Winter is Worse in MI

We just returned to sunny Los Anchorage from an extended holiday trip to Michigan, where we were asked many, many times, "How dark is it in Alaska? Don't you get depressed?"

The answer is, no contest, that Michigan winters are far more depressing than Alaska ones. We were in Michigan for 17 days--and saw the sun exactly twice (and those times were brief). Other than those short burst of blue sky and sunlight, the skies were oppressively overcast, as a heavy gray-white blanket of clouds hung constantly over our heads. It was very, very depressing.

There was more light (longer days, sun more directly overhead) but the longer days made us exhausted. Go figure.

I think I'm concluding that most of what I imagined about living in Alaska was backwards. I do love a place that surprises me!

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.