“THE SHEER JOY OF BEING FULLY ALIVE”

 …has been the vision which first drew Father Gary Mitchener into the priesthood.  For most of his life, he has followed that vision by exploring various boundaries.

   Raised in the evangelical church, Gary, in graduate school, crossed a boundary to become an Episcopalian.  He was seeking a deeper faith more grounded in the historic, sacramental tradition of the universal church, while continuing to honor the strongly experiential faith of his childhood.

    Having marched--at the invitation of Martin Luther King, Jr.-- in Selma, Alabama in the Spring of 1965, and having explored a vocation of prayer in an Anglican monastic community in the 80’s, Gary is committed to living at the creative boundary between social action and prayer.

    More recently exploring the boundary connecting spirituality and sensuality, he seeks to reclaim the Biblical witness to a more wholistic unity of body and mind and spirit.  As a massage therapist with the Cleveland Clinic “Center for Integrative Medicine,” he offers the ancient modality of “the laying-on of hands with anointing of oil” as a way of healing.

Photo by Chris Holley Starling
    http://www.chs.photo.com/

A native Midwesterner, most of Gary’s ministry has been in New England until he and his family moved to Cleveland in the early 90’s.  Having been a campus minister at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire for 8 years, Gary became canon pastor at Trinity Cathedral for almost 9 years.

Delighted to be at St. Alban—affirming an ancient faith and a future vision—Gary seeks new interpretations of the familiar slogan:  THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH WELCOMES YOU…whoever you are, and wherever you are in your spiritual journey.  Whether you label yourself a believer or an agnostic, a conventional Christian or a skeptic, gay or straight or in-between, despairing or hopeful, St.Alban welcomes those of all races, of all classes, of all abilities, without imposing expectations of your having to become like us.  Following Christ’s core summary “to love God and to love others,” we believe that the way we treat each other is vastly more important then the words we happen to use in describing our various beliefs.