On November 12th I completed my 6th, and hopefully final, unit of CPE.  Clinical Pastoral Education is an intensive process of pastoral formation that takes place in a clinical setting.  My setting was a metro hospital and the units I covered were in the children's hospital.  Much of the work I did in CPE had to do with knowing myself, claiming my pastoral identity and growing into a more whole and mature pastor.  During the year and a half of my CPE I also wrestled with my denominational affiliation, partially because such wrestling is designed into the program and partially because some of the theological questions that plague me are intensified in the face of the pain and suffering the patients and families I work with experience.  All along the way, even though I could clearly see ways that I didn't always fit into the RCA framework, I could never imagine going anywhere else.  One reason for this is that I really do still identify with the ways of worshipping and approaching God thoughfully and lovingly that the RCA embodies.  Perhaps an even more compelling reason for staying Reformed is that I belong.  My people are Reformed.  That convinced me to be at peace with my affiliation, but my own sense of theological integrity still nagged at me.

Because of all that, I am extremely grateful for the experience I had at the Making Room for All conference at the end of October, especially for the perspective I gained from Norman Kansfield's workshop "Towards an Orthodoxy of Inclusion."  Throughout the conference, presenters returned to a landmark of the RCA, the first question & answer of the Heidelberg Catechism, and Norm emphasized that our most beloved confession begins with the notion of belonging.  That struck me as deeply resonant with my own instincts.  We are a small denomination and this is one of our greatest strengths and one of our greatest challenges.  But for better or worse, we are family.  Whether you are a fourth generation lifer or a transplant like me, we are family.  I knew that as an observable fact.  It has been a gift to discover it as a theological reality.  Before the Catechism discusses what we believe or how we behave, it asserts that we belong, to Christ our Savior and by extension to each other. 

As I get in the spirit for Thanksgiving tomorrow, I'm aware of how grateful I am to be part of the family.  I hope that the strength of this bond always enables us to be a blended family of faith that is spacious and welcoming where all kinds of people get wrapped into the family, not because we are all the same but becasue we love God together and we love one another.