My Journey of Faith (with Dick Steele)

A Life Long Episcopalian, by Dick Steele

I came into this world at the Biltmore Hospital in Biltmore, North Carolina on May 20, 1946.  Little did I know that some of my formative years as an Episcopalian would be spent at All Souls Episcopal Church just a few hundred yards away.  I was baptized at St James Mission in Black Mountain, North Carolina.  Too young to remember the ceremony I do know I was pinched so I cried to ensure the Devil was gotten out of me.  Not sure if it worked.  I don’t remember attending St James as a young child.  I do remember being sent to a private Pre K/Kindergarten school at which the children of the rising preacher Billy Graham attended.  Our teacher stressed wasn’t it wonderful that Franklin Graham was the Baby Jesus for the Christmas pageant.  I on the other hand was a Shepard and was awed when all the Angels stood on the winding stair case leading up to the second floor singing “Glory To God In The Highest” as baby Franklin cooed!  

I do remember going to All Souls in Biltmore.  All Souls was built by the Vanderbilt family as the parish church of the town of Biltmore which was built as an English town in support of the Biltmore Estate.  (I was not aware of this fact until later) all I knew was each Sunday I was dressed in a suit and went off to attend Sunday School singing Onward Christen Soldiers etc. and allowed infrequently to very quietly attend the adult services.  At the same time I attended the Swannanoa, North Carolina (First People’s word for Muddy River).  Swannanoa was the home to Beacon Mills who manufactured woolen blankets.  My mother Mary worked but more accurately volunteered to bring help to folks in the hills and hollers of the Blue Ridge.  I went with her.  It was an eye opening experience for a young child.  I saw poverty first hand as well as dignity and independence.  My Mother worked with those proud people explaining how the State and Federal Government could assist them.  She was unique since she was a Yankee and they respected her for coming to them.  I did not learn till later that she took me along since there was an unwritten code of the mountains that no women was to be bothered if she had a child with her.  This experience made me realize that the world was not equal and that you had to help those who needed help.  I listened to the Bible stories about Jesus and began to realize that we were all equal under his mantel.  

Also one thing I learned in public school that during mandatory religious class that as an Episcopalian I was not in the norm.  I was taken aside by a friend that when asked if your parents drank, smoked, danced, used bad language, etc. that I was not to raise my hand.  I said it was true and he said his did the same but the code was to smile sweetly at the Religion Teacher and admit to nothing.  So much for hypocrisy.  I no longer got special prayers.  In the 4th grade I was transferred to the private Catholic School Gibbons Hall School for Boys.  I finally found a religion that was close to an Episcopalian.  I later learned that the school population was made up of 75% Jewish, 15% Protestant, and 10% Catholic.  Instead of a religion class that made you feel guilty you got to learn things.  Only problem was that our Catholic brethren were preparing for their Confirmations.  The rest of us read the Old Testament.  Safe ground for us but after you read it you heard the Catholic’s getting their responses drummed into them.  We listened.  When the Monsignor came to ensure the Catholics were ready to meet the Bishop he started asking questions like Who Made You.  All our Catholic brethren froze so Leo Finkelstein and I raised our hands.  The Monsignor called on me I answered The Lord God Above.  Leo answered the next, and others helped our Catholic brethren out.  They soon joined us in making the correct replies.  At the end of the Monsignor’s visit he congratulated our teacher, a wonderful Sister of Charity, on how well the entire class was prepared.  After he left she turned to the class and said “If the Jews and the Protestants know it you little Catholics can darn well know it to.”  That was my first experience in ecumenical efforts.  While there I discovered prayer.  It came about in a roundabout way a protestant friend and I discovered if we went to chapel after lunch we could spend 15 minutes extra out of class.  I still can remember the chapel with it life size Saints and their purposes.  Unlike All Souls the Chapel had real things you could concentrate on not just the brass cross.

I also learned the discrimination between those Confirmed in the Episcopal Church and those who were not.  My older brother got to take Communion and serve at the Altar.  I got to sing in the junior choir.  Since all my friends were there with me it did not bother me till I came to Albuquerque.  We went to St Marks On The Mesa since it was the closest Episcopal Church to our home.  You did that by custom not like today when you get to choose your Episcopal church.  I had been confirmed prior to coming to New Mexico and looked forward to being an Acolyte.  The rector at the time welcomed my brother to the altar but informed me he had too many acolytes and I should continue in the Jr. Choir.  I was pissed but realized it did not affect my relationship with God.  

You have to remember I was a child of the 1928 Prayer Book so guilt and purgatory were all part of the game.  Fortunately my Mother had made friends with a lady I later called my New Mexico Grandmother who urged us to come to St John’s Cathedral.  We did.  We found it welcoming, concerned with the less fortunate, and struggling to keep the doors open so everyone who was there was counted on to make a contribution.  I didn’t get to serve at the Altar until I was on my way to Vietnam.  This helped to sharpen my awareness of God and realize that the building and the people could support that awareness but not take it away from me.  

This supported me as I attended seven other Episcopal churches during my service in the Air Force.  The one thing that I always remembered as a single person: it was God and me.  When I was married it was God and us.  In many cases there was only one Episcopal Church but He was always with us.  He led Janet and me to integrate the oldest Episcopal Church in Alaska.  Our New Mexico heritage did not even make us aware we were doing it.  It lead me to stage a kneel in at the Altar at our church in California when a lay person would not serve my two year old son wine even though he had been admitted to Communion at Canterbury during a visit to Albuquerque .  God is always with us wither we be a cradle Episcopalian, or a new comer to the faith, or just a Child of God.  He is with each of us and we have to remember we are sheep of His fold.

Dick Steele