8/14/22

I finally had a chance to visit Spirit of Grace today. I read about them a while ago while searching for churches in my area and had planned on checking them out at some point. At the time, I was mainly looking for local Catholic and Reconciling in Christ ELCA churches, and Spirit of Grace caught my eye because they're an intentional community of Catholics and Lutherans who worship together, with alternating celebrants. Today happened to be the first time Patrick Hannon, C.S.C joined them for their hybrid service. He's a Catholic priest out of the University of Portland. Next week, Pastor Robyn, who I met at St. Andrew Lutheran years ago, will offer communion. The homily was given by a Vinci, Director of Catholic Ministries at Spirit of Grace, and it was based on the day's readings (Jer 38:4-6, 8-10 and Luke 12:49-53) and inspiration from the series Little Fires Everywhere. It was mainly about the little fires that our faith ignites within us and encourages us to be brave and speak and act even when doing so is difficult or puts us in harm's way. Doing what's right isn't always easy and sometimes puts us in difficult situations or in conflict with others.

It was really interesting to see an entire community intentionally doing what I've been doing on my own the last couple of years. While I'm sure the local Catholic Bishop would frown upon it, I'm happy I'm not the only one straddling these two traditions. I see my Catholic and Lutheran double-belonging similarly to how I do my Buddhist and Christian double-belonging. For me, it's very much in line with the universality of Christ and the open arms of the church I find within the New Testament (e.g., Gal 3:28, Mt 22:1-10 and Luke 14:15-24, Romans 15:1-7, etc.), as well as my own perennialist leanings. After the service, one of the parishioners, Marcia, introduced herself and started a conversation with me about what brought me to Spirit of Grace and my spiritual background. She also introduced me to Pastor Robyn, who in turn introduced me to April, who delivered the children's sermon, and Rachel, a seminary student in her final year (although she'll have to take one more in an ELCA affiliated program to be ordained within the ELCA). They were all nice and patiently listened as I awkwardly rambled on about my spiritual interests in monasticism and background in both Buddhism and Christianity and how I saw them complementing one another, balancing the contemplative confrontation with internal suffering with the active confrontation of external suffering in the world. They seemed to understand where I was coming from at least, and were all very welcoming. All in all, I had a pretty positive experience and I definitely think that I'll visit again.