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My Odyssey of Peak Experiences
Dr Meredith J Sprunger, Fort Wayne, In.
Our lives are shaped by our peak experiences. These episodes of transcendence are sometimes difficult to explain, but most people have a sense of the ministry of a reality above and beyond themselves which is bringing meaning to their lives: "...at every crossroad in the forward struggle, the Spirit of Truth will always speak, saying, 'This is the way.'" (383)
My search for knowledge and truth started at an early age. I have a vivid memory at the age of four of a compelling urge and a deep hunger to know more about life. I was standing outside on the south side of our house in bright sunshine. I recall saying to myself, "There is something about life that I do not understand, but I'm going to find out."
These prayers of the heart take years to integrate our minds and fashion our lives. Along the way critical peak experiences stand out in our memory. The death of my mother when I was about nine, and the death of my father a year and a half later, were rugged reality probing confrontations. I recall sitting in our front room during the home funeral service of my father looking out of our picture window at a herd of cows grazing in the sunshine, and saying to myself, "Now I'm like those cows with no one to care for me but God."
An aunt and uncle took me to live with them at their home in the country. When I was around thirteen, I went to the Mennonite Church in Berne, Indiana to hear the community chorus sing Handel's Messiah. I was so carried away by the spiritual grandeur of the lyrics and music that I became acutely aware of my finitude and insignificance. When we got home, I went up to my room and prayed fervently, "Lord, make me a part of something more important and significant than myself!" Little did I realize that one day I would have the privilege of being one of the pioneers associated with the Fifth Epochal Revelation.
My central interests have always been nature, philosophy and religion. As I struggled with the decision of what course of study I would pursue in college, I was drawn to a career a a naturalist. Since I was without parental guidance, I tried to think objectively. Reasoning that my attraction to nature was a passing adolescent fancy, I attempted to make a more mature, conventional choice. Since I was always interested in the "why and wherefore " of things, I thought that chemistry fit this description. Knowing, however, that I did not want to spend my life in a laboratory, I settled on chemical engineering.
Although I got the highest grade in chemistry of any freshman chemical engineering student at Purdue that semester, I knew that I did not want to be an engineer.So I turned to my first love and transferred to the School of Forestry. Here I felt comfortable but more and more the idea of philosophy and religion seemed to be calling to me. Comments my uncle made about ministers led me to think he regarded them as "parasites" on society. The idea occurred to me that I could earn my living as a forester and engage in ministry as an avocation. So I wrote Mission House Seminary asking if I could enroll in the Seminary after graduating from the School of Forestry. Their reply was, "No, you should have a liberal arts major to enter the seminary." This was a devastating blow to my life plan. What should I do? What was God's will? I walked late nights under the full moon in pasture fields near the agricultural campus trying to decide. It was an agonizing decision but finally I felt confident that God was calling me to transfer to Mission House College (now Lakeland), major in philosophy, and enter the seminary.
My life pilgrimage proceeded somewhat normally through Mission House Theological Seminary, B.D., Princeton Theological Seminary, M.Th., a pastorate at Trinity United Church of Christ, and earning a Ph.D. in psychology at Elmhurst College and a pastorate at Highland Avenue United Methodist Church in Chicago. The pressure of these two new positions plus the daily 25 mile drive through Chicago traffic began to take their toll. Being a hearty person with considerable ego-reinforcing courage, I plunged on until my physiological and psychological energy reserves were exhausted. Suddenly my ego invulnerability was shattered. I was thrown into the physical exhaustion and psychological depression of battle fatigue. Only those who have experienced the engulfing depth, anguish, and hopelessness of such depression can know what it is like. It is a psychological-spiritual event that tests the depths of the soul. It will either leave you a wounded and broken individual or a transformed and stronger person more in tune with spiritual reality.
While it was the dark night of the soul, it was also the transforming peak experience in my life. Stripped of all my ego-defenses and rationalizations, I was faced with either giving in to despair or surrendering my ego-defenses and giving myself completely to God regardless of consequences. I saw this as the only option with which I could identify. My life had been dedicated to God before but now I had faced the ultimate test. The restructuring of my inner life was slow but sure. I had a better understanding of what it means to be spiritually born again. I had passed through the tempering fire of testing and knew the spiritual invincibility of being a son of God. Much later my experience resonated with a passage I read in The Urantia Book:
"But long before reaching Havona, these ascendant children of time have learned to feast upon uncertainty, to fatten upon disappointment, to enthuse over apparent defeat, to invigorate in the presence of difficulties, to exhibit indomitable courage in the face of immensity, and to exercise unconquerable faith when confronted with the challenge of the inexplicable. Long since, the battle cry of these pilgrims became: 'In liaison with God, nothing--absolutely nothing is impossible.'" (291)
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