The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God,
thou wilt not despise.
Ps 51:17
2 - what leads me to respond
I laid in an empty room of a recently-rented apartment, forty miles from any friends or family.
Instead of furniture, there was the sound of frogs croaking in the backyard pool. My body pulsed with over-exertion from the walk upstairs. I laughed. Even if I had wanted to continue working the breakneck pace of the past three years, my body wouldn't allow it.
Instead of blessings, I counted the wonderful elegance with which things had been taken away from me: Six weeks before, my car and belongings were stolen. The day following, our approaching wedding canceled by my fiancee. Meanwhile, the progressive deterioration of my health that had started nine months earlier. The tapering of calls from concerned friends and family removed any obligation toward them. The utter comprehensiveness of loss felt strangely beautiful. I felt my body pulse and buzz, and peaceably readied myself for death.
Hmm, God reminded me. Hmm, there was one thing that hadn't been taken away, but had been strangely supported where things might easily have failed: the letter for scholarship money covering my expenses; the lucky securing of the last available campus apartment in my price range. God was opening one door, only one, while all others quietly shut on rooms full of death. I saw a singular beacon of light beaming through the decay.
"All things come of thee, o Lord." And when only one thing is given, there is little question remaining about what God has created for us. From this stark and unforgettable experience in mid-June of 2005, my priorities were clearly laid out for me. All things involved in bringing and sustaining me at Harvard, and which God had waiting for me there, were the focus of my life. Everything else could be left for dead.
In that beacon of light, God built for me a bridge past a life that otherwise had ended. On the other side of that bridge, now, I am His alone, and every action or decision gets weighed in consideration of the work He has shown as laid out for me. Some involves long-range goals and academic projects; other work involves daily devotionals of ministering to individuals for whom God has found me. As surely as I can tell, one of those acts is unashamedly declaring myself a servant through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of the One True God. With or without ordination, when I remember this, my energy is restored to keep on living. If ever I become sidetracked, death begins to set in again.
My early struggles as an acolyte against hesitant sermons or stultified congregations first awakened my passion for work within the church. This led to crises at each major life-path decision that did not honor what felt like the call to Seminary. After college, responses to a desperate letter to all the pastors who had mentored me through my life assured me that when the call was true, I would be able to answer it without anxiety. Meanwhile, I pragmatically challenged the idea that a young man, practically untouched by tragedy or the complexity of adult life and relationships, could have anything to offer a congregation. Secretly, privately, I welcomed such growth experiences into my life.
The crash of two jet airplanes into the World Trade Center while I slept in New York preceded by two months the discovery in my blood of a fatal and unknown disease. In three months, doctors finally confirmed that the source of my profound debilitation, my 14-hour nights of sleep, and my layoff and relocation back to Seattle was a rare bone marrow disorder known as Aplastic Anemia. For the next three years, I found dependence on my family, practices of yoga and Eastern healing, and a long conversation with God about what I was doing wrong, or how much I should even take responsibility for my illness and its healing.
Ironically � some would say � stories from the Bible became more accessible to me from my yoga practices than through Church itself. Through experiencing and learning to live within the laws of energy, I found principles quoted by Jesus and experiences of the Apostles in Acts to be for the first time understandable. Over a period of months, every sermon and reading delivered at Bethany Community Church in Greenlake recapitulated a lesson I had experienced in the yoga studio, just the week before. I began to accept that the One True God was working in all the world, and was recognizable by faithful people through many vocabularies.
The quality of worship exploded tremendously for me while practicing yoga! At pastors' prompting, I knew now how to let go of my doubt and resistance, and trustfully welcome the Spirit in through my brain, my heart, my complete body as an opening to faith and renewal. Suddenly, there was no need to question or wait for the proof from God about how to know or believe in Him truly. I knew plainly from those feelings of grace, deep cleansing, assurance, and inspiration that I encountered at every service! What before had been a vague affinity for church buildings, community, and attendance now showed herself to be the Holy Spirit, who had been working through my numbed body and brain all along!
With thankfulness, I had no doubt any longer about taking up the gauntlet to investigate a call to ministry. What remained unsolved were only minor questions about the church or denomination to facilitate the inquest. With fond amazement at the workings of God, I found that God had actually placed me in the right church over 16 years earlier; that my mother's best friend, who had lovingly saved me from a near-crisis by taking me into her home, had recently been ordained as a Priest in the Episcopal Church, and that one of the newest Episcopal congregations in Seattle turned out to be the first church I have ever felt was a home to me. It is no exaggeration to say that the church home at COTA feels as much like a family as the two beautiful families who raised me and nursed me through my sickness.
To answer more briefly: I can never say to know for sure the scope of God's plans or vision through the actions He takes in the world and our personal lives. Yet I answer my congregation's call to ministry because, to the best of my ability to discern, God has plans for me in this role, and has seemed to be preparing me for it quite intensively over the past seven years. I accept it happily because it may be the only thing for which He keeps me alive.
I answer the call to ministry in sober acknowledgment of the challenges facing the church today. Echoes of political struggles destabilize our polity, and a new generation addicted to stimulus, proof, and mistrust finds less of value among church offerings. Firsthand work managing yoga studios has shown me what people will pay for tangible improvements to their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Consistent with my experience, my God-given vision involves creating safe and sane ways to incorporate body-mind practices into liturgies, so we may better minister to societies for whom the disconnection of their souls from God is intimately related to sedentary lifestyles, distraction, and a disconnection between their minds and their bodies; and between the lives they deeply long to create in harmony with the Spirit and what they successfully realize.
Sincerely,
Andrew Varyu
5 Jan. 2006
Prepared for Bishop of the Episcopalian Diocese of Olympia
Statement from Aspirant to Postulancy Andrew R Varyu
Submitted Epiphany, 2006
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