So, I don’t really write much about my day job. It is not full time, but it is a job nonetheless.
I work part time, online, for a local community college as a writing specialist. What is a writing specialist? Basically I am a glorified writing tutor. I work specifically with assigned classes that are also online, and assist the students in those classes.
In addition, I am working as a general writing tutor so that means anyone can schedule with me during my available hours. I am also assigned to the fledgling online writing center as one of two specialists for the whole college of 44, 000 students. So, there is a lot to do in 15 hours a week.
I can work 19 hours a week as far as the college is concerned. For many, many semesters I stuck to the 19 hour schedule. This past fall, and this spring semester, I cut down to 15 hours just to buy myself a few extra hours to do the other stuff in my life: house, pets, groceries for four adults, and doctors’ appointments without end, oh, yeah, and the care and feeding of five dogs, a cat and a bird. I also try to exercise, find time to sing and I have begun a new endeavor… a course of study with a Rabbi.
That course of study thing is a big deal. For a long time now I have been working with a Spiritual Director. When I say, “long time” I mean I have been working with her for close to 10 years. She has had a profound effect on me in many ways and helped me keep G-d present in my life at times when it seemed G-d had abadoned me altogether. Her patient guidance, wisdom, friendship and grace have been and continue to be one of the things that glue me togeher.
As I have mentioned here before, I am a seminary graduate and at one time I was an ordained United Methodist minister. For many, many reasons, that path did not remain open to me. I ended up as a minister to my students and I think the work I have done there, or tried to do, has had meaning.
I have very consciously tried to open minds and equip them with the skills to think and read critically so they can make informed decisions about the world around them. I spent many years as a college English professor before I took my current position. In both jobs, I have taught people what a primary and secondary source is and how to structure an argument that is logical and not biased. Of course, in doing this they hopefully, with my help, learn to read and recognize arguments that are based in fact and not opinion or propaganda. I think these are skills that are crucial to a free and just society and are vastly important in a world saturated with social media and dubious journalism.
This has been good and important work but I am starting to see myself in other places.
That call to ministry thing never went away. It has just gone through a lot of twists and turns. I have detailed, probably ad naseum, in this blog, my health journey. Due to the highs and lows and challenges it has presented, my faith has been tested, to say the least. For a while, before I met my spiritual director, my faith left me altogether.
I was all done with G-d. And I was pretty sure She was all done with me.
In order to find my way back to G-d I had to be brutally honest about what I believed and what I did not. (And let me just say here that this is highly individual and I DO NOT BELIEVE there is a one-size-fits-all approach.) For me, that meant admitting that I was never really a comfortable Christian in some ways. There. That was difficult to say. Even now, after all of the water under the bridge, I still feel like I disappointed someone, somewhere.
But, no. I didn’t. I know better. I am perfectly whole in G-d’s eyes, just as we all are. And for me, I have always known that the place I feel called to worship and the G-d of my understanding is the G-d of my father, Hashem, Adonai, The Great I Am.
I was raised in a plural home. My family’s favorite dysfunction centered around the fact that my grandparents forced my father and uncle to attend a Christian church even though they were a Jewish family. This occured at some point in the 1940’s. Yes, anti-semitism and Hitler played a part. Yes it led to a great deal of confusion, upset and family problems and it reverberated down several generations and across branches of the family.
Judaism is not just a faith tradition. It is an ethnicity and a cultural identity. It has roots that go back at least 5,000 years. Jews have fought for survival and have been forced to live in isolated groups for much of history. This has forged a very strong identity.
This is my birthright.
Incidentally, my mother had a Jewish grandfather, but he hid his background from his family: ironic, but common.
My older sister, eighteen years my senior, married into a conservative Jewish family, went through conversion, and raised Jewish children. These children were closer in age to me than my siblings. When I worshipped with them at home or at the Synagouge, I always felt at home. I had a sense of belonging.
But Christianity told me I had to be wrong somehow. Mainstream culture where I grew up was 100% Christian. Being a Jew would have been weird and I was already weird! So, I tried to fit in. I tried to be the best Christian I could be.
But something was missing.
My heart and my head were not aligned.
When I studied Hebrew in seminary, I would find myself crying for no apparent reason. I took a course on the Psalms and it became so vitally important to me that I was obsessed with it.
When I was a parish minister I found myself choosing my sermon from the “old” testament side of the Christian lectionary more often than not. Indeed, it is one of the things my congregation complained about! I did my best to weave in stories about the life and teachings of Jesus, whom I greatly admire, truly, but I did not believe is the messiah… not for me, at least.
Somehow, after I thought G-d, Jesus and whoever else might be out there and I had parted ways, that “thing” happened to me again. I was familiar with it but not sure I wanted to welcome it back. “It” was a sense of a Higher Power at work in my life… very deliberately.
And all of a sudden, the dam broke. I knew. There was no more fighting myself. There was just a quiet sense of self and of joy. I felt free!
I am free to worship G-d as I understand Her in my deepest self and that is as a Jew. It is where G-d makes sense to me. It is how I identify.
All of this brings me back to the issue of ministry and my study with a Rabbi. For a long time I have felt called to work as a Spiritual Director. I think I might have a lot to offer, especially to people who live in mixed faith families. There are a lot of questions and a lot of issues that come up. I think I can be a good resource for them.
Obviously, I have a good education and background when it comes to Christianity and pastoral care. However, I am lacking when it comes to a good Jewish education. My education there is haphazard and mostly self taught. For a long time now I have had a deep desire to learn more and to do it in some sort of formal setting. But I have been held back by many things, most of them pretty practical, like money, time, health and a lack of energy to do more than I already am. However, through the encouragement of my Spiritual Director, I have tried to remain open to whatever possibilites might come along to help me reach this goal.
So, in November I ran smack dab into a woman Rabbi. The Rebbe, or teacher as she prefers to be called, has decades of ecumenical experience and stands ready to help me, for free, through a course of study that will prepare me for the work I want to do.
It doesn’t get much more obvious than that!
As I have begun my course of study I find that the reading and writing and so far, my first lesson with her, is like stepping into a warm bath. It is all the right temperature and very comfortable and cleansing.
I don’t know how I am going to do this.
I don’t know from day to day if I will have the energy to do the things required of me so I just put one foot in front of the other and try.
That is all I know to do.
The rest is not up to me. It is up to Her… to G-d.
If there is a call and I am to answer it then things will happen as they may. All I can do is walk the road before me and follow.