When I began this semester, I knew I was facing several challenges. Our campus Hillel director resigned in the summer to take a position in a synagogue closer to her family in Boston, Massachusetts. This vacancy meant not only that I’d have to conduct the search for her successor but that I would need to fill the programmatic and pastoral gap in the meantime. Additionally, we were still looking for our director of Muslim Life, a position we’ve since filled with Imam Osman Simsek. All of this occurred amid a backdrop of rising antisemitic, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian prejudice locally and globally and simmering tensions and wounded relationships on campus. Our pastoral and programmatic resources seemed at their most profound ebb when the community needed them most.
I would be lying if I said these challenges didn’t keep me up at night. They did. My deepest fear was for students who feared social acceptance hinged on hiding their Jewish or Arab identities. I grew up gay in a religious community that struggled to see truth as valid and holy. I know what it is like to grow up in the closet and to find a false and fleeting sense of safety by hiding my true self. I know how much the human spirit petrifies in the dark. I don’t want anyone to experience that.
Deitrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor and martyr, once wrote, “There is a meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.” My team and I assumed we were primarily on a programmatic journey when we began this semester. We ensured Shabbat dinners and lunches after Jumu’ah (Friday) prayers were arranged and staffed appropriately. We met regularly with students to troubleshoot events and provide pastoral support. We received feedback from faculty and staff, parents and alums that helped us better understand and thus meet the emergent needs of our students. We were only sometimes successful but always faithful in our efforts. Poet Robert Browning once wrote, “The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life.”
As we near the end of the semester and I reflect on our journey together, it is clear that I’ve been on an altogether different journey than the one I thought I was on. I thought I was supporting students during an acute pastoral crisis, and I hope I’ve done that. What I know for sure is that my heart has grown by being broken repeatedly. I’ve become more human by bearing witness to the grief of others, by “mourning with those who mourn.” I’ve become a better listener by suspending my defensiveness and instead listening for the deep grief underneath the grievance. I have become more curious by listening to the stories, traditions, and values of others and realizing how much I have yet to learn. I have become more hopeful by observing how people find ways of being together against all odds, pushing against prejudices and past hurts to forge new pathways toward more elastic relationships. In the words written by David Whyte in one of my favorite poems, this semester’s journey has taught me,
how to invent my own disappearance
so it can lie down at the end and show me,
even against my will,
how to undo myself,
how to surpass myself:
how to find
a way
to die
of generosity.
I am a better chaplain today because of my parallel journey this semester.
I’m not necessarily one for New Year’s Resolutions, mostly because I believe the words of St. Benedict of Nursia to be true: “Always we begin again.” Our transformation is not timebound. Every moment of decision is an opportunity to make a new start and a different choice based on new information and experiences. If we’re open to it, wisdom can come from all directions. Moreover, every moment and every person can become our teacher. As Lao Tzu writes in the Tao Te Ching,
Not to know the thing you ought to know is folly.
To know that there are some things you cannot know is wisdom.
The wise recognize the limits of their knowledge.
The foolish think they know everything.
Still, there are natural inflection points in our lives that more readily lend themselves to reflection and renewal. One such opportunity is the end of one semester and the start of another. You likely had some goals in mind when you began this semester, registered for that class, or applied for that internship. Grades and evaluations are one way (among many) we measure if we attained these goals.
Are you aware of the parallel journey you’ve been on as well? Have you considered the “soft” skills you’ve sharpened, like compassion, empathy, nuance, resilience, and curiosity? These goals are more challenging to measure. We only know we’ve grown in compassion when we choose compassion when presented with an opportunity. The same goes for empathy, nuance, resilience, and curiosity. We know we are different when we make different, hopefully more human, choices.
Take a moment and reflect. What journey have you been on? Where have you been successful? Where you have faithful? Before you launch into a season filled with pressure to be different, rest in the ways you’ve changed in unforeseen ways.
And rejoice.
