Walter William Melnyk has been a priest in The Episcopal Church in the United States since 1982, and a walker between the worlds of Anglican Christianity and Celtic Spirituality. His part in creating The Apple and The Thorn emerges from his own journey through the interweaving of traditions.
Melnyk graduated from Washington & Lee University in 1969 with a BA in journalism. In 1981 he graduated from the University of the South with a Master of Divinity degree. He was ordained in 1982. Over the ministry career that followed, he served churches in South Carolina, Tennessee, Michigan, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania.
He explored with growing interest the connections between early Celtic Christianity and pre-Christian Celtic Druidry, maintaining a passion for finding common ground between those traditions. His teaching in The Episcopal Church was grounded in the Celtic tradition, from which so much of Anglicanism has emerged.
In July of 2003 Melnyk led a ritual at Stonehenge for Christians and Druids seeking interfaith understanding. That ritual was attended by Emma Restall Orr, head of The Druid Network and former joint Chief of the British Druid Order. In mid-2004 the two agreed to collaborate on a novel about the meeting of Druid and Christian spiritualities in the persons of the Lady of Avalon and Joseph of Arimathea in what is present day Glastonbury.
Melnyk left the active ministry in 2005, under intense opposition from conservative elements in the church. He retired in 2007..
He has been happily married for over twenty years, with three children and four grandchildren. He lives in an old farmhouse in Pennsylvania. |
