pat loughery

I got a really fun email from Rev. Susan Baller-Shepard today. In it, she invited me to participate in a little interview project that she is doing:

I’m collecting interviews to highlight the spiritual lives of real people:
http://www.spiritualbookclubblog.blogspot.com/

We hope to get diversity of opinion, occupation, and global geography. So far we have interviews from people in Ireland, Australia, India, England, Austria, Canada, Germany, etc. There are currently interviews from people who are Hindu, Muslim, Bahai, Christian, Jewish, and those who would not claim a particular tradition. Our objective is to foster understanding between people from diverse backgrounds, and to see similarities and differences among spiritual paths.

Check that link out – I recognized a couple folks there (Julie Clawson and Bruce Reyes-Chow), but really enjoyed reading from the wide variety of participants.

Here’s the interview text I sent to Rev. Susan:

Your Name: Pat Loughery

Where you live:

North Bend, Washington (a commuter town of Seattle)

What you do as a vocation or avocation?

I manage software testing projects for a living. I also am a Doctor of Ministry student at Bakke Graduate University, and I enjoy my family and being outdoors, photography, riding motorcycles and bicycles, playing music, traveling and exploring new restaurants.

Your two favorite books:

Well, that’s an impossible question, limiting me to just two. I’m not going to do the lame Christian thing and say “The Bible” (though I would pick Psalms and Matthew). How about A Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris, and Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I could live with those two books forever and not grow tired.

Your two favorite cd’s:

This is at least as hard. Two that come to mind are Stevie Ray Vaughan – The Sky is Crying and Eric Clapton – Unplugged. Both are deeply spiritual to me.

Why you are interested in spirituality?

We are spiritual beings, and our deepest desires, hopes and fears are spiritual. We long for connection with something greater than us. Our pursuit of love, joy, hope, beauty, all are spiritual journeys. And we’re always being spiritually formed, whether we’re doing it intentionally or not. I’m interested in intentional spiritual formation, especially as it happens in relationship with others.

Your favorite quote:

In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.
— John of the Cross

Hope is passion for what is possible.
— Soren Kierkegaard

You pay God a great compliment by asking great things of Him.
— Teresa of Avila

Music can change the world because it can change people.
— Bono

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
— Jimi Hendrix

The way of Jesus is always local and ordinary.
— Eugene Peterson

Your favorite web sites:

I blog at http://patloughery.com/. For sites I visit all the time:

http://pandora.com – Streaming music that tailors playlists based on what you like.
http://google.com/reader – Google Reader. I’ve got lots of stuff in my RSS feeds, and I love being able to share items I like with my friends
http://postsecret.blogspot.com – Heartbreaking, funny, deeply troubling and deeply powerful.
http://www.northumbriacommunity.org/PraytheOffice/index.html – Celtic Daily Prayer on the web
http://www.flickr.com/photos/patl/ – I love flickr as a photo community. There’s my photostream link.

Your hero?

St. Patrick of Ireland, St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

A spiritual lesson you hope to learn?

Right now? What does it mean to live simply, while in an upper middle class neighborhood.

A place in the world where you feel spiritually “connected?”

Lindisfarne and Iona. Actually, mountains and undeveloped waterfront pretty much anywhere.