My Franciscan Journey
07/29/14 
Peter Strand
Professing Member of the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans (OEF) since 2001
Ordained Minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) since 1998
Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Ridgefield Park, NJ since 2000
Served as pastor of Christ Lutheran Church, Ridgefield Park, NJ 2000-2004
and served Russell Sage Memorial Church of Far Rockaway, Queens, NY 1991-2000
M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary (NYC), 1993
Hitchcock Award for work done in the Church History (upon graduation in 1993)
Post-graduate work as a doctoral student at UTS (in the field of Patristics) and further study at General Theological Seminary
(in the field of Ascetical Theology)
[Easter, 2014] My interest in Francis and Clare of Assisi was first stirred when I was a child. I was brought up in a Protestant home where religion and the Bible were frequently discussed. We were involved in the life of the church too. At St. Ann's in Sayville, Long Island, there was a Third Order Franciscan who became a friend of the family, and when we switched to Christ Church in Bellport, we began taking trips to the (Episcopal) Little Portion Friary up at Mount Sinai by Port Jefferson. And there was the figure of St. Francis watching over a birdbath with a feathered creature on his hand, tucked away in a little wooded recess in the back of the church, where I used to go for quiet and solitude. That was in the 1960s and accompanied our family's and the church's involvement in the Civil Rights and antiwar movements. We also had books at home, lots of books, and I was an avid reader of anything that was not assigned by teachers. One book that I recall reading when I must have been twelve or thirteen was Nikos Kazantzakis's 1956 novel, Saint Francis. There was also Theresa, a Carmelite woman on my paper route, a friend of my mother, who took an interest in me and spoke to me of Francis and Clare.
Because of these and other influences, Francis and Clare caught my imagination. Jesus the Christ, Gautama the Buddha, and Francis the Saint, were wrapped up together in my child's mind, and I wanted to be like them. I saw each through the other. I was infatuated with Francis' passionate love of God, his love of creation, and love of poverty. I loved them too. What began then has stayed with me since. I intuitively understood that Francis did not just love the poor-and did he ever!-he knew they were closer to our created being, and as a lover of God he wanted to be poor too. I also was drawn in by his itinerant preaching life and service and just as much by his contemplative experience; I was hungry for just this. Perhaps strange for a Protestant, I was also drawn to, and in childish simplicity, shared his devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus.
I had an evangelical conversion experience when I was fourteen. It was an awakening to Jesus. I was very interested in Jesus, both imaginatively and intellectually, but I had not yet fallen in love with him. Now I became his lover. Shortly after the suicide of our parish priest, he who helped teach me the Franciscan ideals, I was devastated and found refuge among the Jesus Freaks. We were wildly enthusiastic, 'into' Jesus, and 'into' living by the gospels as literally as possible. We were also cockily intolerant of conventional Christianity. I carried my Franciscan ideals with me into this new life, and we were soon organizing retreats at Little Portion Friary. We were amazed at the friars who spent so much time in prayer. We wanted to be like them even as we stayed up late at night and 'danced in the Spirit' out in their meadow. They liked us too, but begged us to tone down a bit our vociferous praises of God. I began looking into what it would take to become a friar myself, or at least a member of the Third Order.
That was not, however, to be. As the Jesus Movement was absorbed into the evangelical churches of conventional denominations, I drifted away from the Episcopal Church and ended up in an intense church movement that rejected all forms of hierarchy and liturgy but made spirituality-individual and collective-its top priority. I continued my Christian development under their nurture right up until I entered Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York in 1990. Since I always liked to read whatever was not assigned by my teachers, I had steeped myself for years in academic theological texts and biblical studies before I matriculated. There I excelled in Church History, and continued at Union for several years doing doctoral work in the Early Church, tutoring students in Early, Medieval and Reformation History. It was, in fact during that time that I was absorbed into the Presbyterian Church and became an ordained pastor. It was also that time when I discovered the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans online (www.franciscans.com).
Yes, I first discovered them online. To my surprise they were an ecumenical order that was historically linked to and modeled after the Third Order Society of Saint Francis in the Episcopal Church. I was at once excited and got in touch with them. They were a tiny Order of barely thirty professed members scattered all over North America (and now in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia; we are at present about forty members). Dale Carmen, a UCC pastor and farmer in North Dakota whose vision and persistence founded the Order, became my mentor and formation counsellor as I became first an inquirer and then a candidate. I attended my first Chapter, the annual convocation of the entire Order, at a convent in North Dakota and had the chance to meet, for the first time, the other people who were drawn to this discipline. At once I fell in love with them all. I became a professed member in 2001. That means I am vowed, together with these others, for the rest of my life, to our Order.
What struck me then and now is our remarkable diversity in every way. We are committed to a practice of 'extravagant and inclusive hospitality to all who seek us out.' We not only are from all over the continent, we also represent a remarkable spiritual spectrum. There are Roman Catholics and Episcopalians, United Church of Christ folk, Methodists, Presbyterians, Disciples, Baptists, and Quakers, a Mennonite, someone from a Pentecostal Church, the Salvation Army, and even a Unitarian. There are liberals and conservatives, people into high church liturgy, evangelicalism, contemplation, social justice, the environment, down-to-earth nitty-gritty work among the poor, and institutional work; people who are strictly Christian and people who have a beautiful openness to other religions. There are the more and the less educated, and clergy and lay, without any recognition given to titles or merit or privilege. There are the skilled and the unskilled, musicians and the tone deaf. There are gay and straight people, women and men, the physically challenged and the less so, and diverse races and cultures and ages. But everyone has a love for Francis and the way of life he taught and exemplified. Since I joined, this diversity has grown.
I was not entirely comfortable with all of it. I didn't understand what a Unitarian was doing there. I was nervous about theological liberals. And I had to come to terms with my own homophobia. I laugh at all this now, but it was stressful for me then. I had to deal with the fact that I loved all these people more than I could understand them, and it took time and compassion and suffering to relativize my head and let my heart win out until my head could catch up. Our inclusivity is one of the most important characteristics of our Order, because it forces upon us the rule of love. What soul-searching it induces, what self-denial, what discovery! It is a strange thing to let the heart instead of the head lead one in one's pursuit of Christ, the Jesus of the gospels, the Jesus whom Francis loved. Strange, and growth-inducing, and wonderful.
It has been important for us to embrace those who have been ostracized and hurt by Christian churches and treated as 'other,' and this includes not only free-thinkers but sexual minorities, not only gay and lesbian and bi people but also transgendered and intersexed people. We have strong rules about mutual respect and protecting each other's personal boundaries, including having respect for the integrity of each other's private relationships. Yes, the vow of chastity goes this far. This is a hard pill for some people to swallow, and absolutely liberating in the Holy Spirit.
Another thing that struck me in the beginning but has grown on me over the years is that our exemplars are not only Jesus and his mother, and those given to us in the Sacred Scriptures, and of course Francis of Assisi, but also Clare of Assisi, who followed Francis' inspiration but in her own way. She was the first woman in the church to have a Rule that she had written approved by the Pope. We have striven to give recognition to both Francis and Clare. Francis deliberately set out to create an Order that was not monastic and separated from society (though monasteries have their role) but one fully immersed in the life of the world. Clare's Order was cloistered, and in this different, though adhering to the same values. There were other early Franciscan women who were not friars but more like Francis, women of the streets: Rose of Viterbo, a street preacher, Angela of Foligno, a master of theologians, Margaret of Cortona, the Poverella, and Sancia, Queen of Naples, who was a protector of the Orders. See the introduction, Women of the Streets: Early Franciscan Women and their Mendicant Vocation by Darleen Pryds (2010), where I found these appellations. We resemble them, taking after the early 'Brothers and Sisters of Penance.' My point is that we consciously seek to be gender inclusive and feel this is integral to the Franciscan heritage.
Not only does the Order seek such inclusivity within, we also seek to be united with the entire Franciscan family without. We are members of Franciscans International, a voice at the United Nations, and we work with Franciscans Action Network, which seeks to influence public policy nationally. We attend retreats in which Roman Catholic, Anglican and Ecumenical Franciscans mutually recognize each other and work on our common vision. These other Orders are represented at our Chapter gathering, and their members often lead our discussions. There is a genuine bond of love and affection between us.
We are always seeking dialogue partners. For years we have sought dialogue with both the Muslim and Jewish communities. Masud Ibn Syedullah in the TSSF has helped us much over the years, as has Brother Al Mascia, a Roman Catholic of the Order of Friars Minor, who used to be one of us. So have others outside our Order.
Our Order strives after the example of Francis and Clare to make Christ the inspiration and the center of our lives with God and with people. We seek to devote ourselves especially to a careful reading of the Gospel, going from Gospel to life and from life to Gospel. (This is our first principle.) Motivated by the power of the Gospel, we want to 'conform our thoughts and deeds to those of Christ by means of that radical interior change which the Gospel itself calls 'conversion,'' and to do this daily. Following the example of Jesus, prayer and contemplation should be the soul of all that we are and do. There are seventeen such principles that we live by. What is clear, of course, is the centrality of Jesus. What is also clear from Francis' own writings is the importance of the Holy Spirit in our entire formation and lives, without whom Christ could not be who he is to each of us. Surprising for an ecumenical order such as ours is also the importance of the church, our collective worship, and our participation in the sacramental life of the church, 'above all the Eucharist.' We are each admonished to be faithful and accountable to our particular denominations or spiritual fellowships and to accept our shared calling to rebuild the church.
We are also covenanted to 'draw up and live by a Personal Rule of Life based on the Rule of this Order' and the particular Franciscan charism (the 'quality' gifted to us by the Holy Spirit) that we have inherited by our calling. We are also each to have a spiritual director with whom we meet regularly.
This all probably seems strange to most Protestants, and so I conclude with an explanation. Francis and Clare lived centuries before the Reformation and Counter-Reformation divided the Western Church. They were not Counter-Reformation Catholics but are the spiritual ancestors of all Western Christians, including Protestants, just as Augustine is, and the heritage of the entire ©cumene. It is true that the Reformation shut down all the Orders of the Roman Church; in our opinion it threw out the babies with the bathwater. Modern Protestants, it seems to me, incline to be preoccupied with either social action towards justice or personal morality and sectarian beliefs, both motivated towards creating a "beloved community." Tending towards either rationalism or emotionalism, moreover, they have short-shifted spirituality, and if this is not corrected it will probably mean the increasing decline of Protestantism until it is no longer a significant presence on earth.
When Christianity loses it ways and becomes indistinguishable in taste from the rest of the world, the Spirit of God raises up someone to clarify what the call of the Gospel means. She or he becomes a 'canon' (from cane, literally a measuring stick) that acts like a beacon that can guide us. Franciscans believe that Francis and Clare are such a beacon. Heeding our call, we covenant together to be true Christians, first and foremost: faithful to Christ in such a way that we do not get lost in the confusion that has become contemporary Christianity. We commit to certain values, and we commit to one another with respect to keeping those values, helping each other clarify them and follow them in our own way. Many Christians feel very alone in their discipleship to Christ, for the churches around them do not support them in their pursuit of Christ's radical call. Covenanting together is a great support. The covenant is not a church nor is it a replacement for the church. It is rather a support to our being in the church. Indeed, we are always 'to seek to encounter the living and active person of Christ ' in the church.'
We commit to certain values, and when we profess, we commit to them for life. This does not mean that our understanding of those values is static; it grows and changes as we grow. Making such a commitment for life, however, gives us a certain stability. We are not a boat tossed about in the sea by winds, having to figure things out over and over, and subject to the moods of the day. No. We can go deeper, and we can expand, but we have a rudder to our ship and a compass to steer her by. There is comfort in this.
Taking vows are Biblical. Jesus' prohibition in Matthew 5:33-37 (see James 5:12) is about our word not carrying its own weight because we swear by heaven, by the earth, by Jerusalem, by our head, and so forth. 'Let your word be, 'Yes, yes; no, no'; for anything more than these is of the evil one.' We give this kind of sincere word when we are baptized. It too is for the rest of our life. Profession is no different. When the professed vow, they make a simple and true statement of their intention "before the Lord and this company." They say, "I give myself to our Lord Jesus Christ, to serve Christ for the rest of my life in company with my brothers and sisters in the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans. I will seek to spread the knowledge and love of Christ, to promote and live in the spirit of the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, following the little way after the examples of Francis and Clare. I ask God for strength, and my brothers and sisters for prayer, as I commit myself to this lifelong endeavor."
Even though our Order is so few and so spread, I find, thirteen years after profession, that my reading of Holy Scripture (I am a Biblical preacher) and the lens of my spiritual vision is shaped more and more by my Franciscan vocation without any effort on my part. My love for the others with whom I have covenanted and with all those bound to us seems to grow day by day. I have not always been faithful in my disciplines nor in my heart, but little by little the Holy Spirit's formation of me into the likeness of Christ, according to the image of him into whose Name I was baptized, grows; and I find my weak efforts slowly catching up to what the Spirit has already done. My Franciscan vocation sticks to me more than I stick to it. Daily I am grateful for my Franciscan vocation. It bonds me to all Christians everywhere and to all people of good will.