Last Saturday night (April 23rd) I was telling a story to some of my old Youth Group (whoi were meeting in Reunion) about my “Vermont experience” which culminated in my Calling to the Ministry, and we got sidetracked from my getting to the end of that point I was about to make about that. I had just described how I had experienced the “Grace” of finally feeling like I was “in communion” or “Koinonia” with the group, after 3-4 years of having “performance anxiety”; trying to be “good enough” and reaching some “Spiritual plateau” that seemed to have eluded me.

What I was about to add to that picture was that I had much of that realization of grace and koinonia “hit me” when I was on a “contemplative” walk on a mountain trail. What I didn’t realize then was something else about the things going on around me of which I was not consciously aware at the time. I was “in nature/creation” in what I see now as a “mystical” kind of way.

Now, on the other side of an “Eco-Conversion”, I see that time with new eyes yet again, and that a big piece of what enabled me to experience a sense of Koinonia was the experience of communing with creation, and that the two (“eco” and “Koino” created a “Kairos” at that point in time —the “Chronos”). I think that is an intended wholeness; a step along the journey that is “built in” to our calling (and in mine in particular, given that I am now devoting my present and future energies to exploring and relating the “Good News” of how God works in the context in which he has placed us (our “Common Home”, this wonderful Creation).