Making our own way

I’ve been alone in Berkeley for a month now. I’ve been through my first pound of coffee, one cup at a time, and I’m understanding why people asked me whether my husband would be accompanying me on my journey to seminary.

“What would he do? Do you think I’m not capable of being on my own?” I would ask.

I now have the answer to the question.

He would keep me company. He would hold me as I told him the joys of being a student and my effort to stop myself from thinking that I immediately know what something is about when I only know the beginning of it.

Although off on my own, my connection to home is strong. A morning email waits for me, sent some three hours earlier than I rise here on the West Coast. As I begin my day in this climate that is pretty much sunny and hovers between 68 and 80 degrees, I know of the changing weather in the Upper Delaware. I know that the goldenrod is yellow in the fields, that the leaves are beginning to turn, that the garden is yielding its harvest and that there has been a lot of rain.

The leaves here are beginning to dry and fall to the ground. A native of North Carolina explained that the leaves fall because the days are getting shorter, not because the night are getting cooler. It’s information beyond my experience in the four-seasoned northeast and the vibrant colors of the leaves before they fall.

I awoke the other day to the rustle of dry leaves blowing around the brick and concrete patterned St. Margaret’s Courtyard just beneath my window. I thought it was rain. But rain here, I am told, does not begin until November. And while I might expect rain, because of the overcast of the morning fog, one is never sure what kind of day it will be until the fogs burns off. Sometimes that’s not until 3:00 p.m.

To me, it’s a metaphor of our journey through the days of our life. We never really know of the day until the fog lifts. We never really know the purpose of our experiences until we have lived to their conclusion.

From my second story room, I look across to a green roof over the first-floor classrooms that border the courtyard. On the roof, there are rosebushes, trees, grass and concrete paths that lead beyond this dorm/school/church complex. There is a secluded, walled-in garden, a mirror of the courtyard, on the other side of the dining hall where there is fish pond with goldfish and an eight-year old turtle, someone’s pet, that swims to the side for a visit if you stand on the edge and talk. The goldfish grow daily.

Flowerbeds, profuse with purple, white and red blossoms, line the walls. Hummingbirds flit in and out, and you can experience them within the garden or through the glass wall of the dining hall.

We all make our own way--not knowing the whether the day is warm or cool until the fog burns off. We make our own way not exactly knowing where or how we will get to where we are going.

Sometimes there are people at our sides, and sometimes we travel alone.

It’s a journey. It’s a life. And it is good.

Night

One of my favorite times of the day are meal times at either one of the two communal cafeterias that are part of the Graduate Theological Union. Not only is it an opportunity to avail oneself to food, it is an opportunity for conversation and fellowship. Not surprisingly as everyone on this “Holy Hill” is a seminarian of one faith or another, the topic of conversation is often religious belief. And many times, people speak of their personal relationship to a God that moves through their lives as a constant living presence.

I read Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” this morning, one of my required readings for the week. It is, according to the book jacket, a “terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness of the death of his family.”

Despite the heavy subject, it is a quick read. And for those familiar with “Schindler’s List,” there wasn’t much in it that we don’t already know - imprisonment, starvation, forced work, selection, gas chambers, the death of five million people.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that humans have the ability to act as both divine and evil creatures. But I find that to be a frightful concept of balance.

In a May fellowship service, I had crafted what I might now call my theology of suffering with the words: “We cannot know the reasons why there is a certain pain in the world. We can only know that that pain has the ability to strengthen our love. This does not dismiss our anger and the tactile misery of our feelings. But if we can find love in our pain, we are indeed evolving.”

Today, I’m not sure it is so simple.

Saturday on the soup line

On September 16, I participated in a street retreat. Facilitated as an immersion exercise to understand homelessness, it was organized by the Faithful Fools, a street ministry operating in the heart of the Tenderloin. Retreat organizers Reverend Kay and Sister Carmen informed the group of 14 people in the morning orientation that the section of San Francisco got its name because its economy depended on the tenderloins of women.

Instruction included a map of the area, marked with the soup kitchens where lunch would be served, and a mantra to hold us together in the time that we would spend apart. We practiced the words and a melody that we could call upon in our five-hour solitary journey along the city streets that house the homeless. “What holds us separate, what keeps us separated, as we walk the streets, what connects us?

I wasn’t sure what the mantra meant but I was intrigued by the difference it struck between being separate and being separated.

We walked as a group to the Faithful Fools building on Hyde Street. We were instructed to return at 3:00 p.m. The group dispersed quickly. I checked the time on my cell phone. It was 10:25 a.m.

At first, my wanderings weren’t too different than what I had been doing in Berkeley. With the mission to witness the lives and experience of the homeless, I did not feel free to walk in and out of stores and do my habitual checking out of product and pricing in the neighborhood. But as I walked past restaurants, dry cleaners, Laundromats, and a variety of retail stores, I wondered about the connection between the shop owners and the destitute people who slept against the buildings or congregated in groups talking.

Mothers walked with their children. An elderly couple picked up bottles. Well-dressed people made quick drug deals. People slept. The police hassled two women, who I assumed were prostitutes.

I had a conversation with a man with a tattooed face, who was immaculately dressed in black leather. He wore a necklace and bracelets that were covered with spikes. His teeth had been individually filed into points.

“I really need some of these connectors for my new surround-sound stereo,” he said as I passed him and an unattended table covered with goods. “They would be cheaper here then at Radio Shack. I don’t want to steal them. But, if I put a dollar in this plate, someone will just take it.”

I paused, surveyed the table and suggested that if he put the dollar under the plate of connectors, the only person who would see it would be the person who packed up the table. He wasn’t convinced that was a good idea and surmised that the police had hauled off the person who owned the table. “They’re cracking down,” he said to me as I moved off.

“Good luck with the stereo,” I said.

I made my way to the soup line. I talked to attendant at the door to make sure that there would be enough food for all. He told me there was never a shortage, that people could return to the line as many times as they choose and that bags were available to take food home. Lunch, he said, was served from 11:30 a.m. to 2:35 p.m. Seniors, families and those who were not able to stand in line were served first. He said that he too had been homeless until he finally got sick and tired of being sick and tired.

“Now I work 40 hours. This job,” he said, gesturing around him, “is 24/7.”

I walked to the end of the line. I had a conversation with a man named Dennis. He said he had a job but that the free food helped him to make ends meet. He lived nearby in an apartment.

Once in the basement of St. Andrews, I was handed a compartmentalized tray filled with tuna casserole, steamed squash, a fresh plum, a piece of bread with butter, half a donut and a glass of lemonade. I ate a bit, and then offered to switch trays with the transvestite who had hungrily eaten her meal next to me. She accepted my tray without comment or conversation. As I left, I saw her get in line again.

I wandered over to the Civic Center Plaza on Market Street, the edge of the Tenderloin which buts up against the theater district. By the fountains there, a drumming circle had formed. People were dancing on the big stone pillars, making out and drinking out of small hip flasks. I sat for a long while before making my way back. Walking past a restaurant with a clock, I was amazed it was only 12:20 p.m.

I was tried of walking and the hot sun. I had neither a hat nor sunglasses. There were no benches and all of the stairways were gated. I found half of a stoop on the shady side of the street and sat down, tucking my backpack under my legs. People passed me by without much of a glance and I wondered if they thought I was homeless. It was the first time that I experienced anxiety.

Sitting on the ground, I could not monitor both directions and felt vulnerable. Still with nothing to do and nowhere to go, I sat for a long while. Feeling a bit out of the flow, I moved to a place where there would be more action. Sitting on a pile of newspapers, I watched some men load a truck.

When I tired of that, I checked the time in another storefront window. Fifty minutes had passed.

I found my way back to the mission and joined the crowd that was hanging there. I sat and watched people greeting friends, singing songs, and generally communing together. I was startled into reality when a man peed into a building corner some two feet away from me. His footsteps were moist as he moved past me. No one was particularly interested in me and my attempts at conversation were seemingly ended when I said that I wasn’t from around there. I felt useless, my presence being no presence at all.

I relinquished my stoop to two men who were looking for a space to play chess and walked back the Faithful Fools building, some 50 minutes early. And then, perhaps by providence, a man who was sitting on the sidewalk, shoved a book into my hands and asked me if I knew what it was about.

It was a complicated book about cosmology. I flipped through it, handed it back and indicated that the subject was beyond me. We started talking about whether Pluto was still a planet and he launched into a lesson on the number of solar systems in the galaxy. I sat down, placing my backpack behind me like a pillow.

He talked about space, Star Trek, the history of various wars and whether Hillary Clinton would make a good president. I asked him how he had gotten so smart and he replied that if he was so smart then what was he doing there.

We shared easily. His presence was a gift that helped my time move forward. My presence was a gift that helped his time move forward. When I told him it was time for me to leave, he painfully got up and helped me to my feet.

What holds us separate, what keeps us separated as we walk the street, what connects us?

On my day of street retreat in the Tenderloin, I found what connects us is the sharing of the human experience, which has the ability to transcend our human circumstance.

All the rest is just how the time passes.

I Got Got Got No Time

My third-year dorm neighbor laughed at me this morning when I told her I had to change my habits so that I wouldn’t fall behind.

“It’s really just a question of when,” she said with a smile.

Of course, she’s right. During orientation, we were told that although a class might only meet for three hours a week, it was standard practice that there would be nine hours of reading to do in preparation for the class time.

In fact, there’s so much reading that the semester is planned with a “Reading Week” in the middle. It’s a week at the end of October where there are no classes, so that students can ostensibly catch up. While that sounds like a relief, I am told that some professors assign more reading because there isn’t any class; so catching up is really just a figure of speech.

I discussed my lack of time with my husband, Stephen, who is keeping the garden harvested and the dog fed some 3,000 miles away. “I play Spider Solitaire before I go to bed,” I said. “Maybe I’ll stop doing that.”

He suggested that if I were to manufacture a day with 27 hours in it, my problems would be solved. (His perception of my abilities far outweighs what I am capable of.) Still, with that in mind, I wondered whether I could get up earlier or stay up later and get what I need to get done.

But what is it that I need to get done, you might ask? I would say reflection, reverence, being quiet and centered and connected to a spirit which is common to us all.

And I guess my plan worked, because instead of playing solitaire, I have written this reflection.

All is well here in Berkeley. It’s a warm, small, vibrant community of learning and reverence. I’m seeing and experiencing a world that is expanding and intimate at the same time. There’s a great desire among most of the people here to make a difference in the world, to connect with that which is divine in our lives and to reach out to others in love.

I know that to be true of many, throughout the country, the continent and the world.

Okay then, I need to do what for tomorrow's class?

Defining routines

For as long as I can remember, I have always had a rigorous schedule. In fact, for the last year or so, my routine was such that if I had an hour-and-a-half free with nothing to do, I wasn’t always sure what I would with it.

While my life was extremely full and I wasn’t discontent with it, in those moments I would be reminded of the slogan “get a life.” And thus began my quest to explore what I liked to do beyond work at The River Reporter, a weekly community newspaper that has provided the basis of my existence, with daily and weekly routines for the past 28 years.

So here I am, enrolled in a graduate theological school, miles away from my beloved Upper Delaware River valley, beginning the process of figuring out what exactly that slogan means in terms of spiritual understanding and the less tangible, but perhaps most relevant, aspects of our daily living.

My schedule is fairly open. I have five classes, and they basically meet for three hours a week. I have no classes on Mondays or Tuesday mornings, which works well with the copyediting duties that I am maintaining at the paper.

Today, for instance, I do not have a class until 7:10 p.m. At that time, I will cross the street from my dorm, and attend my first “Introduction to Islam” class, taught by Yassir Chadly. I added it to my schedule for two reasons.

First, I think it’s especially important at this time of religious divisiveness to have some kind of understanding of the spiritual underpinnings practiced by Muslims. I had been mortally frightened on the flight here because there were Muslims sitting in my particular airplane row. Aware of their every move and every time that they used the bathroom, I was shocked by my fear and my misinterpretation of their actions. In that moment, I received first-hand experience about the need to understand that not all Muslims are terrorists, in the same way that not all Christians are imperialistic fundamentalists.

Second, the instructor and his manner of approaching teaching and communication when he gave an overview of the course during orientation charmed me. A quick Internet search, in this moment, reveals that he is an Islamic imam from Morocco and a musician well versed in Sufi sacred music. Perhaps that explains his command of the room and the material. You can experience this charm yourself by going to http://www.remarkablecurrent.com/yassir.html and clicking on his interview.

But don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I don’t have a fair amount to accomplish before next Tuesday afternoon. With this evening’s classes being my fourth class of the week, I have 200 pages to read in the course required all incoming Starr King students on “Educating to Counter Oppression and Build Sustainable Communities.” Following the reading, I am to write a not-more-than-three-page single-spaced reflection on what I want to get out of the course. Another requirement is to participate in the online creation of a covenant by which the three-hour weekly class discussion will be moderated.

For my “Dance of the Women’s Spirit” class, I have numerous readings and journaling to do as we explore the Biblical figure of wisdom, and its relation to dance as a spiritual practice. I have been reading biblical passages that make reference to wisdom, which, for this Unitarian-Universalist, is a first-time experience.

My “Bibliodrama and Liturgical Studies” class simply requires me to read the gospel story Luke 13:10-17 on a daily basis at the same time each day, as a way of preparing for thorough examination through pluralistic and communal interpretive play beginning next Tuesday.

I am in the process of reading the novel “Gilead,” which is one of the required readings for my “Teacher as Prophet” course tomorrow morning.

And so the routines of this new life begin to reveal themselves and I make conscious choices in their creation.

Setting my alarm for 6:30 a.m. I am rising earlier than my habit at home. My cup of coffee in bed, so lovingly provided by my husband, Stephen, for the past eight years, is accomplished by setting up my one-cup coffee maker, complete with cream and sugar the night before. In the morning, I sit up and press the “on” button.

So whether it is the preparation of my morning coffee, coming up with a system of looking up every word that I don’t know, always seeking out additional information, or simply being in the present moment, I am applying myself to “getting a life.”

And I am realizing that it matters less where we are or what we are doing, but more on whether we apply ourselves with intention, without distraction or judgment.

Purposeful aimlessness

On my wanderings yesterday, I found the Goodwill store and bought a pair of jeans and my newest favorite sweater. The clerk informed me it was buy two, get one free and I quickly added the silken, princess line, blue-print shell I had been eyeing, but had passed over because I didn’t want to spend $3.99.

The weather in Berkeley is funny. If you’re in the sun and strolling up any of the hills, a sleeveless shirt is plenty warm enough. At the same time, if you’re sitting in the shade or hanging out in an open-air establishment, wearing a sweater is a perfectly comfortable thing to do.

I disappointed my aunt and uncle today when I called them and told them that I would be at the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station in their town in time to go to church tomorrow, rather than arrive this evening.

My action surprised me. Last night, I had been a bit lonesome as I made my dinner in the third floor community kitchen and ate alone in the TV room next door, watching a snippet of the movie “Bridgett Jones’ Diary.”

Still, I chose solitude, and took myself this afternoon to the Berkeley Rose Garden, some eight to nine blocks up Euclid Street. I sat there, comfortable in my new sweater, and leafed through the thesis paper of my Dance of the Women’s Spirit class instructor, which I had successfully found on the library shelves after a search of the online catalog. I read the first 19 pages of a novel “Gillead,” required reading for my “Teacher as Prophet” class, which I purchased at the bookstore in the morning, after figuring out all my required class reading using the Graduate Theological Union website. I congratulated myself that I am making my way through some of the introductory chores of a graduate student.

When I tired of reading, rather than heading back to the dorm, I walked further and took a left down the hill to see where it would bring me. I’ve been checking out the neighborhood on foot in widening circles for the last two weeks.

Somehow, I seem to be on a mission to explore this place that surrounds me. With no thought beyond the present moment, I walk in and out of the various retail establishments, wondering how they make their rent and marveling at how much consumers are willing to spend. I pass by the Cheeseboard, a cheese cooperative on Shaddock Street, which features beautiful cheeses at $16 a pound and sports lines of 30 or more people who want to purchase their pizza for $17 a pie. I walk in and out of numerous bakeries where single products--croissants, pastries and cheesecakes--range from $1.75 to $5. I duck in and out of grocery stores and pass by the Progresso soup for $3.29 a can.

I am bold in my exploration. I walk past a bar that is filled with people watching television and walk in just to see what has captured their attention. I contemplate a beer and the first California Bears away game with exuberant football fans and pass it up in favor of my solitude. I try on hats that range from $34 to $225 and understand that I have to do something to protect myself from the sun beating down on my head.

I have no aim in my wanderings, but somehow I feel there is a purpose to it.

Perhaps I finally understand that life is where we live it, in each moment, with each breath, in harmony with our current surroundings and ourselves.

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.