I still remember when Mark Dyer, one of my favorite professors at Virginia Theological Seminary, said to a class full of hope to-be Christians: “I did not even become a Christian until we had our child Matthew, until I became Matthews father.” Matthew was born hydrocephalic with a host of additional health challenges, and the medical staff of the hospital had encouraged Mark and his wife to withhold extraordinary intervention, so as not to prolong Matthew’s life. Doctors and nurses all suggested that they let him live out what short life he had in a medical facility better equipped to handle his physical demands. They were told that Matthew would never hear or see, or feed, cloth and bathe himself. He would never, really know them at all. Mark and his wife, both Episcopal priests, said a simple, “No”. And they took Matthew home to take up residence in their living room, in the middle of their lives with their other child, an older sister. During the telling of this story, Professor Dyer paused, and pulled out a photograph, saying: “This is a picture of the first time Matthew smiled—it took him 16 years to learn how…it took 16 years of our loving him and touching him and centering him in our prayers for Matthew to come to know us. And to me, this is what I mean when I say that I was not a Christian until Matthew taught me how to live as one”.

Mark Dyer had lived his life as a Benedictine monk for 20-some years, before Rome sent minions to remove Mark from the monastery. Then-‘Brother’ Mark’s writings and teachings had been in disagreement with the pope, and Rome’s prior efforts to silence him had not worked. And so he no longer was allowed to continue as a Benedictine brother. Instead Mark went on to be ordained an Episcopal priest, later married an Episcopal priest, and with her had two children. Eventually Mark Dyer was consecrated a Bishop in the Episcopal Church. While serving as bishop, he was one of the final candidates considered for the position of Dean of Virginia Seminary. And when Martha Horne was ultimately chosen for that part, in her wisdom she invited Mark to serve on the theology faculty, where he remains today a remarkable gift to the church. Yet it was seeing the world through the eyes of his son that made him a Christian, as he was proud to say.

Bishop Dyer’s classes were lively with stories about life in monastic-community…some of them still keep me rolling in laughter, as he brought to real life what it means to live day to day with 10 – 20 other different persons…sharing life under the same roof. Bishop Mark’s Benedictine prayer-life formed him to live an incarnation truth. The centering prayer he practiced, developed, over time a state of un-distraction...a state of attention, a state of awareness, so that he lives the truth of the incarnation from the center outwards… capable of serving as an incarnational presence for others. What I learned by being with Mark, is that our challenge as Christians is not to convert people around us...but to love them...to be ourselves living incarnations of what we believe-- for incarnational love requires that we ourselves become that creature for whom Christ came.