Lessons Learned

When I was a first-year college student, I enrolled in "Intro to Biblical Hebrew" at Drew's seminary. It was a last-minute thing, a choice made because the class I really wanted (now long-forgotten) was full. I was the lone undergraduate, and very intimidated. I almost dropped the class.

But then I learned a very valuable lesson. Once I stopped trying to make Hebrew "just like English," things got easier. And once I started laughing at (or with?) this quirky language where everything was "backwards," it all started to make a perverse kind of sense.

When I arrived at Princeton five years later, once again I had to take Biblical Hebrew. "It's not like English," I told my classmates. "Remember to laugh!"

It helped that the prof was the very funny Choon-Leong Seow, who told us that his students are recognized everywhere they go, because they speak Biblical Hebrew with a Chinese accent.

I've decided that Alaska in the winter is a lot like Biblical Hebrew. Once you accept that it's not like the lower 48, you're much better off. And if you can laugh at the fact that it's still dark out way past mid-morning, and dusk by about 3 p.m., you're on your way to being a bona-fide Sourdough. (I've been told, however, that there are residency requirements for that moniker, much like the ones for the Permanant Fund Dividend).

The Rewards of Lonely Exile

Most of the time when I attend the AUUF I am moved to tears at least once during the service. Today it was three or four times.

When I served as a minister in the PC(USA) there was distance between the congregation and its ministers. The most powerful symbol of this distance was the fact that ministers are members, not of the congregation, but of the presbytery (like a UU district).

Even so, I was part of a community. There were Wednesday night dinners, conversations over cookies after Sunday services, Monday night Bible studies, Saturday night volleyball at the Y (we always lost).

But then came exile. Partly self-imposed. Mostly because I could no longer be my true self within the Presbyterian system.

Exile, in my case, has been very productive. For a while now I've known that the desert hast taught me not so much what I believe, as what I do not believe. But today I came to understand a second lesson of exile. It has taught me to value community.

Every time I cry during the AUUF service, it is connected to a deep longing for home.

I hope that this is a lesson that I never forget--particularly if I become a minister within the UUA. I want to remember what it feels like to treasure every face in the gathered congregation, every warm body in my family of choice.

Backwards Progress

It has been strange, coming into this wonderfully progressive group of people (the UUA), only to find them talking about things like "contemporary worship" and "small group ministry" as if they were groundbreaking new concepts. Where I come from, people have been talking about contemporary worship & small groups for a long, long time. Since I'm not real fond anymore of the places I've been, it's kind of uncomfortable finding my new home borrowing from my former places of residence.

Evening All Day

Six months ago in Michigan I thought living through the darkness of an Alaskan winter would be an interesting experiment. In all of the places where I have lived (NJ, OH, MI), I have always loved the Winter Solstice, the turning point of the year, when we celebrate having survived the longest night. I assumed, from the comfort of a light-filled Michigan summer, that winter in Alaska would be the same, but more.

There is a big difference between imagining something and living it.

Most of us are so clock and schedule driven that we forget the little time-cues that bombard us throughout the day. Living here in Alaska has been a sharp reminder of biological rhythms.

The sun rose at 9:58 this morning and set at 3:43 this afternoon. And even when the sky is clear, the angle of the sun is odd, never rising above what would make most people think that it was mid-morning, or late afternoon.

Every day feels like a Saturday when you sleep late, stumble out of bed in whatever clothes you slept in, drink a cup of coffee while you read the paper, slouch around all day, and go to bed at night feeling like you never really got up.

Which explains why it's 12:57 a.m. and I'm blogging.

Good thing we're heading south to sunny MI for a few weeks at the "holidays."