Spiritual Autobiography: Summmary 1

This has not been an easy path for me, nor an easy life. Things are much better now, but the first thirty years since becoming a Christian have all been particularly costly to me. I have lost everything, but this is also the cost of discipleship, and I have gained so much more. When I first encountered Christ in the attic bedroom of that old house on the Fairview Slopes, here in Vancouver, it put me at odds with everything and with everyone that had theretofore made up my fourteen years of existence: my family, my friends and peers, my school and education, my values, my direction of life, ad my future. This was not an ordinary response to "Just As I Am" at a revival meeting, nor an Anglican, Catholic or Lutheran confirmation ceremony. This was God, meeting me where I was, on his terms, calling me to be his. The Jesus People were but the vectors, and when they got snapped up by the Children of God and I was suddenly alone, I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that my calling to follow and witness to Christ was true, genuine and singular. There would be no turning back. I had the good fortune of encountering the Holy Spirit at a very early stage, before I could put up too many barriers against this wonderful and stupendous blessing. It has been this experience of the Holy Spirit that has kept me going, because without God's living presence in my life, I don't think I would have coped or held on to his hand as he was leading me through some very dark places. The influence of the Christian faith upon my life has been huge. I will begin in this post, Gentle Reader, with my economic values. It was during my first weeks as a Christian that I became aware of the economics of Jesus. My first mentors, the Jesus People, were dirt poor. Many were on social assistance, some worked part time and there were many churches, organizations and individuals donating money and goods. We took the attitude of the Early Church of the first century. We shared everything and in our poverty we became rich, in generosity, love, good works. No one considered their things as being their own, but being gifts from God to be shared for the common good. The widow who gave all she had, one copper coin, to the temple treasury, whom Jesus honoured as giving more out of her poverty than all the rich hypocrites offered from their abundance, she became our unofficial patron saint. I knew that because of my values as a Christian, that I would never be rich, and I knew that would be somehow ant ethical to the values of the Kingdom of God. The many severe disruptions that were waiting for me in my family life would also further seal my fate as someone who was destined to be permanently and perpetually poor. I also came strongly to believe that it was out of our poverty that God would bless us as we continued to give and share, and I have found this to be true. Even though I have always been poor, I have always been generous, giving money to beggars and money to the food bank, even while I was pulling less than a living wage, even when I was unemployed, even when I was on welfare. somehow, the books have always balanced for me, and I have always had enough, or almost enough to eat. hospitality has always been for me a strong value, and even if now, in my tiny subsidized apartment during this prolonged bedbug pandemic in my city, I cannot freely have guests over , I can at least carry with me wherever I go a spirit of hospitality, and approach strangers in a spirit of good will and respectful friendship. My sense of spiritual wealth has also infused my natural gifts, and I feel that through my art and intellectual and writing abilities and gifts that I have something to offer others. And this is all transfigured by love. I feel at a huge debt to Mom, the Dutch lady I knew when I was fourteen, for teaching me the supreme value of love, and of how this has influenced, motivated, and beautified my life and interactions with the world around me. Love is the message of the Gospel.