Guide to understanding, appreciating, and getting along with newly observant Jews

My Continuing Professional Life

All these experiences have enriched my professional life as well as my personal life. When my sister and I sold our bookstore in 1991, I had no idea what I would do next to support myself and contribute to the world. I spent most of the next Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year, with the Bulows in New York. I returned to Portland just before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which is a very sacred day of fasting for Jews. I decided I would also fast and pray that day. During the prayer time, I remembered learning about a training program for spiritual directors. As I prayed about this as a possibility for me, I felt a clear pull in that direction. I called the Catholic sister in charge of the program. She informed me that the two-year program was beginning the next week. She was willing to interview me and consider my application.

That set my professional direction for the next years of my life. I completed the training in the spring of 1994 and began seeing individuals in a private practice. Since then, I have taken additional training programs in other aspects of this work – using the expressive arts and the enneagram in spiritual direction, the sacred art of dying, and the art of spiritual direction. Through this time, I have worked with individuals, men’s and women’s groups, and with the employees of a construction company.

Aliza has been my mentor and consultant about the Jewish perspective, practices, and community. The power and support of community is so apparent in her life. I have always longed for a community that would work for me. Over a period of twenty years, I had attended a variety of churches and groups. While they were inspiring in their own ways, none felt like my spiritual home. I wondered if I would be able to find this in the church. In November 2005, I was at the Shalom Prayer Center of the Benedictine nuns in Mt. Angel, Oregon. During the five-day retreat, I had a profound emotional and spiritual experience. It happened while I was reading a book given me by the spiritual director of my retreat. For me, it was an epiphany. Deep inside my being, I knew I would now find my home.

Saturday night, I was back in my own house. I looked in the yellow pages and saw a church within four miles of my home, which is out in the country, south of Portland. What attracted my attention was that it was the denomination of my youth in Wisconsin. The Congregational Church had united with other denominations to become the United Church of Christ. I went to the Sunday service and felt at home with the woman minister and the church members. A few months later, I joined the church, working part-time as the pastoral care associate and, on occasion, leading the worship service. It was a great joy to be in a worshipping community and be “back home.”

The impact of experiencing the Sabbath in the Bulow home and in the Jewish community influenced me to honor the Sabbath in my tradition on Sundays. There is nothing in our secularized culture that supports Sabbath observance. Without my experience in the Jewish community, I do not think I would be able to make it a part of my own spiritual practice. I have written more extensively about the importance of the Sabbath for me in the chapter on the Sabbath.

A few years ago, when I attended one of Aliza’s classes, I heard her describe the path many Jews followed when they came to this country. I saw the similarities in my own journey. Religious affiliations grew tenuous, and social causes became forefront. Aliza called people caught in this phenomenon “cut flowers,” because they had been cut off from the roots of their religious heritage. They were beautiful flowers in water vases, but what they had to offer died in a generation, because they lacked the roots in the soil.

Out of this background, Aliza found her roots in Judaism, learned Hebrew, lived in Israel, and eventually married an American Jewish man, whose parents are Modern Orthodox. My other daughter is most comfortable in secular settings, learned Spanish, traveled in South America, is passionate about soccer, and works in the world of soccer referees. She married and divorced a man from Mexico, and is now married to a man from Ohio, and the two of them love living in Mexico. I was afraid I would have Hebrew speaking and Spanish speaking grandchildren and wouldn’t be able to talk to any of them. My learning disability is in foreign language and music. Fortunately for me, all my grandchildren also speak English and humor me in my language deficiency and inability to carry a tune.

What a privilege to be alive to watch the next generation find their way and tap into their roots. I am so thankful for the richness, the complexity, the depth, and the soul-searching that have been in my life because of having a convert to Judaism in my family.

As I take stock of my life, this is how I would describe it:

I have always had a very strong commitment in my life and in my professional work as a spiritual director and teacher to living and working with compassion, acceptance, and goodwill. I am traveling that direction even though I have times of falling “off course.” Since I am clear about the direction, it is easier for me to make course corrections.

I approach people with interest in their well-being, respect for their beliefs, and appreciation for their contributions to the whole of life. I have compassion for the difficulties we all face and create. I want people to see the goodness in each other. When people behave badly, I think about how much pain they must be holding to act that way. I want to be forgiving of myself as well as others and experience a spark of G-d in everyone.

I want the kind of peace in the world that embodies wholeness or shalom. More than an absence of war, peace allows us to live fully and expressively as the magnificent beings we are. Each of us plays our own unique note in the symphony of life. Our families can be difficult and disharmonious, and yet it is in our families that we most need to practice our notes. Together we carry the possibility of a symphony of shalom and harmony. This is the music I want to hear.

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