The Road to Emmaus

In my thirty-odd years, I’ve lived in six American states and one unincorporated territory, for a total of 21 separate dwelling places. The longest I’ve lived in any was a little over five years, and the shortest was three weeks. I’m often asked “what it was like” and whether I liked all that moving about, but the honest truth is that I don’t really have much to compare it to, not yet, anyway.

Really, even if I had a basis for comparison, I don’t think I ought to like it. Placelessness is one of the afflictions of the modern world, and while it has always been a characteristic of the professions which defined my family during my childhood (the military and Christian mission), I don’t think of it as a proper shape for the life of the human person. We were meant to be local people living in a locus, a place which is our home not merely because we park our cars there, but rather because we park our souls there.

It’s my hope that I get to park my soul in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, for a good long time.

I spent the first two-thirds of my life as an Evangelical Protestant Christian, the son of missionaries, and the most recent third as an Orthodox Christian (still the son of missionaries). I consider myself a Southerner, having been born and living the majority of my life in various areas that either are now or used to be Virginia. (Emmaus was legally Virginia for three years (1606-09), but no one knew it at the time, and the town wouldn’t be founded for another 150 years, anyway.)

I’m a husband and a father, and I love the mystery and ministry and joy of both vocations. I don’t consider myself as any sort of advanced spiritual person. I am a priest, but spiritual advice I give is always secondhand, passing on the stuff that seems to me the most useful from what has been given to me. I’ve had some good teachers.

Before I became a priest, I had a rather bewildering variety of professions, including (but not limited to): newspaperboy, ditch digger, McDonald’s cashier, day-old bread store cashier, columnist, technical writer, web designer, finish carpenter and styrofoam sculptor. I once got a job as a waiter but never worked a day. I was a professional theatrical technician/stagehand/lighting designer/audio engineer/carpenter/flyman/master electrician/box pusher for 10 years, and of all my former professions, it’s that one which probably made the biggest impact on who I am and how I live. Now, I’m a priest.

Somewhere along the way, I got a B.A. in English Language and Literature, minors in Religion, Classical Studies and Ancient Greek (NCSU ‘01), most of (but not all of) a B.A. in Communication, and an M.Div. in Orthodox Theology with Distinction in Church History (STOTS ‘07). (All that probably sounds more impressive than it really is.) I was also present at the canonization of Saint Raphael of Brooklyn (2000), and that changed everything.

For two years (2007-2009), I served as the assistant pastor at Saint George Orthodox Cathedral in Charleston, West Virginia (during which time I authored the Christ in the Mountains weblog), and now I serve as the pastor of Saint Paul Orthodox Church in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.

I also like to play the mountain dulcimer, though I can’t claim to be very good at it.