Michael Scaperlanda
Professor of Law
As a Catholic-Christian and as a member of the University of Oklahoma Law faculty, I take this opportunity to use this wonderful and new communication avenue to briefly share some aspects of my faith with you. On a personal plane, I have been married to Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda for 15 years, and we have four great children: Chris (14), Anamaria (12), Rebekah (10), and Michelle (8). On a professional level, after graduating from the University of Texas Law School in 1984, I clerked one year for the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court and practiced law for the following four years, but my heart always tugged toward teaching and the university life. In 1989, I joined the College of Law faculty at the University of Oklahoma.
In the introduction to his book, "The Four Loves," C.S. Lewis describes two ways in which we are near to God: nearness by likeness and nearness by approach. We are near to God by likeness because He created us in His image and declared it very good. Even the most rotten among us, as God's creatures, are near to God in likeness. In contrast, nearness by approach describes the life long journey to surrender our lives and our wills to our awesome Creator so that we may have life and have it more abundantly. To describe these concepts, Lewis draws an analogy to a man sitting on a cliff over looking a city. The man is very close to the city (he could throw a stone and hit its center), yet to enter the city he must walk many miles around the mountain.
At a very young age, I left the cliff overlooking the city and have been on the faith journey ever since. As a somewhat arrogant young man, I set out to save the world in the name of God. My faith had rightly informed my social conscience, and I dreamed of using my God given talents to slay the dragons of injustice. Yet something was wrong - I was setting the agenda {albeit with good intentions} not God. As the journey continued and my faith grew, I realized that God had carefully and intentionally given me a strong sense of justice and that He had used my arrogance and indignation to fuel my studies so that He could place me where He wanted me, according to His will not mine.
Over the past couple of years, I have begun (with God's constant grace) the process of surrendering my dreams, my aspirations, my goals, in short, my life to God. Don't be mistaken, surrendering these temporal things will not make me a couch potato. Far from it, in surrendering myself to God, I find far greater strength, peace, and purpose in God's divine plan for His creation and that to truly approach God and to live fully the life He gave me, I must follow this path that He has chosen for me, wherever it leads. I know God's will for me will lead to my greater happiness, but my will is strong and as much as I desire to surrender myself completely to the care of our Creator, I more often than not resist. Fortunately, our loving God, continually calls me to Him, sometimes by His presence and sometimes by His absence.
During my first four years of teaching, I commuted between Norman, OK and Austin, Texas, where my family still lived. I made the 740 mile round trip weekly and in four years of commuting, I only missed one weekend at home. This time was hard on my wife, our children, and me. I was starting a new career; one that I dearly loved and that I had long thought was my vocation. Yet, our family was apart physically and at times emotionally and spiritually. At night, alone in my car, driving up or down I-35, with tears in my eyes, I would often beg God to allow me to teach and live with my family in the same town. Silence followed. Where was God? I would shout at God (in my previous 30 years I had never done this) angry that He had opened such a cruel window of opportunity by the teaching position. Silence followed. Where was God? As I came to realize later, His silence was a powerful presence for this stubborn sinner. Driving that lonely highway, my notions of stable family life and work life in tatters, I surrendered my all to God. In that dark night of the soul, the only thing I could cling to was a ray of hope that it would all work out. I hadn't the foggiest notion how it would work itself out; all I had was the knowledge of a God who would use every situation to His greater glory and good. I had nothing else to cling to.
That was the night that I began to truly surrender my will to God. Our family, strengthened and closer because of this time of trial, was eventually reunited in Norman where we live today. Only God knows where my journey of faith will lead tomorrow, but for now please pray for me that I continue to give my whole life to the one who gifts me with my every breath. Also pray that I provide a good role model for my students as they prepare for lives in a very special profession. Thank you and God bless you.
If you have any questions or comments you can E-Mail me at MSCAPERL@HAMILTON.LAW.OU.EDU.