My Church
Some of you may wonder where I go to church. That is a great question.
Right now, my home church is this little prayer nook in my second-floor hermitage. Self-care is my first ministry. Working on this blog and caregiving for my mom, who lives downstairs, are at the heart of my lay apostolate. I sit in contemplative prayer for twenty minutes twice daily, around 5:30 AM and 5:30 PM. When I am well enough, I sit for double prayer sessions on Saturdays. I try to stay offline and keep a Gentile "Shabbat Lite" (Holy Saturday) every 6 PM Friday to 8 PM Saturday. Since Simchat Torah, I have been making my way through the weekly synagogue portions with Depths of the Torah from First Fruits of Zion. I also Pray for Israel weekly on Shabbat.
My mom's house is near three parishes in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany. I have never been to any of them. I know that I need to give Catholic mass a try, on my way to possible participation in the Order of Christian Initiation for Adults, but I am just not sure that bricks-and-mortar church attendance is my charism. Even if a monastery of Catholic vegan Zen cenobites held weekly public services within easy walking distance of my urban hermitage, I might only attend once a month or quarter. Then again, I might want to move in! From a Catholic perspective, I am in the Period of Evangelization and Precatechumenate.
Frank Hoffman (here and here) founded All-Creatures back in the late 1990s. Frank is a vegan Jewish-Christian genius who has been providing me with uplifting spiritual counsel and feedback since 2021. I see Frank and his friend Richard Schwartz as prophetic voices in God's messianic plan for Jews in Israel and Diaspora. I don't know how many vegans we might need to save the world from God's climate wrath (cf. Colossians 3:6), but maybe my rough formula of 1 vegan, 1 vegetarian, and 1 flexitarian for every three people in the world by 2050 is a safe climate prescription. Maybe it's too lenient, maybe it's too strict. I don't want my readers to panic about climate change, but I don't want them to ignore consensus scientific reality either. Let's see what the IPCC says when its 7th Annual Assessment Report is released in 2029.
Tams Nicholson is the Executive Director of All-Creatures. Tams supported me with life-changing spiritual mentoring in the Catholic Franciscan vegan tradition for a year and a half between 2022 and 2024. I wouldn't be nearly as far along in my vocational discernment as I am without Tams. Among other important steps, Tams initiated me into the world of Christian vegan Zoom fellowship with Matthew King from the Christian Animal Rights Association and with Nicole Corrado, a Christian vegan in Canada. Nicole in turn introduced me to Craig Wescoe, the Vegan Christian Discipleship School, and the Creation Care Church.
Creation Care Church is my current virtual church, and Craig Wescoe is my online pastor. Craig is fantastic. We haven't figured out yet if it would be better for me to spend more of my time in a local non-vegan Church or in an online vegan Church. We also haven't worked out the best method for my water baptism, given my discernment of a potential call to Catholicism. Nevertheless, we agree that I am a sincere Christian catechumen, if not already a born-again Christian, at least from a non-denominational perspective.
The brilliant works of Messianic Jewish theologians Mark Kinzer and Richard Harvey have had a tremendous impact on my religious outlook. So has October 7. I made a donation to the emergency hostage family relief fund of the Jerusalem Institute of Justice in October of 2023, and I've been virtually attending weekly Panim el Panim (PEP) classes from the Messianic Jewish Theological Institute since November of 2023. MJTI staff are totally wonderful, and the PEP presenters have been uniformly excellent. I can't manage an academic workload, there are no messianic synagogues in my area, and even if there were, I am probably too much of a hermit to attend one regularly. Panim el Panim has been the perfect way for me to meet my unique learning needs in the crucial areas of Messianic Jewish Theology and Jewish-Christian relations.
Most recently, I've struck up a nourishing correspondence with Sister Laurel at Stillsong Hermitage. Sister Laurel is a great encouragement as I discern next steps on the eremitic path. I wouldn't have started this blog without her blessed example.
My thanks to all of you!