WHO I AM 

My name is Ralph Felzer, and I’m glad you found your way here.  I’m a retired high school English teacher and a servant of Christ.  I have a passion for Jesus and for spiritual growth.  And words.  I love words.  And literature. 

I grew up in Toledo, Ohio and after being told by my father as a senior in high school that I could do whatever I wanted to when I graduated–as long as I enlisted in the military or went to college (this was 1975, right after Viet Nam)–I proceeded to attend the University of Toledo where I very carefully crafted a 1.6 GPA after two years of full-time coursework!  I didn’t do much well in those days, but I did manage to succeed at failing my way through college.

During the seven years I was away from school a friend introduced me to C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity.  I still remember the evening I read:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.

I realized upon reading these words, that if what Jesus claimed about himself was true, I couldn’t go on living my life the way I had been. I’ve been a Christ-follower ever since.

I soon went back to school to study English Literature, then pursued a Master’s in Education, both from the University of Toledo. I taught Composition I and II and other courses on the college level for 25 years before finding myself almost inexplicably teaching high school English. What a joy to be able to teach not only writing but literature!  What a glorious mystery the path of life is!

In 2003, I met my wife Sandy, and just a few short months into our relationship, I discovered that I had colon cancer.  After surgery and a mercifully short but complete recovery, she and I were married in the summer of 2004.

Very often, you can find me sitting out back on our patio watching the birds, gazing into the tiny woods behind our house or tending the little path or I blazed there, and reading (or talking about) C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.  Or I might perhaps be immersed in the spiritual theology of Eugene Peterson, the philosophy of James K.A. Smith, or the histories of David McCullough.  

I’m passionate about “rebuilding the ruins,” my own and others’. My hope is that what you read here will help further you in your own journey into healing, redemption, and wholeness in Christ.

WHAT I’M HERE FOR 

I’m a husband, step-father, teacher, writer, and friend.  But I’m more than my roles; I’m an image-bearer of God.  And so are you.  From the beginning of time, He has been about forming a people for Himself, and He does this by calling out to individual men and women and then knitting them together into a community.  How we respond to that call defines us and shapes both ourselves and our church community.  But our response is not just an intellectual decision of the will, or a mission statement, or a set of action steps, it’s an offering of our body, mind, soul, and spirit (which of course includes our will but is far broader than the will alone–every part of us needs to be surrendered; every part of us needs to be redeemed; every part of us needs to be saved; every part of us needs to be offered in stewardship and service, and every part of us needs to be enlisted in the quest for Christlikeness.  The goal of all this is a heart oriented to loving and serving the One who loves and serves each of us–and all of us.  And that gets done first in the cloistered recesses of my heart, and then in the public service I offer to Christ’s Church and my community. 

So if you’re interested in traveling the road of Christlikeness, you’ve come to the right place. I like to post all sorts of thoughts on the journey of life.  You’ll find suggestions for how to do this, but my vision is much broader than how-tos.  As James K. A. Smith says, “You are what you love.”  What we love shapes us more powerfully than what we think.  What do you love?  I’m convinced that if we want to live and love more like Jesus we need to work on setting our loves in order, as St. Augustine counsels.  

We do not follow Christ in order to become a good person.  We follow Christ in order to learn to love (love is vastly more than the pitiful caricature the world understands it to be).  We see authentic love in the life and death of Jesus.  And we only love because He first loved us.  And the one place where love shines brightest and preaches loudest is the Cross.  The Cross is the school of love.  As Thomas Traherne wrote:

“The Cross is the abyss of wonders, the centre of desires, the school of virtues, the house of wisdom, the throne of love, the theatre of joys, and the place of sorrows; It is the root of happiness, and the gate of Heaven” (Centuries of Meditations).

Jesus lived love, and He showed this by directing Himself to those whom His Father loves who are lost in darkness, distress and misery.  When Jesus begins His public ministry in Luke 4, he sits down to read from the opening verses of Isaiah 61: 

“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
    because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
    to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and release to the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor….”

If you don’t know what comes later in the chapter, you should go there and read it soon!  Okay, I’ll help you a bit.  Here’s what comes just a little later:

“… to comfort all who mourn,
to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
    to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
    the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
    the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.
They shall build up the ancient ruins;
    they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
    the devastations of many generations.”

Friends, we are these ruins.  And when we make the surrender I spoke about above, we find our ruined selves redeemed, restored, and healed.  Jesus’ mission, then, becomes our mission.  We have been blessed to be a blessing.

Though the people of His own day were a bit shocked, we’re not too surprised by what kind of people Jesus seeks out: the oppressed, the brokenhearted, the prisoners, the grieving, the faint of heart.  It’s wonderful that He directs His love and intentions toward these–but to what end?  Have you ever stopped to consider what it is He intends to make of that broken rabble?  Is His only goal to heal hearts, bodies, and souls?  I don’t think so.  He heals them so that they can become what Henri Nouwen called “wounded healers.”  He heals them and sends them out as bringers of good news to their fellow “ruins.”  He goal is not just to release but to empower.  He intends to make them “oaks of righteousness.”  A people who display His glory.  Men and women who will themselves “build up the ancient ruins.” 

Do you want to know who those ancient ruins are?  Those who remain oppressed, brokenhearted, sorrowful, and faint of heart.  We who once were such, are no longer, and our whole purpose in being is to become those who freely give away what we freely have received.

So friends, if you’re interested in living richly and fully, in bringing Jesus more deeply into the whole fabric of your being, if you want to really flourish as a man or woman of God, let’s travel that road together!