When people ask me how I became a Lay Spiritan, they are often surprised when, without hesitation, I reply, it was because I read the Spiritan charism.  It is much more common that Lay Spiritans join our Spiritan community because of the experience of Spiritan education, or their childhood in a Spiritan parish or perhaps they knew a Spiritan family member or friend. In reality, my journey to our community started twenty years before I knew anything about the Spiritans.

I was baptized in the Church of England, but I did not attend church until my wife, Paula, was pregnant with our first child. Our son was born at thirty weeks and weighed just 1 Ib 14 oz.  Fortunately, Paula had been admitted to hospital two weeks earlier.  When she started to hemorrhage one night, she was immediately taken for an emergency Cesarean section. I barely managed to arrive at the hospital in time and was told to sit in a corridor outside the operating room. I was in shock; we were suddenly in a serious life-threatening situation.   It was in that quiet, dark corridor that I realized that there was nothing I could do. For the first time in my life, I prayed. I asked for the life of our son, and I offered my life in return. It is hard to explain; it did not seem rational, but after that simple prayer in the silence of the corridor, I felt our son was going to survive.  In reality, Paula was bleeding heavily, and our son was not breathing when he was first taken to the neonatal intensive care unit. Fortunately, the team of healthcare professionals were able to revive our son and save Paula. From that day our son progressed well and came home healthy after seven weeks in the hospital.

After our son was born, I continued to attend church with Paula for twenty years, but never became Catholic. As a baptized Christian, but a non-Catholic,  I was not allowed to participate in the Eucharist, and so I always regarded myself as somewhat of an outsider. Perhaps because of this, I also attended an Episcopal church for a period of time, finally being confirmed. On most Sundays, I would go to a service at the Episcopal church and then attend Mass with Paula and the kids. If I am quite honest, attending church, even two churches, was not very inspiring for me. I do not know why, but I came to the realization that I needed something else. After our experiences during the birth of our son, I often reflected on the fact there are far too many places in this world where our son would have not survived birth; Paula would have bled to death, and our daughter would never have been conceived. Unfortunately, I do not think my faith journey, even after many years of regular church attendance, had developed the spiritual toolbox needed to fully discern my path. I rarely though about the Holy Spirit and never considered involvement in a missionary organization.

It was in my work as an academic in the Engineering School at the University of Pittsburgh that I looked for meaning and purpose.  A faculty member at Slippery Rock University introduced me to the low-cost ceramic water filter and a small community that worked with them.  The concept was simple, to address the second leading killer of children under five years of age by removing bacteria and parasites from drinking water.  The concept was not new, and several small organizations, including Potters for Peace had devoted themselves to making these filters.  As a materials engineer, my research work focused on advanced ceramic materials systems for new technologies. It was quite counter cultural to start research on clay and sawdust formulations for low-cost ceramic water filters. I knew that it would be extremely hard to justify based on funding potential and difficult to generate interest. However, I felt increasingly drawn to serving the marginalized through my work as a faculty member and used the privilege of my academic freedom to do so. I became the Faculty Advisor for Engineers without Borders at Pitt, started the Ceramic Filter Project, now Pitt-NOCMAT and steadily shifted my research and teaching to appropriate technologies designed to address unmet basic human needs in marginalized communities. 

It was by chance that after twenty years of attending church that I discovered the website of the U.S. Province of the Spiritans. When I read the charism, I knew that I was a Lay Spiritan. I promptly went through the process of joining the Catholic Church, and a family friend who worked at Duquesne University introduced me to a Lay Spiritan group.  I was warmly welcomed and immediately entered their formation program.  Since then, all aspects of my life have become infused with this charism; I have established courses on Humanitarian Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, and I am the President of Ceramic Water Filter Solutions (CWFS), a small non-for-profit that establishes small-scale ceramic filter factories in marginalized communities and promotes the use of low-cost ceramic water filters in the fight against waterborne diseases. Many thousands of filters have been placed in marginalized communities through the efforts of CWFS and our partners in Nepal, Nigeria, Honduras and Mexico.

When I look back on the extraordinary combination of circumstances and opportunities in my life since I sat in that darkened corridor thirty years ago, it is quite easy to discern the presence of the Holy Spirit, and I could not be more thankful. The work of a Spiritan is never easy; there are times when I feel tired and overwhelmed, and there are times when my efforts end in failure.  Nonetheless, I am filled with joy by the signs of the Holy Spirit in my life and life of others. I treasure the companionship of our global Spiritan community. I look forward to working more closely with Spiritans around the world and I hope for that inner peace that comes from docility to the Holy Spirit.


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