How I got to this place... (Part 2)

The priest raises his foot. In it he feels a dull, heavy pain. This is no mere formality. He will now trample on what he has considered the most beautiful thing in his life, on what he has believed most pure, on what is filled with the ideals and the dreams of man. How his foot aches! And then the Christ in bronze speaks to the priest: 'Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross.'... The priest placed his foot on the fumie. Dawn broke. And far in the distance the cock crew.  (Shūsaku Endō, from his novel, Silence, 1966)

[I must preface today's post with a plug for the novel Silence, written by Japanese author Shūsaku Endō, about Jesuit missionary Sebastião Rodrigues (and based on the historical Italian figure Giuseppe Chiara) who struggles with his faith as a priest during the oppression of Christianity in 17th century Japan. I just finished it and it is now easily among my top ten favorite books! The film adaptation, with Liam Neeson and Benicio del Toro in the leading role as Fr. Sebastião Rodrigues (del Toro played revolutionary Che Guevara in Che, a superb movie from 2008), is set to open in November.]

Continuing on from yesterday's post...

In 1995 I was knee-deep in military recruiting as a Navy zone supervisor (the single most difficult job I ever had; a short-lived stint as a grocery store night manager was a close second) in Ft. Worth. We had bought a house two years’ prior, during our transition to Texas from Maryland. My job required me to work long hours, travel, and I even had to work some Sundays.

One Sunday afternoon in early April I was lying on the couch watching the Texas Rangers on tv, when I got a call from the vicar (pastor intern) at the church around the corner where my wife and daughters were members and where I sometimes showed up, if my schedule allowed. He had heard that I played softball in the Navy and said that the church's team needed a pitcher. So I joined up (and played when I could) and got to know a dozen guys, just about all of whom are still friends. Then I got interested in choir, then I offered to maintain the congregation’s nascent website, then I asked the pastor what I needed to do to become a member myself. He was gracious enough to work around my miserable schedule and one-on-one we worked through the pastor’s class requirement and on Memorial Day I stood before the congregation in my white Chief Petty Officer uniform and professed my faith—I became a Lutheran!

I had difficulty finding a job that could pay even close to what my military take-home pay was when I left the Navy in January 2001. I suffered the indignities of interview after interview, a series of hourly wage jobs, desperation followed by fear followed by intense anger at God...one morning in July I was in a hotel room near BWI airport packing my things to return from another interview when my cellphone rang-- it was the principal of a high school in the neighboring city in Texas with a job opening as an ESL teacher and I was 1,200 miles away. He agreed to meet me later in the day after I had returned to Texas, the interview took 15 minutes (10 of which was spent on the topic of football), and I left his office with a classroom key. A contract showed up in the mail 5 days later. I must admit that at that time I couldn't even spell ESL, much less teach it... On the drive home from that interview, thinking about that key in my pocket, I broke down because I had blamed God for what I perceived as His persecution of me for some reason that I just couldn't understand-- I felt so guilty and so ashamed, but at the same time so relieved! My faith took a huge step forward on that day.

To help supplement my starting teacher salary (minus the cost of certification), I had a job at a nearby large liquor store. While helping customers, I met a lot of Russian speakers and God gave me the idea to try and form a Russian-language Bible study. So I made little cards to hand out that directed folks to a webpage that advertised a study that began in spring 2002 and grew to about 20 persons through spring 2004. My pastor and I actually conducted a first-ever bilingual Easter service that year!

From 2001 until the end of 2004 I served in varying capacities at church—elder, Andrew Caller, small group leader and Sunday Russian Bible School teacher, mid-week instructor, choir member, member of congregational softball and bowling teams, congregational vice president, and chairman of the board of elders (the post I was occupying when our pastor,the guy who had graciously worked around my schedule to make a Lutheran out of me, took a call and left).

With my buddy Aleksei near
a Moscow Starbucks in 2008

When I had become a civilian again, I inquired within the LCMS as to whether there were any Russian-speakers (preferably living in Russia) with whom I could correspond to practice Russian. The church put me in touch with a missionary pastor in Moscow who, in turn, put me in touch with a Russian Lutheran pastor there named Aleksei. He and I spent many hours chatting online and became good friends. In fact, even though he now lives on the Crimean Peninsula and it's been years since we've visited, we still consider him part of our family (my father, who I think was a little distrustful of Russia and Russians at first, even gave him a house key of his own with an open invitation to stay in an extra bedroom). Thanks to my connection to Aleksei, the summer of 2004 became a huge spiritual turning point for me...