Legally Crazy; Why I Never Got Ordained

Hello My Dear One,

I have severe mental illness. I know you know that, but sometimes seeing it in black and white makes it less abstract.

I was asked recently which of my mental illness diagnoses (I have more than five) was the one that bothered/affected me the most, and without hesitation I replied "Bipolar 1 Disorder." The person was almost surprised, but I explained that it takes the biggest toll on my psyche. It's unpredictable. It's scary. It takes inordinate amounts of time and effort to keep it under control.

It's the reason, besides being half Jewish, that I never pursued any form of ordained Christian
ministry. I knew that the diagnosis would prevent me from passing the psychological fitness exam. But more importantly, I knew that the disease itself would prevent me from being a stable and safe leader. It's always seemed to me that training doesn't guarantee a profession. And further, my training in seminary was more about my transition as a transgender individual than about the spiritual care of others.

To me, the truest mark of why I didn't go for it was that I didn't take the four final classes. I never took Pastoral Care, Introduction to Worship, Church Field Placement, or Clinical Chaplaincy Placement. Those are the "where the rubber meets the road" courses and I put them off until it was too late to do anything about them. For years I blamed my advisor for doubting my call to ministry and her having me take theological/academic courses instead of pastoral leadership ones in the first years of seminary. But perhaps she saw in me something that I didn't see back then. She knew my mental health history, and she never came to terms with my gender identity and transition, but I don't think that was her only reasoning.

In looking back I think she must have seen the academic in me. The lecturer. The professorial dreams. The desire to learn and synthesize vast amounts of information, knowledge, facts, and theories rather than administrative or daily pastoral care. She herself was an academic nun, and hadn't felt the call to ministering to individuals in a pastoral way. Rather, she taught students for decades about the history and enormous value of Torah, or for her, the Old Testament. Even her History of the Bible course had only one class out of fifteen on the Christian Scriptures. She had a passion for the prophet(s) Isaiah and the writings, that was unparalleled in any of the other professors I had. She also had a thing for photocopied handouts, but that was a separate issue.

Now that I'm more than ten years away from that part of my journey, I can look back with a completely different lens. I used to blame her for so many of my struggles, but in retrospect I understand that ordination was never my path, and those struggles were what propelled me to be the theologian that I am. Though I do not get paid in money for my work or expertise, I do receive "G-d" pay for using my gifts of theological studies.

So, after a sermon I gave recently, I was able to name the fact that I am not a pastor, but I am a preacher. I am one who studies the inner depths of scripture and reports back the message that I feel called to share with others. Most of the time, I do this with young children in a religious education setting. But occasionally I get those opportunities to preach to adults and it is always a wonderful time in my spiritual life.


But none of that means that I wish to be ordained.

No, my love is for the studying itself, and the passing on of the understandings that I've gleaned. My heart is in the individual letters of the texts, right down to the vowel pointing in the original Hebrew writings. I gain my greatest fulfillment in parsing out the hidden ideas and ideals in ancient phrases passed down through an oral tradition and then captured in the markings that can relate them to those who will never hear the tales. I adore the process of entering into a narrative and searching throughout it, attempting to find a way that leads to something greater than just the text itself. That is a gift I wholly enjoy.

Preacher man.

So, I know that I want to keep going with what I do. I want to share my deep and profound love of finding truth and meaning in texts that are thousands of years old. I want to share the history, the words, the images, and the ideas that recount the faith of generations upon generations. And I need to communicate these things in all that I do. I need to commit to my passion. And I need to be present to my call in this direction.

Thank you for being present with me on this part of the journey.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

- Ari