Starr King: the beginning

Within 20 minutes after crossing the threshold at Starr King School for the Ministry, I had a key to the place. I hadn’t even paid my tuition.

The key, they told us in the worship ceremony where I and 17 other incoming students were welcomed, opens all the outside doors and the closets in the school building.

They told us that we would come to love the place and all that it had to offer, both spiritually and educationally. They told us they were glad that we had all arrived there, now.

I felt exceptionally welcomed and immediately trusted. How could one not fall in love, if nothing else, with that gracious treatment?

Over the next five days, we received orientation. We went on a scavenger hunt and found the cash box for the copier, the six fire extinguishers, the three first aid kits, the portrait of the founder of the schools, our own mailboxes and those of our teachers. We were cajoled to find how one makes an appointment with the seminary president, our advisors and where to find the dishwasher soap in the kitchen. We were introduced to the faculty, the wealth of the courses offered and professors at other schools throughout the nine-school Graduate Theological Union complex.

Later, we learned the eight thresholds in which we must achieve competence including Life in Religious Engagement, Prophetic Witness and Work, Sacred Text and Interpretation, History of Dissenting Traditions and Thea/ological Quest, Spiritual Practice and Care of the Soul, Thea/ology in Culture and Context, Educating for Wholeness and Embodied Wisdom and Beauty. We were told that even though we had just arrived, we were being prepared to leave. We experienced the school’s relentless mission to education against oppression and the process of that discussion.

Our orientation was rounded out with how to register on line and a tour of the Graduate Theological Union, its library and bookstore. We were asked to identify our calling and offer it up in worship in daily worship.

It was all very clear, but I was left with my own confusion whether my choice of a Masters Degree in Religious Leadership for Social Change was really the right course of study.

Most of the incoming class is on a Masters of Divinity track. After three of four years, and fulfilling more requirements from the Ministerial Fellowship Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), most of my class will become credentialed as a community or pastoral minister. They will have done fieldwork and internships that will lead them to a life as a professional religious leader.

I, one the other hand, after one or two years of study, fieldwork or internship will graduate with no credentialing and no fellowship with the UUA. I will be prepared for life as a lay religious leader.

“What am I doing?” I ask my husband and my son. “Does this make any sense? Think of all of the money I am investing, to what end?”

My husband, Stephen, offers the possibility that I can change my mind at any point and follow the credentialed ministerial track.

My son, Zac, offers that I had worked hard for the last 28 years and that I could see my time at Starr King School for the Ministry as a well-earned vacation.

I articulate my confusion within the orientation process, and I am told that everyone is confused, and it will sort itself out at some point in the future. I believe that to be true.

In the meanwhile, I have been enjoying my time here in Berkeley. I have a single dorm room across the street from Starr King in the Episcopal dorm. The shared second-floor bathroom is just across the hall. And the third-floor kitchen serves me well until the cafeteria is in full swing with the start of classes. I have been walking around, scouting out the various areas of the city on foot, and finding all of the different grocery stores. I have been copyediting for The River Reporter, and editing and tracking the progress of the monthly publication Hemlock News. With no classes yet, and no hours of reading, my days stretch before me with possibility and solitude. I look forward to becoming in touch with my spirituality. And I look forward to engaging myself in a whole-hearted exploration of what moves me, what interests me and what causes me to think outside of my immediate circumstance.

As I walk around, far removed, yet intimately connected, to my life in the Upper Delaware, I wonder whether it is truly necessary to remove oneself from daily living to experience the unencumbered realization that each day is a new beginning.

And I wonder whether I need to end up with the tangible outcome of credentialing to have my time here be worthwhile to me.

Life, wherever we live it, speaks of our own potential, our own choices and whether we curse or bless the world in our daily lives.

I don’t know exactly what I am doing here. But I am thankful that I am and that there are so many that support this journey.

Perhaps we each can all say that about our own lives, wherever we are.