End of Summer Report

It is August 15, 2006 and summer is essentially over for me. In the coming days, I am finishing up my first summer job in 28 years, I am headed back to school to assist in orientation for the new crop of students and I am preparing to begin another major part of my journey, as an intern minister.

Just a quick note on the job; what an experience going from $100 an hour back to $9 an hour. (I must really want to be a minister.)

I became a manager for the first time at the age of 20. Since then, I have pretty much been in management or an ownership position in almost every job I have had. One possible exception was when I was a cook for sororities when I returned to school to finish my bachelor’s degree after a 6 year hiatus, but that is a story for another day. Working at a little bed and breakfast just down the block from my house was a strange and wonderful experience. It was humbling, frustrating, fun, and perfect for what I needed to help support me this summer. It was also the first job I have had since this new path in my life began.

I will return to the job in a moment but first let me explain another profound experience of my summer. I have had some awakening around some thoughts on life. All summer I have been meeting with my friend Lee who I met through the Network of Spiritual Progressives. He is a warm, wise and wonderful man with a loving spirit and a gentle heart. We have spent much time talking about where we are in our lives and how that relates to the world we live in. As I wrote in an earlier blog entry, I heard a speaker at the NSP conference in Washington say, “don’t follow your bliss, follow your heartbreak.” Well, we two are following our heartbreak and in some strange way it has given me a great deal of bliss.

We have spent much time talking about “the Movement.” In my opinion, the movement is happening all over and needs to happen in the face of an equally increasing sense of violence as the answer to differences and division as a political strategy. It has been written about by many authors such as Jimmy Carter, Jim Wallis and Michael Lerner, and it is being tested all over in religious and political circles. To me, the movement is about the growing knowledge base and brewing strategies that are attempting to answer the question; how do we really, finally, and truly build a different world? How can we build a more loving world, a more generous world, a kinder world, a more respectful world, a more peaceful world and a world more in tune with sustaining the life and beauty of our planet?

This is not a simple task, especially when faced with the horrors of dead children caught in an over rationalized crossfire of violence (not just in one area, but in too many places). This is also not about an election, a new book, or some new policies; to me this is about a true shift in the way the world operates. Lee and I have decided that this must begin with us. I am not saying that the whole movement will begin with us, but we must live and breathe the movement if we ever want to make sure that we can help create that movement in the world.

Now, how does my summer job fit in? It has been a fascinating experience to have this clerk’s job in the middle of all of this. I have really been living so many different roles this summer. Preacher, pastoral care listener, partner, hourly employee, nonprofit consultant, student on break and a host of others. Of the experiences that came from this, none were more surreal as the day I helped lead a service at church speaking to around 400 people, glowing in the excitement, warmth and love of this calling, feeling that I have truly found my place in the world and then an hour later, sitting at a desk answering phones and taking breakfast orders at my little B&B down the street. Even though I was back in my clerk’s role, the transition of that day and how I define myself was much easier with this purpose, movement, (or calling if you will) in mind.

It isn’t that I did not know some of these things, but being a clerk this summer allowed me once again to see how hard the immigrant women maids worked for such a relatively small wage. How the issues of health care, child care, stereotyping and immigration affected many of them on a daily basis. I saw and experienced how challenging it is to treat ourselves and each other with love, generosity and respect in the realities of this small business. This summer I was steeped in observing how we can live in the boxes we have so long defined for ourselves and each other.

I also found myself struggling to know how to apply this movement in my job, not being in a leadership position that I have become so used to over the years. I decided that the best way was to do my utmost to treat others with love, respect, kindness and generosity. To think of all of us as in some way as being wounded and in need of healing and love, to being special and in need of expression, to deserving respect and in need of kindness and to be searching for our own truths and in need of support and connection.

I am clearly training to be in a position to have a voice and a place to express it, but I also learned from this summer’s experience that the words from that pulpit will ring hollow if I do not live the values I preach.

So I finish the summer with a flurry of activity in preparation for my next phase of life. I need to have my car serviced, I must fill out scholarship applications, I have been asked to assist others (new students) in their transitions on their journey, and I strive to balance the substantial new commitments away from home with my on-going commitments in my own home. But, most of all, I hope to continue my call to do what I can to facilitate enlightenment, awakening or whatever you may call it in myself and others. I am not naive about what it may take to build a better world, I am just convinced that it is possible. As my friend Lee says, “Shift Happens."

Many blessings and peace to you all.