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Hey there, Diocese of the Rio Grande. I want to make sure that you know Lynn Finnegan.

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I'm Lynn Finnegan and I live in Los Alamos.

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I'm Associate Rector at Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe.

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And tell us about your journey to being a priest and how, I mean, go back as far as you want to go, but just tell us how this all happened.

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Well, God has a sense of humor. I trace it back to about the age of 19, where I was sensing this call of some sort.

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I was raised Catholic, so at the time, the only call available to me was to be a nun.

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I grew up in Savannah, Georgia. And I was in college in North Georgia, Berry College, beautiful.

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It's got the largest land area campus in the United States.

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So I was out in the woods on a snowy day and I just was really sensing the Holy Spirit.

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Came back, told everyone I wanted to be a nun.

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Dumped my boyfriend. Can't have one of those Can't have one of those if you're going to be a nun.

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But then I had a very wise nun.

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A young nun who was one of my high school instructors.

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And I met with her, and I'll never forget, we were sitting on the beach in Savannah, Georgia, and she said, Lynn, she said, maybe God is calling you to be a nun.

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Good advice. It was good advice because within a year or so I was no longer sensing a call.

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I was rejecting the church in its entirety.

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And swung completely to the other direction, you know, being 20, 21, just, you know, feeling this rejection of organized religion, having some real questions about the Pope and lack of ordination of women and et cetera, et cetera.

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So this calling was fallow.

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My husband and I came back to the church when our kids were young for a couple of reasons.

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Um, I wanted to bring my children up knowing more than Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.

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And he also was at a time in his life his sister was very, very ill.

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She's since recovered, um, but she had a very rare form of cancer.

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So it was a, a good time for us to sort of, um, come back to faith.

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I was raised Catholic. He was raised Methodist.

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We found the Episcopal Church. Mm hmm.

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Common story. Yeah. And a good one.

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It is a good one. Uh, I had another amazing Holy Spirit moment, um, when the choir sang the Alleluia chorus.

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And from there, I got deep into the Episcopal faith, was still wrestling a little bit, but very active in ministry, senior warden, um, parish life, outreach, stewardship, chair of the capital campaign, you name it.

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I was involved in it. Um, But I was just, I was doing all the action and not doing the spiritual, but God was still there.

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God was still, you know, banging on the back of my head.

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Were you practicing law by that point? I was practicing law.

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Yeah. Yeah. So I had my own practice, uh, predominant in the area of estate planning and probate.

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Busy with raising a family, busy with my law practice, busy with church stuff.

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So I kind of put the whole, what is this called thing on the back shelf.

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And then it started creeping back in again.

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And I realized it within the context of my law practice.

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What I was really loving about it was the pastoral component of it.

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Because when people are experiencing death and grief and they're meeting with the lawyer and the whole legal system is so overwhelming and complicated, I was able to, within a space of an hour to provide calm.

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And I would often pray with my clients, um, who were, you know, receptive to that.

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And there were some people who were asking me, Lynn, do you feel any call to ordained ministry? I don't know.

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And then what I happened is my husband, I had this amazing opportunity.

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to live in Vienna, Austria for about four years.

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He worked at the national laboratory.

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The international atomic energy agency is in Vienna.

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And so he had a change of station.

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So, I packed up my law office, told all my clients, I'll be back in a year, shifted all my files to another lawyer who told me, well, when you come back, I'll give them all back to you.

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No problem. Moved to Vienna.

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And then all of a sudden, I had time.

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I had space. Wow. It was such a gift.

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It was a gift. You know, I think that's so important and we can all get so busy.

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In our lives doing important things, right? I mean, you're talking about helping people with your law practice.

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You're talking about raising your family. You're talking about volunteering at the church.

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And the complexity of all those levels.

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Meant that you weren't able to slow down enough.

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To listen deeply enough. For what am I really here for? Right.

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And I feel like we, part of the reason I've said, you know, I've said it before, the Sabbath is a commandment.

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It's a, it's one of the big 10, right? It's as important as don't commit adultery, don't murder.

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Keep Sabbath is an important part of that because we can get so busy doing good, really good stuff that we don't hear.

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So you were able to, all of a sudden, you had a, a space.

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Space. I had no agenda.

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Had very few friends. You know, new environment.

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Don't speak Austrian. Don't speak, although they're all bilinguals, right? But I tried speaking German and it fell flat.

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And also, I guess a little bit previous to that, I, I, I had been feeling this sense of unrest and I had been meeting with the priest at Trinity on the Hill, just kind of, I don't know what this is, but I'm feeling this unrest.

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So that was sort of a precursor of to this amazing gift of time and space.

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Wow. Restlessness is another thing.

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I think that people, uh, sometimes we, we feel that restlessness and we think something's wrong with me.

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Yeah. Or, or I'm screwing something up or it presents as anxiety.

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Anxiety. But if you can kind of dig sometimes underneath the feeling of anxiety, you get to that restlessness, which Augustine talks about, you know, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in the.

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Oh God, you know that, that sometimes God stirs us up and makes us uncomfortable because otherwise we wouldn't move.

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Otherwise we wouldn't change because it's just too easy to just not change anything.

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But sometimes the restlessness really starts down in our soul to say something isn't what I, what I'm yearning for it to be.

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Yeah, and it can manifest as depression or anxiety or stress or, uh, or all the things that we do to avoid the Restlessness, right? So I'm going to get involved in more things that do good to help people because I don't want to like stop and be with myself, in which case this restlessness will rear its head again.

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Yeah. So I'm just gonna, yeah. And that's when sometimes it takes, sometimes a crisis, you know, somebody close to us dies or there's some, there's some big thing that happens that kind of, Knocks us upside the head and and makes us listen and I've heard some people say, you know that Everything happens for a reason sort of theology that you know, oh, yeah, God used that crisis to know I would say I wasn't listening Before like I didn't need the crisis.

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I just needed to listen. Yeah, you know, so so you had the restlessness And then you were given the blessing of having some space.

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So what happened in that space? So in Vienna, there is a very active, uh, Anglican chaplaincy there that was established, I believe about World War II time for the British.

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Soldiers who were over there. Amazing congregation.

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So here I came from Los Alamos, very homogenous community, um, to this congregation that had Austrians, uh, quite a few people from the United Kingdom, um, quite an active, uh, uh, population from, uh, Kenya and Uganda and, um, some other African countries.

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French Canadian so I'm thrown into this amazing congregation.

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I'm like, wow, this is really cool Of course, they didn't use the book of common prayer.

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They use the book of common worship What is this? But of course, it's very similar because it's Anglican and the chaplain a very wise man who is Canadian but was raised in Germany and so I started exploring with him this restlessness And he, uh, gave me a book to read called, it was, the name of the book is called or collared.

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Interesting. It's a, uh, woman author out of, uh, United Kingdom.

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And it, it discusses the range of ministry.

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Like God is calling you to something that is not necessarily ordained ministry and that's okay.

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You're still called. And I met with him and I'll never forget him because I'm saying I think I may be discerning a call to ordain ministry.

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And he said some of the wisest words I've ever heard.

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He said, Len, what do you have to lose by entering the process? You may find out you're not called to ordain ministry.

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But you're going to have amazing spiritual growth regardless.

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And so I did. And, uh, Bishop Vono was kind enough to allow, uh, the chaplaincy, the Anglican chaplaincy to form my discernment committee, as opposed to, uh, we didn't even have zoom then it was more Skype, you know, at first we would do this Skype discernment committee from Trinity on the hill.

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And that was another blessing because I think had I had a discernment committee of this community where I had been in active ministry for many years, Oh Lynn, yeah, of course you're, you must be called to ordain ministry.

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You're wonderful. That's great. Go ahead. Whereas instead my discernment committee had a woman who was.

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Uh, Scottish, but was raised in Japan, an Austrian young gentleman.

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Um, a woman from the United Kingdom, a Canadian, um, someone from South Africa, and my chaplain, who's Canadian, German.

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Wow. And so I had this great perspective from an international.

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Sharing and exploring and I had only been there about a year.

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So they didn't really know they had a lot of questions.

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And so it was just a really robust discernment process.

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And that launched me to go through the discernment process, believing, as I have told you that I was called to be a deacon.

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And that I would work part time and I would come back to my active law practice and Take all those clients back? Take all those clients back, hang out at Trinity on the Hill, and just do what I was doing before but with a collar.

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So then how did that part unfold? Because I think there's a lot of confusion in a lot of the church about deacons and priests both wear collars.

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Aren't you all the same? You know, all that kind of thing.

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So how did, how did the call... When you came back, you were thinking deacon, lawyer, bivocational, which makes sense, right? Deacons are non stipendary.

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They work in a, in a, in a different capacity.

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Tell me how that sense of call then evolved or clarified, maybe, once you got here.

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Yeah, a couple of things happened when I came back to the U.

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S. and was about to enter the Iona School of Ministry.

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The idea of going back to my law practice was Not feeling right.

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I didn't miss it. Oh, that's a good sign.

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I had been a lawyer for 30 years and I was not missing going back to that.

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I was attracted to being a deacon because I have a strong heart for social justice.

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And I think maybe I had this perception that That's what deacons do.

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And then the priest are over here in parish ministry, where what I'm finding out now in my current position, it's not these, I mean, there are roles, but there's some blurring in ministry, right? Depending on your gifts.

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And I think also Bishop, it was my coming to terms of my own sense of self worth, because especially having been raised, raised Catholic.

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I could not envision myself in that role as a priest.

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It's a lot of decades of, of both not seeing that.

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Yep. But also, nobody would imagine that of you.

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Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Even when you were thinking about being a nun, nobody could have said, What about the priesthood? Because that was not a choice.

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So that whole part of your life is blocked off.

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But then all of a sudden, and if that happens for decades, it takes a while for you to kind of open up to that.

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So getting through that was important.

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I also, uh, entering seminary, I had this fear that, you know, everyone else was going to be so much smarter and better than me and they would have all the answers.

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And, um, And I didn't have that experience.

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I have a wonderful cohort where we worked with each other and encouraged one another super smart people of super smart people.

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Yeah. But all with our own gifts and contributions to the conversation.

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And I was finding that I was enjoying this.

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I was getting it. I was doing well.

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Um, and so that gave me some confidence.

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And so towards the end of my first semester of seminary, I went to our mentor.

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Um, and I said, you know, I'm wondering if my calling is perhaps to the priesthood.

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And she just looked at me and said, I thought you were already in the priest track.

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So that was a clue. Uh huh. Other people sometimes tell us things that we haven't understood yet.

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Yeah. And then, so what I told her, I said, well, I'm going to take Lent and I'm going to pray about this.

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I'm going to. You know, wrestle with this and, and I'll come back to you.

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And I talked to Canon McGowan and she said, yeah, I think that's a great idea.

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My rector at the time was Chris Adams, who has since left the diocese, unfortunately.

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Um, we miss him, but, um, at the end of Lent, you know, I went to him and I said, you know, I'd like to meet with you, whatever.

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So I walk into his office and I said, well, I'm having this wrestling.

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I'm wondering if I'm really called to the priesthood.

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And he just looked at me. He said, I knew that was why you're coming.

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So that was another little, uh, tap on the head that, okay, thank you, God.

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Thank you for affirming.

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Um, and it just kind of escalated from there.

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Yeah. Here I am, a priest in full time ministry.

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Right. Who, who, who would have guessed? Not you.

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Fairly. Not me. Yeah.

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Oh, what a wonderful, what a wonderful journey that has been.

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So tell me how it feels now.

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You've been ordained to the priesthood.

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How long has it been? Uh, June 14th, 2022.

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2022. So a little over a year.

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Yeah. Looking back as you tell this story, tell me about how it feels.

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It feels pretty wonderful. Now that's not to say there are not days that are really hard.

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And there are not days that I, um, and just pray in my heart out, Lord, give me the words, give me the wisdom.

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I don't know what I'm doing here, but it is so gratifying, uh, to serve the community of church of the holy faith.

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They immediately welcomed me when I, I did my transitional diaconate there.

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And they were immediately welcoming, and I'll never forget the first time I preached, the number of women who shook my hand and said, it's so nice to see a woman up there in the pulpit, um, because they were older women, and that, for some of them, that was denied them, for some of them, they may have felt it.

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A calling to that as I did when I was at the Catholic faith and, and, but it was not part of what was available.

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So I love the diversity of the ministry that I'm exposed to at Holy Faith.

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Um, the joy of baptisms.

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I was able to baptize, uh, my first baptism was a young adult.

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Um, my second was an infant and the third was a baby who is the son of a young man who I knew when he was a baby because he was born a week before my daughter.

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So just to see that being part of that.

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I've been able to, um, preside at, at weddings.

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Um, so the joy of that, um, also being in, in funerals, um, in Santa Fe, we do have a fair number of retirees.

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We do have, you know, perhaps more than our share of funerals cause the size of our congregation.

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And for just because of the demographics of the area, I don't know, but, um.

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Healing ministry.

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We have a to say service every Tuesday.

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The first time that I was able to put my hands and say healing prayers and anointing.

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I still love that. Um, preaching is, um, I don't get quite as nervous as I used to.

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Um, I get wonderful feedback from my parishioners.

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They're very affirming. So, um, yes, it's, it's just, it continues to be a trajectory.

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I keep waiting for it to even off and it hasn't yet.

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Wonderful. So as you look at the future, both maybe at Holy Faith, maybe for the diocese, maybe for you, what do you, what do you hope you see as, as God continues to work in your life and ministry? I hate this question.

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It's like, where do you see yourself in five years from now? Oh, no, no.

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All right. Then let me, then let me rephrase.

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Let me rephrase. Um, what, what are you, maybe it's, maybe it's more as you continue to listen to the Holy Spirit, where do you see the Holy Spirit moving in this part of the diocese? Now and pulling us forward.

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Yeah. Yeah. I love the idea of the churches in the area doing some coordination of ministry and efforts and Because I was from Trinity on the hill I did my internship at st.

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Bede's and I'm now at Holy Faith.

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I know people in all these congregations and so that coordination of Vacation Bible school, you know this past summer I know some of my parishioners came over to st beads to help with vacation Bible school and I know there's support the ministry here of our children and Families program that we have people who come to our picnic who are not members of holy faith but and since we have the tis a service that attracts a people in the community because that's unique.

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And then St. Bede's and Holy Family, you know, we all have our gifts.

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Um, so I would like to see that flourish and grow.

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Um, quite honestly, I believe in the past there's been some, some separation, like, you know, you serve this population, we serve them, and we'll serve these, and never the three shall meet.

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And I think that that sometimes happens with With parishioners as well saying, well, I'm a member of this, but I'm not a member of all that over there.

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And I, I share your hope that part of what is starting to happen is that people can see I'm a, I'm an Episcopalian and I have access to all of it.

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So if there's a cool Christian formation thing over here, I can go to that because it's open to me.

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And, um, and if. clergy are on vacation, they can help each other out.

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And there can be a, we were talking, um, recently about the, the new growth and the, all the development that's happening in the South part of Santa Fe.

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I mean, it's, they're going to expand the airport. It's huge booming.

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They're building every, they're building on every piece of land that's out there.

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And, um, some of the questions that I have are, you know, I don't think any one church.

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Mastermind a Strategy for how to meet the need the pastoral needs of all those people that are coming in right be overwhelming but together We could do something and also recognizing our strengths.

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So point, you know, I see the strength of the Spanish speaking ministry at st.

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Beats And, um, I do do Olingo 222 days.

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Thank you very much, but I am not fluent, but I have been able to, you know, we get people who come to our church who are Spanish speakers.

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I have been able to communicate to a level.

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But I also always give father Lucas and father Ryan's name and say, in fact, just recently, I met with a couple who wanted to have their child baptized.

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And I went through, you know, this is what it looks like and come to our service.

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And I said, but if you want a Spanish speaking baptism, this is where I would direct you and let me know, you know, we're always welcome to baptize here.

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Um, I don't know, I didn't hear from him afterwards, so I hope and pray that they did come here to St.

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Pete's. Yeah. Yeah.

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That kind of, that kind of coordination and sharing, and I think it expands the value for everybody.

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You know, it's more fun as clergy to work together as a team than you do that and I'll do this and, you know, somebody said to me, sometimes we in the church behave as if we are.

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On different teams in the same league.

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Yes. I've heard that expression as opposed to being on the same team.

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And I think that, yeah, the more we can be on the same team, the better.

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And then, uh, you know, holy faith. Um, we have an Anglo Catholic tradition, um, which.

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You know, it's different for me coming in here, but I appreciate the richness of it, the beauty of it.

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And that attracts a lot of people, especially people who are yearning for tradition or, um, are here, um, for the summer and they come from a similar congregation.

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So, so we are able to serve that need and desire.

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So yeah, hopefully we can just continue to build.

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Amen. Amen. Well, Lynn, thank you.

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Thank you for your ministry and thanks for taking the time to talk to us today.

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Thank you.