As a family, we visited Rome on our way home from three weeks on the island of Malta, the heart of the Mediterranean, the navel of the world. I share bits of these stories in Clairvaux Manifesto.

Just as my editor and I were preparing the manuscript for publishing, one early reader (and potential endorser) of my work said the book was condemning of present day Church culture, and my autobiographical portions lacked personal vulnerability.

As a Church leader, I took such criticism to heart. I pondered it prayerfully for weeks, eventually concluding I wasn’t writing Clairvaux Manifesto to vent to readers about the state of the Church, or open enough windows for curious others to view my wounds; I had a deeper and much more profound agenda.

I for one, say this book is not condemning of the Church at all, but that’s just me, though the reader may discover I only use the word church a few times in the entire manuscript (intentionally). Regardless, my name Kirk actually means Church, and I love her dearly!

On the vulnerability thing, it all depends on one’s definition and use of the word vulnerable, which has its root in the Latin vulnus, literally meaning wound. Have I been wounded? Yes, of course I have. Do I share such things all over the manifesto? No, I don’t! Why? Ask me someday, when we’re eyeball to eyeball, and you’ll hear the answer in the tone of my voice.

On page 279, I begin the closing section of Clairvaux Manifesto, entitled Ora et Labora, with these words,

In this book, I have shared some of my thoughts and experiences. I realize I have not shared my deepest personal hurts. Thimbles full of eternity have given me strength to wade through oceans of pain. I don’t have to lay it all out there. I also don’t live every moment of every day looking forward to the next ecstatic spiritual experience. There is a process to mature prayer. I spend a lot of time with God in the midst of living a very real life. I ask God lots of questions. I shed tears before God. I don’t know the answers.

Like the saint who penned O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, I see with Isaiah:

The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,  a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over,  a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away.  We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—  our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.  We thought he brought it on himself,  that God was punishing him for his own failures.  But it was our sins that did that to him,  that ripped and tore and crushed him— our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole.  Through his bruises we get healed. We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.  We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,  on him, on him.

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