A new thing
And it's not what I expected
I last posted here some weeks ago about my employer having a reduction in force, about my first time having to let someone go. I thought I was taking it in stride, but I found myself unable to come here and write or to talk about leadership on LinkedIn. I said to myself, you’re tired, Heather, and it’s okay to give yourself a break. I feel bad for the colleagues I’ve essentially ghosted on LinkedIn since the lay-off, and I’ll connect with each one to make amends.
Meanwhile, something beautiful has been coming to life. My spiritual journey has been an interesting one, with its ebbs and flows and valleys and peaks. I’ve met people who have had at all times an abiding sense of Divinity, of the presence of the Holy One in their life. I’ve found myself gawping in near-disbelief at this, because I’ve had the periods of desolation, of separation from the Divine, and of consolation, of blissful union. I’ve had the dry, desert times and the calm, green, growing times, and the times of riotous beauty like springtime in a mountain meadow. I mean, I’d read my spiritual memoir, if it were a book.
Ten years ago, I was approaching a time I would need to walk apart from the church. It wasn’t the first time. I was encountering a leader who did one thing but taught another, a leader who spun the best possible tale of the circumstances he was recruiting someone into, a leader who claimed a participative leadership style and then dictated his position regardless of his council’s feedback. I met and counseled lovely, vulnerable, deeply faithful people who were treated shamefully by leadership. And I just couldn’t do it any more. I was a life-professed member of a dispersed religious order in the Episcopal Church and active in a number of ministries in my parish. And I had to stop. I couldn’t continue, not with the bitterness and mistrust in my heart.
In the last couple of years, something new has been growing. I’ve thought it was one thing, considered it might be another, and tried yet a different thing. One day last week in the shower, I thought of teething as a metaphor. The teeth form below a baby’s gums, and in the early stages they’re unnoticeable as they grow. Eventually, though, they start to push their way up, and as they do, they bring about soreness and fussiness, sometimes a rash or a fever. And then finally, the tooth erupts through the gum, and it doesn’t hurt any more. I’ve been teething for two years or so now. I look in the mirror and now I can see the tippy-top of my beautiful new tooth, and it isn’t what I expected at all.
I started this Substack to be sort of a log or list of my favorite poems and quotations, because I didn’t find any good apps or sites for this. The first poem I linked to here was by a Jewish poet. I’ve been reading and learning about Judaism, which has always been an interesting topic to me. I’ve listened to some podcasts and even joined an online group of people learning about the Talmud. I picked up a prayer book for my e-reader, and the language is so beautiful. I’ve remembered one of my favorite things to teach, back before: Jesus really only said one new thing, and everything else is already there in Judaism. One night, I saw a book titled “Who is a Jew?” And my mind said, “I am.”
Wait, what?
“I am. I am a Jew? Am I a Jew? I am Jewish?”
Huh. Not what I expected.
Oh, and it’s something my partner had considered herself, years ago. She said something amazing about the impoverished experience many Christians have of the Hebrew scriptures, and I can only agree. We’re exploring this new thing, separately and together, and it is beautiful.