Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of Faith, media and culture.<\/p>\n
In this space yesterday, Reverend Peter Panagore talked about a 1980 ice-climbing snafu that resulted an apparent near-death experience that forever altered his outlook on life.\u00a0 Here, he talks about the years that followed, including his current tenure as pastor of the First Radio Parish Church of America.\u00a0 Here are some highlights:<\/p>\n
JWK: <\/strong>You said that, at the time the incident happened, your sister was missing. Did you ever find out what happened to her?<\/p>\n Peter Panagore:<\/strong> Yes and no. Two (or) three years before this (mountain experience), she showed up. She had been gone for four years\u2026She showed back up in the city, my hometown, for a month. She was part of the Rainbow Family\u2026At the time I think they were the Rainbow Tribe. It was a hippy movement \u2013 a gathering that happened and still happens annually in a national park somewhere in the United States.<\/p>\n Anyway, she showed up back up in \u201977 with a baby and apparently pregnant. She spent about a month and then she ran away again which broke my mother\u2019s heart again\u2026 Thereafter, we knew that she didn\u2019t want us and it became worse for my mother.<\/p>\n So, years go by \u2013 years and years and years and years. (It)was my second year in divinity school when she finally came back to us but never quite fully. She was with us for a terrible Christmas \u2013 the worst Christmas in my memory\u00a0 — and eventually died five years ago \u2013 maybe it was four — in Miami. (It was) an unattended death. As such, Miami CSI contacted my parents and (we, my brother and I) had to fly down to Miami to find out if she was murdered.\u00a0 Eventually, we discovered that she wasn\u2019t murdered but there had been a violent altercation the night before and she was found in a place where she wasn\u2019t supposed to be.<\/p>\n The long and the short of that is that six months later the autopsy showed that she had died of a heart attack. That began my mother\u2019s healing process\u2026There\u2019s a lot more to the story than that but that\u2019s kind of the thumbnail sketch.<\/p>\n JWK: Can you tell me more about how the events on that mountain shaped your life.<\/strong><\/p>\n The near death experience left me in a constant pursuit of the divine.\u00a0 And, on top of all this, is my natural tendency toward contemplation and mysticism anyway. I mean\u2026when I was six years old I told my mom that God spoke to me and told me that I was going to be God\u2019s priest.\u00a0 I was standing out under our maple tree. I distinctly heard God say \u201cYou are mine.\u201d\u00a0 So, I went in the house and I told my mother that I was gonna be a priest.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know if it was gonna be Catholic or Orthodox\u2026. A priest was the only form of (minister) that I was exposed to.\u00a0 So, my mom decided to teach me how to cook and sew and iron — things I would have to do for myself because I wouldn\u2019t have a wife, she told me.<\/p>\n And then throughout my whole life there have been mystical theophanies to drive me on.<\/p>\n JWK<\/strong>:\u00a0 I understand you were hit by a bolt of lightning once.<\/p>\n Peter Panagore:<\/strong> <\/strong>One year later (after the near-death experience)I was with one my childhood buddies\u2026(His) girlfriend wanted to take him to church and he didn\u2019t want to go by himself and so he invited me along.\u00a0 It was a couple of towns away. After church I\u2019m driving back home in my dad\u2019s VW convertible bug under a blue sky (but) in front of me was the darkest, angriest black cloud I had ever seen. I could see lightning bolts by the dozens shooting out of this thing a mile ahead of me. I thought to myself in a prayer to God, should pull over right now and pull up the roof?\u00a0 As I thought that, I saw this bolt of lightning come out of the cloud, aim right toward me, go right past my face and strike in the back seat of the Volkswagen. As I looked at it, it was like the sound of an explosion in the car. A side bolt came out of the main bolt and struck in my thigh and I watched it come out my shoulder and back into the main bolt.<\/p>\n JWK<\/strong>:\u00a0 Were you knocked out?<\/p>\n Peter Panagore:<\/strong> <\/strong>No. Nothing. All I can say is that it scared me like I can\u2019t even explain. For years after that, any time lightning would strike in the yard or nearby me, it was like post traumatic stress.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t make myself dive to the floor or the ground. I just did it uncontrolably. It took me a long time to get over that\u2026.(When) I got home I told my parents \u201cI was hit by a bolt of lightning!\u201d and my dad\u2019s like \u201cYeah.\u201d I said \u201cSmell me!\u201d I stunk of ozone!…I had the smell of the lightning on me.<\/p>\n JWK<\/strong>:\u00a0 Have these experiences helped shape your ministry?<\/p>\n Peter Panagore:<\/strong><\/strong>\u00a0Definitely the near-death experience. It turned me into a midwife (for) the dying.\u00a0 Although I didn\u2019t tell anybody about it for 90 percent of my ministry, I used it as a resource as I would sit by the dead or the dying while helping counsel the grieving.<\/p>\n I spoke in Connecticut recently \u2013 in the past few months \u2013 at a church where I had served (as a youth group counselor and associate pastor).\u00a0 One of the (former) youth group members came\u2026 and he said to me\u2026I went there to Connecticut to specifically to talk about near-death experience \u2013 and he said to (me) \u201cYou know, you used to say crazy stuff like \u2018Heaven is better than life.\u2019 And, when we would ask questions about death and dying, you would be cryptic and leave us wondering \u2018What does he know that he\u2019s not saying?\u201d\u00a0 We used to talk among ourselves about (you) not telling (us) what (you were) really thinking. (That\u2019s) because I wasn\u2019t able to talk about it at the time.<\/p>\n JWK<\/strong>:\u00a0 That\u2019s because you were still dealing with it yourself.<\/p>\n Peter Panagore:<\/strong><\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Anyway, it left me like kind of a midwife for the dying. And, then as a sort of community minister, I spent a lot of time at bedsides or in hospice situations or at funerals.<\/p>\n JWK<\/strong>:\u00a0 Did your experience help you in those situations?<\/p>\n Peter Panagore:<\/strong><\/strong>\u00a0I tried to help them make the transition into death and to trust God and (to assure them) that they will discover that they will continue to exist upon \u00a0their death in the aafterlife.<\/p>\n JWK<\/strong>:\u00a0 That\u2019s really inspirational. How\u2019d you end up getting involved with the media?<\/p>\n Peter Panagore:<\/strong> <\/strong>Part of my goal of being a minister was to write a sermon a week.\u00a0 And part of that wasn\u2019t just to preach. It was to hone my skills as a writer. Really what I wanted to do was write. I ended up working for Homiletics Journal as one of their staff writers for about five years.\u00a0 Having my first serious editor critique my work on a regular basis pushed me as a writer.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in the pulpit, I tended to be a rule breaker in terms of presentation, instead of just using expository (writing) and speaking in a preacher\u2019s voice, I did all sorts of stuff \u2013 storytelling, character development.\u00a0 I would play people. I did all sorts of crazy stuff in the pulpit like siltwalking or running a chainsaw (without the chain on it) and pushed the bounds of what was normal preaching.\u00a0 I tried to make it interesting and exciting, artistic and theatrical and, meanwhile, have the depth of thought and the scholarship that would give it weight and truth.<\/p>\n And, so I did this for years and years and one of my deacons has a daughter who was the executive producer of the (The First Radio Parish Church of America)\u2026She had been in church and she had seen me over the years \u2013 once in a while. She wasn\u2019t there all the time… So she sent her mom \u2013 this deacon \u2013 to speak to me and ask me whether I\u2019d consider applying for this job and, if I would consider it, the executive producer would help me get ready. \u00a0And so that\u2019s exactly what I did.<\/p>\n JWK<\/strong>:\u00a0 And you took over in 2003?<\/p>\n Peter Panagore:<\/strong> <\/strong>As the fifth (pastor).<\/p>\n JWK<\/strong>:\u00a0 What changes did you make when you took over?<\/p>\n Peter Panagore:<\/strong> <\/strong>Each of the (previous) ministers brought their own theology and their own presentation style…When I came aboard the program itself made a shift from three minutes with my predecessor to two minutes for me.\u00a0 So, that was the first thing that happened.<\/p>\n The program had developed under my predecessor \u2013 Rev. Dr. David R. Glusker \u2013 into sort of a storytelling format.\u00a0 Originally, it had been a Sunday morning radio church. We were the First Radio Parish Church of America, literally\u2026Over the years, it became a daily program and then it became a (TV show) during the morning news. It started out as five minutes and then it became four minutes, then three minutes and now we\u2019re at two minutes.<\/p>\n I employed the storytelling format that my predecessor had\u2026 I hope I bring art to it in my storytelling. I had a storytelling mentor named Brother Blue who was a world-famous Cambridge, Massachusetts based reverend doctor. Rev. Dr. Hugh Morgan Hill was his real name\u2026He was a consummate storyteller and he would be on street corners in Cambridge. I grew up\u00a0 listening to him all the time\u2026He\u2019d be dressed in butterflies and all in blue with balloons and bells and ribbons and he would play a character\u2026 I would have the great fortune of having him adopt me as one of his students, one of his many students\u2026 And I decided that, as a writer, I wanted to be an oral storyteller.\u00a0 <\/strong>And so I brought poetry and storytelling and writing and writing skills to the presentation.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what I\u2019ve been doing ever since.<\/p>\n I have some parameters that the station makes me follow which is fine. I can\u2019t really talk about Jesus all too often. I can talk about Him indirectly which I do a lot but I have to make it approachable (for) everybody\u2026and it has to never contain politics \u2013 which is just fine with me.\u00a0 It needs to reach a broad audience. It has to be written in a clear language and in simple language. I try to give it cadence and poetry. I use the structure of the story and the language of the story to engage the heart of the listener as I try to engage the imagination\u2026and pull the listener\/reader\/viewer into the story which is only two minutes long. (I) end with a thought for the day and a prayer. Really what we try to do is bring hope and inspiration into people\u2019s daily lives.<\/p>\n JWK:<\/strong> And it available at Call on Faith<\/em> on the Internet, right?<\/p>\n Peter Panagore:<\/strong> <\/strong>We\u2019re in eleven media modalities. You can get us at the mobile app Call on Faith<\/a>, and at DailyDevotions.org<\/a> on the net<\/em>. We\u2019re on TV here in Maine, on two NBC, Gannett owned, TV stations.\u00a0 We\u2019re on AM stations and FM stations in Maine. We\u2019re on the web, on Facebook, Twitter, and in Ashboro Magazine in Ashboro, North Carolina.<\/p>\n