Presenting Josh!

Hello, blogosphere!

My name is Joshua Migallos Ligan. I am an American of Filipino ancestry, and thanks to the colonists who settled in the Philippines, I am of European and Chinese descent too.

I was born in Manhattan, New York. I lived in New York until I was four years of age. I lived most of my life in Milpitas, a former asparagus field turned bustling Silicon Valley village in Northern California. I completed the Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute programme at De Anza College in 2003. I then took up Culinary Arts at the California Culinary Academy.

God and I have an interesting relationship. My straying Roman Catholic mother (who had been dabbling in Pentecostalism) requested a Roman Catholic priest to emergency baptize me when I was three days old. A Roman Catholic priest could not be had, so an Episcopal priest ended up baptizing me. I did not know about this fact until later in life. I survived and was dedicated at a Pentecostal church.

I grew up a 'Born-Again' Christian, but during my summers, my grandmother would drag me kicking and screaming to the local Roman Catholic church for daily morning mass. Thanks to fundamentalist Pentecostal indoctrination, I thought the Roman Catholic Church was the ‘Whore of Babylon’ described in the Book of Revelation. However, due to my grandmother’s influence (and a lot of prayer), I became enthralled with the traditions, customs, and ceremony of the Roman Catholic Church.

Now you may ask, “How did you (re)discover Anglicanism?”

So that I won't bore you with my faith story, I’ll try to cut this short: I still couldn't agree with the Roman Catholic Church on certain points, but I was in love with its liturgy and common life. I really wasn't sure what to do. My Roman Catholic heritage beckoned me, but my childhood Protestantism still influenced me. It was a creative tension between Roman Catholicism and Born-Again Christianity. In high school, a friend reintroduced me to the Episcopal Church. I profoundly, one could even say romantically, became spellbound with Anglicanism, and I was confirmed an Episcopalian in 2004. I’m still in love with the Episcopal Church, and the Anglican via media transfixes me day by day.

One could say that it was a process of returning home.

No comments: