else's life to be in me and like, how often do we act in life because of someone like purely out of?
Speaker 4:a will to unite with someone.
Speaker 3:Just the feeling of being moved to that place is sort of unlike the feeling of being moved any of the other ways that we move around the world. It's a unique expression of our will to unite with someone else thank you, sean, my pleasure.
Speaker 4:Yeah, mark, what about you? You want to take? Take us, take us another route into why and how the ritual has, given what you've experienced there, has been so strong enough and solid enough and real enough that you are ready to step towards and letting yourself be anointed to carry it out into the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had experienced something of ritual through all of education, through the times of the day and what to do when, in order to help the children, in order to connect, whether it was also lighting a candle before the story time, and things of that nature. Certainly, I'd experienced the colors in art and in a world of sinning, as you're making these drawings or the blackboard drawings and whatnot, that vibrancy of color, the changing seasons and whatnot, also as you're living through that, in a church organism, sorry, a school organism. And here I was trying to make more present to myself the reality of Christ through his liturgical expression, to use a big word, meaning through the course of the year and what you had mentioned, patrick, with, uh, with how, uh, for a certain time of the year, certain colors, it changes through the year. So I felt that, uh, what I was seeking for from Christ had an expression there for sure. Now, with Christ, it was, uh, something of his mission, his power, his giving into life and death in order to create community. That was intriguing me, that is, I felt that, or had an expression, a powerful feeling that he is the one that that is able to go above human rivalry or above the envies in the human heart that so often, too often, make it so that we clash, so that you have two human beings who have so many similarities and yet will go to war against each other.
Speaker 2:And he, coming towards us, is not saying an eye for an eye, but saying turn the other cheek, turn the other cheek. And it could be so trite to just put it that way, but he really means it. It's really a profound change in world evolution Propose this and in what the Christian community offers as a sacrament of Eucharist. It's a world changing event that's happening daily in a little incremental step, tiny and very humble, of that world change that can only affect us in order to go. One tiny communion in that regard with others who are looking to take that step.
Speaker 2:I had realized that with my church experience from the past, nothing of it was conscious Rolling along, nothing of it was conscious rolling along, in a way rolling along and basking in the light. But here my task was to become more and more conscious of it and to teach in order for others to become more and more conscious of it. Along the seminary journey definitely was that question what is your relationship with Christ? That had to take up. I feel as if, uh, I'm uh doing adulting, I'm going towards an adult experience of it. I'm becoming a human being standing up in the world by taking this course, by going in this direction.
Speaker 4:That's right.
Speaker 2:So that's a bit of one Beautiful beautiful.
Speaker 4:So how does it feel now, at this moment? Uh, at this, at this powerful gate in your story, you guys have have done, uh, you know, more than two years of of study with with us at the seminary. Both of you have actually touched and tasted, I think, everything we offer at the seminary, whether it's the podcast or the distance learning program or the on-site training in Toronto. Yeah, maybe that would be nice, just like, I don't know, just pick one, just pick one moment. You know maybe two, but just like, take us into a moment during your seminary journey, right? So you've given us a lot of your life journey, right? But you know you've had now, both of you, three to five years of life connected to the schooling that we attempt to facilitate at the seminary.
Speaker 2:What was just a rich, iconic moment for you in your path well, just to reiterate that one time where it's you, patrick, who asked me through the distance learning program what is your relationship to Christ? And, honest to God? No one had ever asked me that, no and to Christ and honest to God. No one had ever asked me that, so that was definitely an important moment for me.
Speaker 4:But why? Why was it such a key?
Speaker 2:because my image of community was very strong, that is, church was very strong. I realized that all of that was very developed to a certain degree within the Catholic tradition. Yes, but what is my relationship to Christ? Nothing had been developed Nothing. But what is my relationship to Christ? Nothing had been developed, Nothing, and I had to take it up. I couldn't blame the Catholic Church for me not doing this work, although nothing had been offered in that regard. Whatever, now it's up to me. It's Mark. Okay, what's your relationship to Christ?
Speaker 4:So a kind of awakening into yourself that spurred a next journey of what you called your adulting. You're adulting, your adulting, your relationship into, into him and the church. Yeah, that's really powerful, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think for me it was, um, this specific character that I feel like the seminary really sort of strives towards, which is, you know, of course, we would get deep into these beautiful theological conversations and we would be sort of right at the edge of what it felt like was knowledge and thought about this, these high beings and all of these things that we were trying to do through sacramental life, beings and all of these things that we were trying to do through sacramental life.
Speaker 3:But I think that the most profound quality to it for me was that there was always a genuine interest in how these things are living or landing or expressing themselves in us, in our individual lives, in our individual characters.
Speaker 3:And to me it was, you know, both in the class setting and also sort of in private spiritual formation conversations with the directors. There was always this sense of his relationship with the community can only come alive if his relationship with you comes alive, and the reason that that is is because he is just the one that is interested. He is interested in who we are and how we're unfolding, and so it's always this question of you know, there were so many things that I think at the beginning of my seminary journey that I felt, okay, I have to hold this back, or this has to be transformed, or one day, if I ever make it to that place of being asked to move towards ordination, I will have a new image and I will look like something different and it will be more priestly in its nature. And I think that I just realized over time that actually what was happening here was like coming into a radical relationship with him by fostering a radical realism with myself.
Speaker 4:Everything that was oh, that was like the awesome, like Zen Cohen of the whole thing, that was awesome. Yes that was like the awesome. Like Zen Cohen of the whole thing, that was awesome.
Speaker 3:Yes, coming into a radical relationship with him is coming into a radical realism with myself, like the this is this, these are the ways that I am, this is who I am, and he is interested in that and that is that is the place and the reason for his deed and his activity in the world is because you are you and he wants to know who and what that is, and he wants to help guide it forward. And so, like gosh, that's so powerful, to show up, to really show up to the training was to bring, to bring yourself forward and say, like this is, I can only move forward in my relationship with you if I'm aware of all of the things, if I'm interested in myself in the way that you're interested in me all of the things, if I'm interested in myself in the way that you're interested in me and you can feel there's some like super deep sickness in the church that this is healing.
Speaker 4:I'm just going to jump in there and say, because there's something about and it makes sense, right, because if you are right, like it's one thing to go my individual life with god and I'm going through my processes, but then as soon as I show up on sunday as a representative of him and his life to talk to people, to be people, look at you when you're ordained and working as a priest to try to see him, actually they're trying to see you know what's god like and working as a priest to try to see him. Actually they're trying to see you know what's God like and what is it like to be in relationship with God. Like I'm not sure about myself, but that person apparently thinks they have a relationship with God because they're like wearing a three-cornered hat and showed up on Sunday and getting dressed and praying you know, and so forth. So this incredible pressure that can be there I'm going to be on. Therefore, I need to perform and I'm going to need to kind of get dressed up in the right image. I'm going to produce a picture of priesthood that I think the people want, but that I for sure know is not me.
Speaker 4:So there's like a real powerful, super subtle destroyer of healthy selfhood. Connected to the shadows of the priesthood, yes, connected to the shadows of the priesthood, yes. And so you get, over and over again, performed priesthood, performed pastorhood, like it's just like rampant in the evangelical church. They know, they know Mega churches, 20,000 people going to see this incredible pastor, and then it's like, seven years in and kind of everyone knows, like here's the scandal. Actually, what's going on behind the scenes is a mess and it's darker than you ever wanted to know. Yeah, exactly Right, I think, is the temptation and the draw to hypocrisy is enhanced. It goes up as you draw near to donning the garments of being his servant, and so he has to have a healing medicine for us in his bag and you see it, it's like what you just said. It's just when we meet people who who are trying to be in that radical realism with themselves and feel his radical love, in that there's just nothing more beautiful.
Speaker 4:That's beautiful I am, and you don't want anything else either. And so you can see that there's something in the spiritual formation of the priestly self that you've described. We are attempting to try to cultivate self that you've described.
Speaker 4:We are attempting to try to cultivate how that is addressing that core liar that's waiting there to say like, yeah, like you and I, sean, we know you're not, you don't cut it, but let's see if we can produce a priestly self that will, like, pull it off and fool everybody else Totally, totally priestly self that will like pull it off and fool everybody else Totally, and that's just so dangerous, because that's that is the adversary's tactic.
Speaker 3:Right is illusion, illusion is the adversarial, like that is, and so to so to base uh yeah, one has to cut away illusion in order to reach the true priesthood, as I, as I can understand it.
Speaker 4:Well, I don't know, mark, if you want, if there's something burning in your heart, still to add to that.
Speaker 2:To add my yes.
Speaker 4:Yes, amen.
Speaker 2:Amen, hallelujah, yeah, yeah, there's something very humbling with all of the ritual aspect and the dotting of those robes and going out and being at the altar. I asked many of more recent priests in the Christian community what can you say? You know, two or three years in, and many of them said the altar work is so demanding, they're, they're. They're not saying it in a, in a, in a depressed way or whatnot, but they're just saying it really is demanded, um, to go up at the altar. And you're talking about the altar, not so much the sermons, although some one or two mentioned, oh yeah, the sermons, coming up with the new ideas and you know, but being at the altar it's as if, yeah, so you're, you're, you're, you're receiving a strong power from above, you're receiving a helpful upholding from behind and you're there at that moment, day in, day out, and the kind of stamina that it takes to to to do that. So I'm just adding that to that whole pic.
Speaker 2:yeah, beautiful, of the yeah of Of the danger of hypocrisy, the danger of performative way of doing this, the reality of putting your full soul, full spirit, full body in action, action in a sacrificial gesture for your glory, but for your glory to shine, and doing it together with all the other priests, so to speak, the priests that are there. Nothing but priests Us in our priestly hearts to realize the nation of priests that was given as an enunciation of a goal, higher purpose to humanity, way back when Moses encountered God, and God spoke of that nation of priests.
Speaker 4:that's what it yeah, nice, thank you very much. Yeah, I, I can. I'm noticing by the end of there, of of this this time together, how fun it would be now to track. Okay, let's go down this road, this road and this road and hear how you see things and how you're living in things.
Speaker 4:But just for now, we'll leave it at that and I want to thank you both for being willing to try to. It's always revelatory, right, it's a kind of a practice of apocalypse to unveil the hidden worlds that are within you and your life with God, and your life and your story, and to let others in to look and to judge as they may. And so thank you for your vulnerability and willingness to share and just all blessings, good blessings on your next phase with ordinations. Hopefully there'll be a final kind of decision in you to be done in the course of these months and then the whole priest circle will let you know over the next of these months and then the whole pre-circle will let you know over the next couple of months, I think around December and November, december, their decision, final decision and then ordinations in middle of March in Toronto Very, very moving, exciting, so blessings to both of you.
Speaker 2:And blessings on you, patrick Jonah, thank you All the team behind what we're trying to accomplish here. This whole seminary journey is such a journey, such a transformative process, such a healing journey in so many ways, and this is another aspect of it.
Speaker 4:A little petal. Yeah, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you. This feels like such a blessed, sacred time, both this conversation and also just this moment. Yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 4:All right, Be well you too. Be well yes, thank you. ©. Bf-watch TV 2021 ©.
Speaker 1:Transcript Emily Beynon.