Greetings!
I am oh so glad that wandering through cyber world you have managed to stumble across the website for Episcopal Campus Ministry at Arizona State University. Welcome! ECM is an outreach of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona that seeks to engage the university community in Tempe. Our purpose is to celebrate life in Christ by creating an environment in which students can discover what it means to be 21st Century Christians living in a 21st Century post-Christian world.
While as yet we don’t have any acoustic guitars or BIG wooden crosses (we do have a handbellist in our group (me!), there is a movement afoot to procure a gigantaur pink beach umbrella adorned with “I’m Down with Jesus” in lime green gothic black letters (again, me!), we do have one wicked interfaith dialogue on spirituality! We will be launching a United Religions Initiative dialogue group this fall. All students are encouraged to participate, especially since URI involves a broad spectrum of communities of faith on campus. Additionally, ECM hosts a Sunday evening prayer and discussion group in conjunction with other Protestant fellowships. These fall and spring semester gatherings are always friendly and provocative.
We are always open to new ways to engage ASU and on the look out for students who would like our support and encouragement in developing their own sense of ministry on campus!
(transition) This is the part of my diatribe where I get to attempt to transform myself from letters on the computer screen in front of you into a breathing personality in your head who, if per chance you saw at a party, you would immediately recognize, smile at, and hand me a shot (the alternative response being to take a shot and run away screaming, “The horror! The horror!”)
My favorite book is “The Pictorial Guide to the Living Primates” by Noel Rowe, with a forward by Jane Goodall and an introduction by Russell Mittermeier. This makes sense, since my academic advisors tell me I’m an anthropology major. As any healthy male primate, all I really want to do is eat, sleep, and …um… but I also have this preternatural, masculine urge to create and sustain (by which, I mean “rule”) entire civilizations. I amuse myself by having adventures with my compatriot in crime and English linguistic major, Robin Cole. These usually involve us being chased by the Hobosaurus that live in the river bottom under the Loop 202; hiding in the old flour mill and scaring drunks on Mill Ave; or hosting “Fondue, Fun-do, Foucault” cocktail parties in my condo for our friends in the gay community. Our next adventure involves a three-person bicycle and Tempe Town Lake Park. The details are still pretty sketchy, but we know it involves ridiculous amounts of white linen clothing, big sashes, parasols and wide rimmed hats.
My source is dated (or my memory is just wrong), but ethnographic data really isn’t the point here: I seem to remember reading that there are 1.2 million Americans who identify themselves as Episcopalians. Sometimes, I hear the pithy old people in my parish remarks that there are “two kinds” of Episcopalians. Maybe three. I tend to think there’s more like 1.2 million kinds of us running around the globe, and at ECM we welcome and celebrate all of them. We warmly accept any students who invite us to be one, small experience in their lifelong journey of spiritual wholeness, wherever it may lead.
