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Here humans craft and share their personal, compelling, beautiful, sometimes difficult 17 minute story of when God got real in their life and how that experience changed them. Following their story, they consider with host Sarah Hollar how their experience continues to affect them in their relationships, their sense of self and their way in the world.
Hello, friends. Here's hoping you are well in all ways that matter.
Here's hoping your time with this episode brings you something to ponder and
encourages you to think about signs, nudges, whispers,
pauses that disclose where God is calling you next and next and next.
Are you looking for burning bushes?
Are you hoping for dramatic, struck-blind moments?
Is God likely to take you hostage to his plan, or will the Spirit come more
gently, allowing you time and space to acquiesce?
Here is a story of call, discernment, surprise, gratitude.
A yes to something unexpected, or maybe not.
This episode also comes with an invitation to follow and leave a review.
Stories to share and comments are welcome at sarah at whengodgotreal.com.
It's good to know what resonates and what misses the mark.
Now, here's Father Andrew's account of God getting real in a river.
I've been thinking a lot about a particular story in the Gospels recently,
which is the baptism of Jesus.
It's been on my mind since early January when we heard it again on the Feast
of the Baptism of our Lord because it reminded me of an experience that I had
in my own spiritual life, a time when God got more real for me.
I'm thinking about a particular mission trip that I had the privilege of participating
in alongside folks from St.
Mark's in Huntersville and other parishes in Charlotte.
At the time, I was still in college working to complete my architecture degree,
but something else was brewing.
And so I'll take you on that trip with me again to one of the moments where
I felt my faith changed for good.
Like Jesus in the Jordan, we were near the New River in Roanoke, Virginia.
It was after a long day of traveling and getting settled into our mission fields
for the trip, and I can still feel the cool water washing over my body as the
hot, humid air clung to my face.
I remember being surrounded by people
I had come to care a lot about in a relatively short period of time.
Matt, Lynn, Whitney, and all of the teenagers who were entrusted to us by their
parents on this new and exciting journey.
I remember sitting in the river, and the current was actually pretty strong.
I can remember feeling a little bit afraid.
What was keeping me from floating downstream into regions beyond?
What was on the other side of this adventure? What was coming next after we
left the river and got to our bunks for the night?
Even though I was 21 years old, I'd
actually never been on a mission trip before. So what was I doing here?
I had a history of personal anxiety at this point in my life,
and it was hard to quell the stirrings of the mind in a place I didn't know.
On a trip with people I had only just met doing work I'd really never done before.
I think about Jesus in the River Jordan at his baptism, surrounded by people
who don't know him, and on the
verge of an adventure that would make some pretty big waves in the world.
And I wonder, what if he had just stayed in the water?
What if he didn't go on from the banks of the Jordan River?
If he ended up feeling half as good
in the Jordan as I had come to feel in that river in
Virginia Tired muscles and hot skin soothed and reinvigorated in the cool water
With a gentle breeze to temper the still blazing sun Who could blame Jesus if
he wanted to stay in the water At least until the crowd had left and he could go home in peace,
When it was time for us to leave, I remember thinking in a very childish way, Do we have to?
I'm not so sure about what's next.
This wasn't a breakthrough moment for me necessarily, but it changed my mind about one thing.
I was at a time in my life where some pretty big journeys were about to end,
and new ones were meant to be beginning.
And it turned out that the ability to leave that water wasn't just about mustering
the strength to swim back to shore, but it was about believing,
trusting that something,
someone, God perhaps, had brought me here to teach me something.
I wasn't sure yet what that was, but it was coming, and fast.
Jesus got out of the waters of the Jordan, and he had his moment with the Spirit.
In the same way, I feel like I received my own anointing when I got up out of that river in Virginia.
Jesus had the Holy Spirit descending like a dove, and I had some wonderful colleagues
and teenagers who poured their spirits upon me.
The next few days were spent sweating,
sawing, nailing, lugging We were building a deck and the architecture student
in me knew what to do That was the easy part What became challenging to me was
the time I spent praying Talking,
giving counsel even Well, the
kind of counsel a 21-year-old can give to an angsty teenager, at least.
I felt out of my depth in that regard. What did I know?
And where was all of this headed?
None of that even mattered in the place of my typical anxiety.
I remember feeling a simple kind of joy, a joy that was over me at lunch on our second day.
We were sitting on water coolers, I remember, underneath the tent in the blazing
sun, eating peanut butter sandwiches, talking about college,
talking about hopes and dreams,
talking about love and faith, and how we got here in this place to be together.
Wait a minute. How did we get here?
I think that's when I realized I didn't choose any of this for myself.
There's no way that I could have.
I remember at the end of the trip, a few of us leaders were sitting out late
at night reflecting on how things had gone.
I'm sure I was sitting there quietly when Matt, our youth minister at the time,
asked me, So, have you been scared away yet? It's a lot, right?
And I swear, I didn't even think about it before answering. I just said back,
I think I love this, and I don't know what this is or why, but I do.
And I think that in that moment, I had the Spirit descend on me in her own way.
I had left the water. I had no idea what I was doing,
but God certainly did, and in the days that followed, I felt this continued
urge to keep saying yes, to keep getting up from the water, if you will.
I look back on this experience, and I see it now as the moment that I was able
to truly answer to my calling.
It would have been so easy to go back and finish my degree, which I did do,
actually, and continue on in the world of architecture.
Sometimes I still think about this choice, as I've lived and worked in New York
City as a priest for six years now.
I could probably better afford my rent and groceries, at least, if I was an architect.
But I was captured. I had been turned.
That Spirit of God, I feel like she has made herself right at home in my life,
and there was nothing I could do about it then, and there's nothing to do about it now.
I feel forever grateful for that river and for the people that helped me to
trust in God's presence and power in my life as I got out of that water.
This wasn't my baptism. That had happened many, many years before this,
but it feels like a day when I received a gift from God that has changed my life for good.
I had a calling, a purpose, and a growing clarity that God was actually doing
something with me and is doing something still.
To this day, there is something helpful about being near a river when I need
to lean into God's presence.
And thankfully, we have two rivers right here in New York City.
While I can't get into them to swim or to rest in their waters,
I often find myself contemplating the big feelings of life on their banks,
trusting that God will provide a spirit moment once again.
And to answer Matt's question, this life and priestly ministry, yeah, it is a lot.
But it's become real for me as I feel God's real power and presence through
the people and places I get to encounter along the day, along the way, each and every day.
Here we are.
Thank you, Andrew. Thank you.
Um there was a point in your
story when um you
were aware that i think it was on the second day of your mission trip where
you became aware that uh your presence there wasn't accidental or coincidental
that you had been brought there.
Oh, and I'm curious about God was real to you in a way that you hadn't remembered before.
And so how has that experience of God, of you recognizing that God is moving
in this way, how has that affected your ongoing relationship with God? Hmm.
Yeah, that's a great question. And I think I can start by going back to that tent, as it were.
You know, I can remember feeling in that moment connecting to some of the teenagers
who we were with in particular.
And they had all kinds of questions for me about what college was like,
what life was like beyond high school, how did I decide that I was going to
be an architecture major, all of these kind of big questions.
And in that moment, I felt like I was really able to not only answered their
questions, but to do that in a way that was filled with love and care and presence,
I was able to see them in a particular kind of way, not just as teenagers,
but also people of great faith who were there for a particular reason to grow
their own faith, to grow their own experience of life with God. And it's,
It began to cause a wrestling, I remember, within me.
And I remember actually feeling earlier on in my life inspired by some of the
clergy that I knew, but curious.
How did they know what to say to people? Or how did they know how to care for
others in their life in such a way that it always felt good to me to be on the receiving end of that?
But where does that come from? where does
the energy where does the the kind
of peacefulness where does the love and attention come
from for them as they're listening and responding and
I had a lot of questions too as a teenager and
and I always felt like I was met with compassion in a particular kind of way
that that a lot of clergy meet and and give to others day after day after day
and I just I had so much curiosity about how and why and where all of that came from.
In this particular moment, I realized I was doing the thing that I never thought
I would do for other people.
I was doing the thing that actually made me feel pretty anxious as a young person,
sharing my own experience, sharing my own vulnerabilities,
sharing my own anxieties and wrestlings with others.
But it came willingly in that moment. And I think I realized at that point that
I wasn't doing this on my own.
Because as I said, I wouldn't have necessarily chosen to do that for myself.
I was pretty shy as a young adult and as a teenager, and so it felt like a personal
change, a spiritual change even, to be able to offer that presence to others in that particular way.
And for me now, I feel like I continue to feel God's invitation to offer myself,
even from those places of insecurity and vulnerability, that feels important and it feels important.
It feels like an invitation that I receive in my priestly ministry now to lean
into the parts of my life, my humanity that I may not enjoy, actually,
all that much, or I may not want to share broadly.
But actually, you never know who else might connect to those pieces of your life.
And so often, I find that the parts of myself that I feel like I'd rather keep
hidden And those are the parts that touch other people,
and those are the parts that God has actually worked to weave together in the
human connection and relationships that we get to share.
It feels like that's what Jesus did in the Gospels. He met people in the places
where they didn't want to be seen or heard.
Maybe they were longing for love and
compassion but there was a little bit of fear or
anxiety certainly marginalization and he
worked in a way that caused people to connect to
each other and I felt like in that moment I was doing
that with him in a particular kind of way and
I can look back on that and see that as very much a coming alongside I feel
God was coming alongside me in that moment and helping me to do work that did
not feel comfortable or natural to me even at that point in my life.
Yes. Yes. Um, you had a,
an experience of God getting real and it was a call experience to a,
a very specific kind of vocation.
Um, I've had that, I've had God getting real in my, in a, in that way,
call me to a particular vocation.
I come across people all the time that say, well, I don't know what God wants for me.
I'm trying to figure that out. I have not had that kind of experience.
I want a burning bush. I want a bush. I want that.
And if I had that, I believe that I am faithful enough that I would follow it, but I haven't had it.
And I feel for them because it is a lovely thing it is a lovely thing to find
this and know in the center of your being this is what God wants me to do,
for people that haven't had that um.
And how would you describe, I think you did when you were talking about,
you know it's of God when you feel you're most centered, right?
But if people came to you and say, I haven't had that since, what should I do?
What should I do about this? Yeah, well, I think one thing that I've thought
about a lot recently is that we like to sort ourselves and our experiences in certain kinds of ways.
And I think that there's a great temptation, as you say,
in looking for those big picture moments through the scriptures and through
the stories of the people of God and trying to match ourselves or sort ourselves
into those kinds of experiences.
And, you know, I did that too, even in telling my story, the baptism of Jesus,
the burning bush, right?
Like, how can we connect to those exciting moments of call in the history of
God's interaction with humanity? Yeah.
And it might not always be apparent to us in similar ways.
And so what I would encourage is a sense of curiosity, a sense of wondering,
a sense of exploration, not just in the stories that we hear in our faith,
in our lives as Christians, but a curiosity that's inward.
You know, maybe I don't have the same exact story as Moses and the burning bush,
but how have I heard whispers or inklings drawing me to a particular moment,
a particular place, a particular group of people in my life?
I might not have a whirlwind like Job, but what are some consistent signs that you've experienced?
What are some things that might appear meaningless even at first glance,
but as you sit and spend more time with them, reveal other meanings?
Maybe secrets even that you feel like you weren't let in on before but now you've
been able to hear a new voice or see a new sight discern a new presence and.
We don't always have to match ourselves, I think, to those big and glorious
moments that we hear about so often in our tradition.
But I do think that God is still in there, even when we can't do that,
or we feel like we haven't been able to do that.
And so, exploring, coming to life with a sense of curiosity, and also, I think,
coming to life with the hope that God is there and maybe hasn't yet given you
what you think you're looking for, but perhaps God has given you something else.
You just have to crack it open a little bit more, look for it in a different way.
And that comes through prayer. I think it comes through relationship.
Often, I think sometimes the things that I think I'm looking for,
it turns out I'm going in the wrong direction, and I'm hearing the voices and observations,
conversations, and prayers of other people that point me in the true way.
And so, that feels important to me, being open
to everything that God has laid before us in our lives and taking time to sift
through that for the moments and the presence that God actually is very real in, I think. Yeah.
I appreciate that. One of the things that calls to my mind is conversations
I often have with parents who are going to have their child baptized,
is that part of your real job is to pay attention to this God's beloved child
that he has given you in some ways to be foster parents to.
That precious is his child.
And part of your job, part of your responsibility is to pay attention to who this child is.
What brings this child joy? What brings this child a sense of groundedness?
Pay attention to that and hold that up. Yeah.
Maybe God needs another lawyer, maybe God needs another architect,
maybe God needs something very different that may sound kind of scary,
but if that's what this person you're raising is showing you,
pay attention and encourage that.
And that's what a community of faith can do as well.
Absolutely. Yeah, I love thinking about baptism and the baptismal experience as one of invitation.
And as you say I think one of the most beautiful invitations in that experience is to pay attention,
ultimately to ourselves as we grow in faith and in life we can look inward and
we can search the chambers of our hearts we can search our inner rooms we can
search those places of ourselves that.
That we may not even be fully aware of or fully comfortable with.
And we can also search the relationships that are outward.
We can search the relationships that God has given us. We can search our daily
experience because don't we believe that God is there?
And don't we believe that God is present in all things?
So, I love this language of invitation. And I love the particular invitation
to trust that God is actually present,
and probably particularly in those places where we least expect it,
those places within ourselves, those relationships,
those small moments in our life, eating a peanut butter sandwich underneath
a tent in Virginia. Yeah.
That doesn't feel outwardly sacred at first glance.
But when you approach it from a place of trust and hope in Christ's presence,
it actually, I can look back on this and say, that feels very sacramental to
me, and that we were sharing a simple meal, loving one another in a particular kind of way.
And I may not have been able to make perfect sense of it in that moment, but...
And there was a certainty of presence and of God's presence,
I think, ultimately in that place.
And that's also an invitation, I think, that I feel often,
the invitation to be released from having to understand completely every moment
and interaction that we share with one another and with God.
But leave room for the wondering, leave room for the curiosity,
leave room for the spirit, because spirit does what spirit does best and creates
life, creates new connections,
creates new moments of compassion, and really brings us to that possibility, I think.
Sometimes, and well, as our tradition tells us, out of nothing, apparently.
And that is a great gift, actually, because we don't have to manufacture anything for ourselves.
We don't have to build up our own ideas about who God is and where God is in
our lives if we can really turn ourselves over to the power of the Spirit and
the power of God creating these sacred moments,
these call moments, these moments of care,
these moments of connection, apparently from nothing.
But that nothing becomes everything if we really lean into it in our own way.
Creating space, holding space for wonder, and expecting something to show up.
Right? Yep. Yep.
Thank you, Andrew. Thank you for this. Thank you.
Thank you, listeners and subscribers. Thank you for your time,
attention, and ponderings.
I invite your comments and reviews.
I also invite you to share your story of when God got real.
Send them along to sarah at whengodgotreal.com.
Until next time, breathe and be well.