Comments:
I left Brasil in '68, returning to the US after my father completed a 2 year Fulbright as a professor at USP. After leaving high school a year early (I still haven't graduated or gotten a GED-- is it too late?) I did a couple of years as a Navy medic, an undergrad degree in International Studies, worked as a paramedic in Chicago and with the Peace Corps in Korea, then as a journalist for the UN in Geneva, Switzerland, edited a small-town Vermont paper, and was Associate Editor of the national paper in the Turks and Caicos Islands, all before going to seminary to become an Episcopal priest.
I served in parishes in New York, Vermont and Washington State (where I married Virginia), in each place also volunteering as a chaplain with local emergency services, and then as a Navy and Marine Corps Chaplain, stationed first with in Okinawa with two Marine Corps battalions, then aboard a cruiser out of San Diego followed by a school command there, and finally with submarines, based in Poulsbo, Washington.
During this time I finished a D.Min., writing my dissertation on the role of community clergy as volunteer chaplains with police, fire and EMS departments. I also was qualified in traumatic incident stress counseling and as a Combat Stress Instructor. Even while serving as a military chaplain, I continued volunteer chaplaincy 'on the side', setting up two volunteer chaplaincy departments for police and sheriff's departments in areas where I was stationed.
My last major duty before being medically retired was three weeks service in New York following 9/11, working weekends at Ground Zero and the morgue while spending weekdays training clergy from parishes which had lost members in the attacks.
In February of 2002 the Navy retired me because of serious back problems-- degenerative disk disease-- combined with problems with my shoulder and knees. We moved to Charleston, SC, where I spent nine months as a hospital chaplain, completing the CPE certification requirements as well as being certified as a Thanatologist (Death, Dying and Grief Educator and Counselor), but having to leave the hospital because of the back problems. I then spent a year working part-time for a hospice before that became too much, and I shifted to voluntary pastoral counseling at an Anglo-Catholic parish in Charleston.
Still able to put in a day or so a week (I've now had 6 spinal surgeries, and set off metal detectors!), I am now volunteering for the Igreja Lusitana, the very small (and very poor) branch of the Anglican Communion in Portugal, I celebrate and preach in Portuguese once a week in the Porto/Gaia area, grateful that I've been able to keep the Portuguese I learned 40 years ago (and practiced whenever possible in between!) and to still be useful and needed, despite being exceedingly "part-time". My disability checks are enough for us to survive on, and Virginia is studying Portuguese so that she too can volunteer-- the hardest part, particularly for her, is that our three grandchildren are in Seattle, a LONG way from northern Portugal!
We're here for at least another year or so-- what happens after that is in God's hands. I am a priest and canon, now officially a member of the clergy of the Portuguese branch of the Anglican Communion, but as an Anglo-Catholic I fully believe that I am a member of a Church that is part of the Body of Christ, and not bound by human-defined national borders. I have spent most of my life as a volunteer of some sort or another, and that will continue, but where, and doing what, is not in my hands.
