Losing My (Genetic) Identity

Hello My Dear One,

Last December I gave a sample of my DNA in a saliva filled tube to a popular company, and waited for some genetic answers to my ancestral past. I was hoping to learn more about my history, my ethnicities, and the other exciting things that came with the promises on the box. Like, does dark chocolate make me sneeze?

I guess I should've known that the testing was going to change things for me from the beginning. When I submitted the kit and filled out the online information, I checked the box that said male. But less than a week later I received an email that said I needed to go to my online profile and answer a question. The DNA sample submitted was from a female, and they needed to know if I had checked the wrong box, mixed up samples, or was it a gender identity issue?

So, I changed my profile to match my DNA, because I had to correct a purposeful lie. I'm not really a male of the species. I am a man, which describes my gender identity and expression, but not a male, because that has to do with my biological sex. And according to my DNA, I have 2 X chromosomes, and am for scientific classification purposes, female. I often identify as transsexual rather than transgender, due to medical interventions such as hormone therapy and surgical procedures. Yet, my DNA is forever encoded to produce a human whose first introduction to the world would be "It's a girl!" A thousand years from now if someone tested a single remaining cell of mine, they would never know that I had lived as a man.

A few weeks later when the test results came back, knowing a good portion of my family tree, I was not surprised to see the British Isles genomic markers, or the French/Germanic results. Learning that I have 306 traits of Neanderthal genetics, making me approximately 4% "caveman," wasn't all that odd either. But, it was the absence of some genes that was an issue.

According to my DNA, I am not (genetically) a Jew.

In all likelihood, it's a matter of an incorrect birth certificate several generations back. No, I don't want to do more digging, that information was not what I wanted in the first place.

Regardless, having been raised with a mix of Conservadox Judaism and Protestant Christianity, I've always felt like I'm in the middle of a religious road. Moreover, there is a G-d shaped 18 wheeler bearing down on me at a very high rate of speed.

Now, several months later, I find myself having gone through a wild ride of emotions and thoughts. How do I process this information in the first place? How do I reconcile my sense of self, with my genetic self? What does all of this mean to my faith and spiritual life? Does it make things easier or harder? How much do I actually have to reconcile anyway?

I learned all of this before Chanukah this year, and it shook me. It was so unsettling that I didn't retrieve my menorah from storage, and I never lit a single candle, though I frequently caught myself singing the blessings in my head. Although I try to live my life with no regrets, I decidedly regret not shining light into the darkness.

In the following weeks and months I continued to struggle with this new genetic understanding of myself. Oddly, it's been far more difficult to wrestle with this than with my gender identity genetics. You'd think that my biological sex being proven as the exact opposite of who I know myself to be would be far more traumatizing, or crushing, or painful. But it isn't. That biology doesn't really affect how I walk through the world. With hormones and surgeries I "look" male, and I feel male. Even my brain works and communicates differently than it did prior to transition, or at least that's what my wife tells me.

And, honestly, my gender identity and expression is not who I am at the end of the day. I've always known what my gender identity is, that I was a boy, and now a man. Even when the outside didn't match the inside, I still knew exactly who I was. Rather, it is how I act, how I speak, how I may have helped or harmed another, and how I reconciled that with G-d. Hormones and body parts don't change that reality. They are simply a part of the human packaging.

So if I'm able to make that immensely complicated genetic scramble into something so simple, why has it felt nearly impossible to do so with what could've been as little as 12.5% of my DNA? Who am I if not this flesh and most importantly blood self? How do I know myself as a Beloved Child of G-d, an "Un Homme de Dieu," and a thousand other names for a faith believer? And in the end will it really matter?

The answers to those questions are so massive that I cannot answer them all just yet. Maybe I can't even answer them at all. But, a telling thing happened to me and I guess it provides a hint of what may come.

I was introduced to a young man who is a practicing Muslim, and I immediately said, "Salaam Alaikum!" which is an Arabic greeting meaning peace to you. It is nearly identical to the Hebrew phrase "Shalom Aleichem," which also means peace to you. I happened to be cooking sausages and I shared that I didn't eat pork either since I was Jewish. I quickly pointed out that the people around us, the other members of the church, were not Jewish, but that I was. Yes, I am a member of a church, and apparently, when faced with with someone of a different faith in that setting, I find myself claiming my otherness. And, to be clear, I always greet someone I know to be Muslim with the words Salaam Alaikum, because I want them to know that a white person can be welcoming of who they are. And I do this during presentations as well. I see interfaith dialogue as the only way to truly living out G-d's Dream.

So, there's an answer to all of this. I am an interfaith Beloved Child of G-d, a muddled man of faith, un homme de dieu à plusieurs parties (a man of G-d with multiple parts,) and Heaven knows what else. And hopefully, without sounding too presumptuous, like G-d, I am who/what I am.

Thank you for being on this genetically scattered journey with me.



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

Ari

Of Red Geraniums, Orange Marmalade Cakes, and Yellow Towels; Of Mother's Day

Hello My Dear One,

It was Mother's Day recently here is the United States and instead of perseverating on the painful relationship I have with my own mother, I chose to focus instead on my wife and her journey as a mother.  This year was the 10th anniversary of the burial service for my wife's mother, Linda. She passed on Christmas Day, 2013 and because of the icy winters of the Northeast, we were unable to return her to the earth for nearly 5 months.  This is a painful reality for those of us who live in climates that render the ground beneath our feet frozen solid, immobilized against all manmade equipment.  So, we preserve the body, have the memorial or funeral service, and after the thaw we relive the pain of the loss as we part with our loved one again.  Although there is a sense of completion at this second service, it is often lost to the reopened wounds that have only just begun to heal and scar over.

In our case, the wounds ran deeper, as the burial took place the day before Mother's Day, 2004.  My young wife, not yet 30 years old, had lost her mother less than 5 months before.  And the next day, Mother's Day, would be her 1st as a mother herself with our then 10 month old son.  What an aching duality she must have felt at that moment.  To be watching the body of her mother leave her for the last time, while holding the gift of the new and unbridled joy of healthy, happy child who was loving her as she had loved her own mother.  I have not experienced this in my life, nor will I ever, yet I can feel her sadness a decade later as I recall that day.

But let me return to the burial itself.  Let me tell what can happen when one is open to the G-d that has more for us than just grief.  Often there is something special, extraordinary, and inexplicable that occurs at these "plantings," these burials of our already long gone friends and relatives.  There is something out of the ordinary that brings us a renewed sense of the continuation of our lives and the presence of the Holy within and around us.  In our case, it was a hawk.

I have a physical remembrance of standing near the graveside, hearing words, looking at my wife, and wondering what solace might be found there.  As I felt the air moving around us, heard the birds in the trees, smelled the fresh flowers, and saw the blue sky through the treetops, I felt a hand on my shoulder, and saw the smile of a friend as she pointed up to the sky.  There, circling in majestic arcs was a hawk, surveying us and all that was around.  As she spoke the word "look," my wife and I both looked up and saw the magnificent sight.  It was as if, in that moment, G-d had given us a a reprieve from the darkness of looking down into a grave.  Rather, we were compelled to look up and see the soaring hope of the life that was still ahead of us.  We gave meaning to presence.

When we ascribe meaning to parts of our life experiences, we create truths for our own comfort and resiliency.  Within the Jewish and Christian traditions, the physical reminders of our covenant(s) with G-d contain the ancient rituals of breaking bread and drinking wine while speaking prayers of blessing.  Every time we share in a meal where we give outward thanks, we create a truth about experiencing the Holy with our most basic physical needs of food and drink.  I believe that all of creation can be a witness to G-d and the blessings that can be had when one is open to them.  From bread and water to the most sacred of religious practices, we are in the presence of Holiness when we use the material gifts that G-d has supplied us with.  Like manna in the wilderness or fish for the multitudes G-d gives us tangibles to access a G-d that is too great to be comprehended by us.  In our family this Mother's Day there were 3 things of material existence that were given spiritual significance, and allowed us to access that Holiness, that enormous G-d.

Red geraniums, an orange marmalade cake, and a yellow hand towel.

Long before my mother-in-law passed she always said that if reincarnation was possible, she wanted to return as a red geranium.  I am sure I could delve into all the reasons for this, but frankly I enjoy the mystery of it more.  Every year I buy my beloved wife a red geranium, on or around Mother's Day, as a reminder of Mom's wish, and as a reminder of my shared memories of Linda.  This year I found a beautiful hanging basket filled with the bright red flowers and tons of buds waiting for their chance to bloom.  It was a remembrance of the gift of a human life and how love had the power to change so many lives.

Mom's Red Geranium

The orange marmalade cake has its roots, not in my mother-in-law, but in my wife's love of a series of books by the author Jan Karon, The Mitford series.  In it, there is a character who bakes this special cake for friends and family, often annoying her husband during the holidays due to the cost of the ingredients.  It is more than just a delicious treat, it is actually an expression of love and caring as the baking process requires many steps, attention to detail, special ingredients, and a lot of time and patience.  The cake was a gift of gratitude for the love that continues to change the lives of our sons as well as our own.

Orange Marmalade Cake

The yellow hand towel has a unique place in this trinity of everyday sacraments, reaching back over 20 years.  In the late summer of 1993 my wife was preparing to attend college, 2 hours away from home, and would be living in a dorm for the first time in her life.  As she collected the necessary items for her new journey, her mother also purchased things for her to bring.  Numerous toiletries, clothes, and bedding were secured for her future life in college, but there was a need that Linda provided with her unique pragmatic approach to life.  She bought a set of mustard yellow hand towels, high quality no less, that if one were being generous in describing them would say they were ugly at best.  The reason for this was intentional, because Linda believed that no one would steal these towels due to there color.  And sure enough she was right, because twenty plus years later, we still have those hideous towels.  They've never been stolen, no matter how much we would have wished them to be.

The "Still not Stolen" Yellow Hand Towel

And here I choose to ascribe one more bit of meaning to these three items, that their colors represent the relationships between mother and daughter.  The red geraniums and the yellow towels are primary colors that when combined create a secondary color, orange, in the form of the cake.  You see, the deeply imprinted devotion of a mother's love for her daughter was bonded with a promise of love that would transcend mortality.  And this has given new life to the daughter who is a mother herself.  The red of the future along with the yellow of the past blend into the orange of the present.  And although this interpretation could easily be called false, I believe that the sacred meaning is greater than the "truth."

In the end, we find our ability to have meaningful experiences with the Holy, with G-d, with our sacred truths where we are, not where we are supposed to be.  Through the process of living into these truths we can begin to see ourselves within the heart of G-d and the universe itself.  Whether it be through flowers, cakes, and towels, or bread, wine, and blessings, we are capable of entering into relationship with G-d.  And when we do that, we are able to enter into relationships with others.  And it is only then that we can witness the true, unique, and unconditional love of G-d. 

Thank you for continuing to seek the true love of G-d with me on this journey.

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

Ari

Of Unhidden Easter Eggs and Unwanted Rabbit Holes

Hello My Dear One,

It was a hell of a Holy Week this year.  I found myself pulled as usual in multiple directions, Passover, Easter, the Bipolar I nightmare that is the month of April, excessively high blood glucose levels, and dealing with a school vacation that robs me of my routine as well as a week's worth of pay.  Spring has never done much for me, I love summer, but that's another story.

Anyway, as far as the Holy Week issues, I could have defaulted to my old standbys of religious discord as the basis for my current distress, however that would have been a lie.  This year I have been more at peace with who and where I am on my spiritual journey than I can ever remember.  I watched and listened as the Jewish and Christian holidays and traditions danced, dovetailed, and diverged as they always do.  I marveled at their relationship and my relationships with each of them.  In reality my problems with Holy Week have far more childish roots, or at least, reasons that are rooted in my childhood.

The angst I experience each year stems from what I didn't get to do as a child, what was not done for me, and how I leap down the rabbit holes of distortion over and over again.  Every year I perseverate on the missing elements of the holidays and the ones that I as an adult am now responsible for.  There is a deeply wounded place within myself that recoils at the jobs that are now mine.  And there is but one reason that underlies my petty unwillingness to participate in a manner befitting an almost 40 year old.



My parents never hid easter eggs for me.






It appears trivial in a way, never having been gifted with the opportunity to seek out plastic eggs filled with jellybeans, candy, or coins.   It seems silly, to be sad over children's holiday games that ultimately do not enhance the spiritual meaning of the religious tradition.  And it even seems a little pathetic that I, a trained theologian, become morose at the thought of Easter morning because there will be no hidden eggs, no basket, no store bought candy waiting for me when I awake.  My desire for religious growth is buried under a heaping mound of missing chocolate bunnies, stringy vinyl easter grass, and those damned plastic eggs.    

Now, for sake of transparency, I will admit that I did receive easter baskets in my youth, they did have candy in them, albeit from the fancy candy store from our beachside town, and that there were indeed plastic eggs with goodies in them in the basket itself.  Mind you, the coins within the eggs suffered from a dirty, sticky, cough drop infused coating that made the money seem more like a scrounge through the bottom of my mother''s purse than a special treat.  The amounts weren't even clever, just assorted clumps of change that my mother had in fact fished out of her purse that afternoon.  Oh, and the dreaded black jellybeans were in other eggs.

But these childhood slights are not about the traditions themselves, not the actual hunting for eggs, or shrink wrapped, toy filled, plastic baskets from the local department store, but rather what they represent. They represent the normal that I longed for that was never achievable in my nuclear family.  I wanted adults to be adults and hide the Easter eggs for me to find, just like my neighbors' families did.  I wanted to believe in the Easter Bunny, but just like Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and every other childhood fantasy staple, that desire was crushed on a yearly basis.  My parents were people unwilling or unable to play the magical roles that create a foundation for playful innocence and joy in a child.  Instead, they chose to explain how the magic tricks were done, leaving behind no mystery for me to be amazed by.

So, I hid the easter eggs for them.  I was the Easter Bunny.  I was the magician performing for my parents.  At the tender age of 9, I secretly hid the eggs and ensured that each one was found.  I hid those stupid plastic eggs for people who should have been hiding them for me.

So, like most years, Easter morning arrived this year and once again there were no eggs to be found.  In fact, because there is often a hectic rush to church on Easter morning, the Easter Bunny visits our house while we are at church.  Translate this statement to mean that when the church service ends, one parent must rush home, hide the eggs all over the lawn, make sure the baskets are ready, and display the handwritten note from the Easter Bunny himself stating how many eggs he has left for the boys to find.  This final touch ensures that each child will have an equal number of eggs at the end of the affair.

It was my parental turn this year, so I came flying home to be the Easter Bunny again, 30 years later, this time as a father attempting to perform the magic for his children.  And as my stomach turned, I hid the plastic eggs, and did my best not to fall into the rabbit holes of my mind, where the sadness, unworthiness, and fear reside.  I tried to hide the eggs skillfully and with joy, but most of them just ended up barely hidden in obvious places.  And in retrospect this lax effort was not a mere fall into the rabbit holes, it was a knowing leap.  

As I squeezed into the darkened tunnels that twist and turn, creating a never ending maze of fear and disappointment, I willingly stayed in the confinement of distorted thinking and behaviors.  It is not a truth I want to disclose, but I wasn't the parent I wished that mine had been.  I didn't bring my best that day, and I didn't miraculously evolve into a better, richer, more fully actualized version of myself.  No, I limped along, tried to make the best of it, and still managed to be an unpleasant fool to be around for the rest of the day.  

At the end of the day I had still done more than my folks ever did, and I knew that my boys were happy with whatever magic I had managed to create.  And in the days since then, I have realized more and more that I can see the rabbit holes before I fall flailing into them.  It doesn't mean that I won't fall or leap into one, but it does mean that I don't have to, and that I can climb out before I get sucked down further.  Just like the disappointing plastic eggs of youth, those rabbit holes are not filled with what I need, want, or even desire anymore. 

What I need, want, and desire is to be a man of integrity, dignity, and inherent value, and I want that for my sons as well.  I want them to know that they are loved.  And maybe, if I can watch where I'm going, I can lead them away from the rabbit holes that I've fallen into too many times.  Maybe, I can lead them to the hidden eggs where the treasure is in the finding, and not what is inside.

Thanks for joining me along this crazy bunny trail of a journey.

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

- Ari   

Of PTSD Flashbacks, and of Screaming to Be Heard

Hello My Dear One,

I've had a rough few weeks at work, and they've left me struggling with how triggering some of my students' meltdowns can be for me.  I understand meltdowns from the inside out, and sometimes my level of empathy is too high in a situation.  I can all too easily find myself feeling the way that I have during my own meltdowns.  I work very hard to combat this, and the more I do my job, and the more therapy I do, the less apt I am to get caught up in my own stressors during an episode. Even so, no matter how objective I can be, the fear of physical danger for myself or others, can still trigger flashbacks from my own past filled with emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical abuse.  And the funny thing about PTSD is that you never know exactly what that trigger might be or what flashback will be triggered.

In the therapeutic work that I continue to do I have recently encountered a memory, a flashback, that was an absolute turning point in my life.  Oddly, after more than two years with my therapist this memory has never been in one of the "memory chains" that I have reprocessed.  Neither one of us is sure why, however I suspect that my own understanding of the event hadn't matured enough to actually deal with it.  I'll never truly know the answer, but I do know that I am at long last ready to face this point, and all of its ramifications from the past 25 years.

The memory is as vivid today as if it had occurred yesterday rather than two and a half decades ago, and this ultimately gives credence to the flashbacks I've been having about it for several months now.

The place, the colors, the smell, the sounds, the emotional distress come rushing in at full force, knocking the wind out of my already deflating lungs.  I am transported back to that moment when the line of before and after is drawn on the invisible timeline of my life.  I am watching myself be changed in an instant, and I have forever marked my time on earth as prior to that moment, and everything that has come since.

I am sitting in the basement of my grandparents' house, noodling with some project or other, the smell of leather and freshly cut pine fills the early autumn air that flows through the ground level windows around me.  I know that my mother has finally decided to confront my father and the tenant who is living in our 2nd floor apartment about the affair that we all know is happening.  I am waiting for her to return to me, to tell me that he has confessed, and that this madness will soon end.  I am waiting to hear the reassurance that I have been right all along, and that this nightmare is real.  I am waiting to know that my mother has put my needs, ahead of my father's wants.

But something else is happening.  My life is being thrown into a radically spinning change and at the eye of the storm is the calmest my mother has ever been in my entire life.  She is sitting near me, to my right, and we are not making eye contact.  She is telling me that the affair is real, that she has confronted them, that they have confessed.  I feel a flood of relief that this wretched time is about to end.  I ask her when, not if, he is leaving.  And the answer to that question will set the course of my life for the next 25 years, although I don't yet know this.  I have asked her when is he leaving, and she replies that he isn't.  She asked him to choose, and he gave some juvenile, puerile, thoughtless response about choosing between chocolate and vanilla ice creams, and that was that.  I am screaming in my head, and I am screaming at her, and I am completely unheard.

She sat there, unwavering.  She sat there, as though no other options had ever existed, or could exist.  She sat there, unmoving and unmoved to choose a life that could be different from this madness.  She sat there.  She simply sat there telling me that my future was forever altered, and that I could do nothing about it.  I was screaming, but unheard.

As I look back now I am struck by the stillness in that space.  I am shocked at the quiet.  I am dumbfounded by my mother's actions, or lack thereof.  Suddenly, this crazy woman with borderline personality disorder is acting the opposite of how I have known her my entire life.  There is a silent void that seems to be expanding, encompassing the rational words that could be spoken.  This created emptiness was as defining as the words that had come before.  And it would take me 25 years to be able to describe that emptiness without the screaming.  

In fact, for the next 25 years I screamed.  Sometimes I screamed at her, at my father, at my friends, at anyone I could.  Sometimes I screamed in my head, or finally cracked and screamed as I threw and broke my things.  Sometimes I heard her screams in the night, the night terrors ravaging her, and awakening me from my own troubled sleep.  Sometimes I even heard the darkness itself closing in around me, a silent scream that was louder than any verbalization I could have made.   

After I married, I screamed at my wife.  Later I screamed at in-laws.  Then I screamed at my children.   I have been blessed by G-d a million times over that they have all stayed true to me and waited for the Beast to stop screaming. 

So even though I've relived this nightmare more times than I can count, I've never been able to ascribe deeper meaning to it than not being worthy enough to have my needs met.  But as I've lived through these students' meltdowns and hears their words, and their fears, and their needs to be heard, I have seen my own memories and meltdowns in a new light.  I have been trying to be heard.  That what I have to say matters, not just what I need, but that my words carry weight and can change outcomes.  That my words can save my life, save my sanity, and stop the madness that swirls around and within me.  

So, for 25 years I have felt unheard.  I have felt that my words, and the meanings behind them, were valueless, and consequently, so was I.  But all that incessant screaming never got me what I truly wanted.  It never made me feel that I had any more value than before I began ranting.  All the screaming ever did was keep others from hearing me, and after awhile, no one wanted to listen to the screaming either.  

Through writing, I've learned that a quiet voice speaks many more volumes than a wild-eyed Beast ever can, even when he's been shouting for hours, days or weeks.  I've also uncovered that so many of my life choices, have been about being heard.  My academic pursuits, my career choices, my professional speaking, my deeper desire for power and authority have all been driven by a need to feel heard.  It is a tough reality to acknowledge, but by naming it, just as I have named my Beast(s), the power of the darkness is diminished.    

Now that I can see parts of this truth, I know that I can begin the process of change, so that I can be heard.  And more importantly, so that I can be heard without screaming.  My life can be my words.  My actions can speak for me.  My ability to communicate rests in my ability to believe that my own words have value first, and then when it is time to speak them, it will not matter if others agree with my words or not. I will know that my words were ones of conscience, morality, integrity, and truth.  And if I can hear that, then I will never believe that I am unheard again.


Thank you for taking the time to listen to my words.

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

-Ari 

Of Call, Of Discernment, and of Teaching

Hello My Dear One,

It is now Autumn, the season that brings a cooler breath to our lungs, more vibrant colors to our eyes, and the needed space for a quieter reflection as the earth begins to prepare itself for the coming hibernation.  For many, this is a time of contentment, a time of settling into a deeper place that came with the activities of summer.  It is a time of discernment for all of us as we prioritize what we must do in order to make the coming months safe, warm, and nourishing in all ways possible.  It a season of planning ahead.

In my own days of fall, I am in the midst of a discernment process, one that I have experienced multiple times before and will undoubtedly repeat in years to come.  It is listening to my call to ministry and what exactly that call is.  It is a remarkably, and achingly difficult thing to do, to sort out my own emotions from my delusions, my desires from the needs of others, and whether the voice I hear is G-d's or my own.  This process is what gives us the ability to serve others the way that G-d wants us to, but only if we can truly, truly listen.  And for a person with mental health issues, well it is even trickier to know what to listen for.

So, I have once again explored the possibility of attending theological school.  I have even visited a campus and reveled in the academic opportunities and enjoyments that come with being in a graduate school setting.  I loved the camaraderie, the jokes, the intimacy, the theological discussions, and the hope for a deepened faith life and practice.  I was nearly giddy with the thrill of course work, readings, exegesis, and frozen yogurt runs at 11:00 at night.  Yes, the sheer exuberance that comes with academia for a lifelong learner, is like an alcoholic beverage to me.  I am intoxicated by the very potential for more study.

To make the letters even sweeter.

And I believe that as a Jew, this is normal.  It is, I suspect, an inborn calling within all who are members of the 12 tribes of Israel, to physically long for learning.  We get our first taste of the Aleph-Bet with actual honey, to make learning a sweet process, thus ensuring that we will want to continue.  It will also probably lead us to being diagnosed with some form of pre-diabetes or diabetes within our lifetimes, but so what? Being able to read is more important than a functional pancreas, right?

We become "men" and "women" at our Bar and Bat Mitzvahs when we have learned how to read Torah well enough to participate in Shabbat, speaking ancient words, sharing the sacred space where words take on meanings that we would otherwise not ascribe to them.  And in some communities we still gift the newest "adult" of our group with a fountain pen, to further impress upon them, and us, that reading, discussing, and writing about G-d is what makes us truly "grown-ups."  Funny story, one of my young cousins, herself preparing for her upcoming Bat Mitzvah, was attending a Shabbat service with all of us to celebrate my Uncle's 80th birthday.  After we celebrated the occasion during the service, my Uncle jokingly asked where the new fountain pen was, and my dear, sweet, modern cousin, asked in earnest, "What's a fountain pen?"  Apparently, we should have said something like a stylus for your iPad.

Heck, we even call our spiritual leaders, Rabbi, a word that means teacher.  It is as if Jews see the need for someone to provide educational opportunities in order to grow, as well as someone who can provide comfort during our times of trial.  And Rebs of old inspire and teach through the Talmud, a collection of explorations and answers to every possible life scenario, and most importantly at least 2 answers that completely contradict each other.  That's right, there are multiple answers to life's questions and there, codified in volumes of texts, is the very answer to the mystery of spirituality itself.  There is no one right answer.  We humans cannot grasp the enormity of G-d, and when we try to answer questions with an either or solution, we show our limitations as created beings.  With G-d there are no "either/or" answers to life, rather, it is "both/and."  Within the first few verses of Torah, in Genesis, the term for G-d used during the creation of humans is a plural, meaning the divine.  G-d is both/and, singular and plural, greater than the entire cosmos, yet within each atom that it is composed of.

So, in my current (perpetual) discernment process, I am seduced by the opportunity to delve again into the words that create meaning within my life.  I have a visceral response to the idea that I could spend hours upon hours sitting in a library, pouring over texts, writing, thinking, imagining, believing, and dreaming about what each letter could mean.  It's true, I would love a life of academia, filling my mind to the brim with every last bit of knowledge I could fit in there.

And yet.

And yet.

For as much as I have a call to learning,  I have a deeper call to teaching.  And of course the two calls are really one in the same, but it is how one chooses to live into them that can have remarkably different effects on the people around you.

If I choose to throw myself headlong into a world of academia, a world of abstraction, and a necessary laser like focus, I will likely lose the connection to my family, friends, and community as I become ensconced in my world of books.

If I choose to throw myself headlong into a world of teaching, a more concrete world, and a necessarily large world view, I will likely grow in my relationships, and have more to offer to those I love.

And, as the Talmud would offer up, both options are right, both options are wrong, and there are infinitely more options than those that I have created.

In my life today though, I know that for as much as I love academic challenges within higher education, I learn far more when I am teaching those who require a little more, a little extra, another set of eyes, or ears, or hands, or neurons in order to learn for themselves.  Everyday, every single day, I am blessed to be able to go to work, experience totally different world views from my own, and get hugs from people half my size.  Being an educator in an elementary school is the best thing I've ever done in my life, save for being a good husband and father.  Being a positive male role model for boys and girls who may not have one is a priceless gift that I have been given to share.  Being allowed to be myself grants me more knowledge than I will ever be able to contain.

And that brings me right back to my discernment process and my own sense of call.  Those dreams of academia, of discussing and debating, of questions that lead to more questions, of philosophical dilemmas worked through in the early morning hours over beer and sleep deprivation, each dream more tantalizing than the next.  But they are just that, dreams.  They are not goals.  They are fantasies, and in all truth, they are fantasies that I have already fulfilled in my seminary days.  I've lived them all.  And I have a life that calls me now to dream new dreams, make goals, and live them out in the here and now.

It is seldom easy to put a want on hold.  It is seldom easy to prioritize which task must be done first.  Should I work on the outdoor tasks before the snow falls?  Should I work on tightening up the inside jobs in my house before the cold winds blow through the cracks in this old farmhouse?  Are the questions I pose literal, figurative, or both?  In the end it probably doesn't matter, whether or not they are reality nor the actual order of the tasks.

In the end I know that whatever decisions I make will have consequences for more than just myself.  Each choice will affect my wife, my sons, my job, my community, my faith, my sanity, and my time to enjoy the changes in the seasons that continue to fly past me.  Each choice isn't about me, it is about the family I have created, and the family that I have chosen to be a part of.

It has been nearly a year since my Deconstruction, and I can't bear to think of putting my loved ones or myself through that again.  Ultimately, I know that a choice to return to theological school, regardless of the reasons would eventually lead to that, and that is not a choice I wish to make.  I am a far better man than I was a year ago and as such I know when it is time to put the good of myself and of my family first.

Teacher, Scholar, Family man.

So, will I regret not attending theological school?  Maybe.  Would I regret not being here for my family, for my students, my community, my friends, or even my own life?  Yes!  I recently read that one should live the way you want to be remembered in your eulogy/obituary.  Meaning, that I want to be remembered for my love and devotion, my volunteerism, the differences I made in others' lives, the way I helped shift understanding of what it means to be transgender, intersex, and interfaith.  I want to be remembered for the good that I did, the Tikkun Olam, and not the times I left my family for my own personal gains.  

So, it is time to plan ahead then, to prepare for the coming hibernation of the wintery world that is coming.  And my plan is to stay the course.  I have found my call in teaching, and in so doing, I will always be able to fulfill my desire to learn.  There are exams for me to take, classes to complete, and teaching that needs to be done.  And there is the constant learning of being a husband and father to my ever evolving family and its growing needs.

May it be so that there is always more to learn.

Thank you for continuing to learn with me, and to teach me on this journey together.

Be well.  Love your neighbor as you love yourself.  And remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari

Of Mental Illness, Accountability, and Adoption

Hello My Dear One,

How are you?  I am busy, and not in that good way when you feel productive after finishing a project.  No, I'm just busy, flitting from task to task, chore to chore, and wondering why everyone thinks that educators have summers "off."  The truth is we continue to work all summer long, prepping, studying, shopping, planning, raising our own kids who have the summer off, and a majority of us take 2nd and 3rd jobs to supplement our incomes.  As an hourly worker, this is especially true for me.  But even the salaried employees frequently take on extra work to support their families.  And, "summer" is not June, July, and August - three glorious months of fun and sun, but really the last 2 weeks of June through the first 3 weeks in August.  If we're lucky that's 10 weeks total.  

At any rate, in the hectic pace of my summer I have been writing a lot, in my head, which although valuable in its own right, fails to share my thoughts as effectively as when I actually write them down.  As I have continued my work in providing parenting for my 2 sons and "sitting" for 2 other boys, while dispersing contents of my mother's home, I have found myself less and less motivated to write.  Which ultimately means that I need to spend even more time writing if I am to save my sanity.  So, here I am, present to the true needs of my life, having survived another brutal heatwave, questioning my often self-defeating behaviors.

I've had many therapy sessions this summer, most of which have been delving into my learned patterns of sacrifice and martyrdom.  It is a vicious cycle that was modeled for me throughout my entire childhood and continues to be utilized by both of my parents to this day.

1) Feeling unworthy of love and/or generalized unworthiness.
2) Attention seeking words and behaviors.
3) Offering myself and my resources to others in unhealthy ways due to fears of rejection.
4) Resentment for being treated poorly or underselling myself.
5) Self inflicted sacrifice of my needs and wants because of feeling unworthy of love.
6) Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.

Intellectually I can fully understand this crazy loop and that I ought to be able to find ways to prevent it, stop it mid-cycle, or at the very least stop the sacrificing of my needs and wants when I realize what I've done.  If only it were that simple.  The patterns of these thinking and behavior have been seared into my very being.  It reminds me of trying to merge on or off of a roundabout in Paris, France or Augusta, ME, either you go full bore into it and make the loops until you can actually get off or you freeze before entering and decide that abandoning your car is the safer and easier choice.

All of this has its roots in my family of origin and my upbringing.  I could spend pages upon pages concerning incidents that cemented the behaviors I have nurtured and used to torture myself and others, detailing each wrong or hurt that I experienced.  Instead, I will attempt to pull the meaning out of the minutiae, leaving the disturbances behind, in the past where they belong.  And this is what I have spent the most time working on during the past few months, learning to sift through the muck of my past and see where the real accountability needs to be placed.  I am learning to separate my parents' accountability for their actions from their mental illnesses, and subsequently my own negative patterns and the choices I have made and sometimes still make in my daily life.

My parents' influence on me and the molding and shaping that they did from before my birth is the starting place. From the beginning of their marriage they were an unlikely pairing.  They had known each other since the 1st grade, from sunday school and church, and from living in a really small town. The two families were actually related, and my parents' are indeed 5th cousins.  Having gone their separate ways after high school graduation, mom and dad re-met at a Christmas Eve service, both having recently ended relationships.  They were engaged less than a year later.  The wedding itself occurred mostly because my aunt had decided not to marry her fiance at the last minute, and my grandmother was bound and determined that there would be a wedding come hell or high water.  So, my parents married and began a miserable life together, each sacrificing their own wants and needs for the "happiness" of the other.  My mother relinquished her New York City operatic career, and my father left his friends, family, and academic career to move to a tiny beach town next door to his in-laws so that his wife might act "less crazy."  I think that from the outside most anyone could have seen the disaster that was already underway, but from the inside, it must have been harder to visualize.  My father resented the fact he had sacrificed, as did my mother, the marriage itself was a sacrifice for both parties, and my birth was the ultimate sacrifice for both of them.  But one must remember that they both made choices.  This concept has become very important to me as I have dealt with my own struggles.

In the end, I found that I had to ask and then answer some difficult questions.  Does all of their sacrifice mean that they were not accountable for their thoughts, behaviors, and actions?  Because they both suffered from mental illness are they exempt from culpability when it comes to the suffering and pain that I endured?  Do their life choices, because they were made through lenses of borderline personality disorder, anxiety, PTSD, undiagnosed autism spectrum differences, ADD/ADHD, and their own learned behaviors from their parents, grandparents, and other family members excuse what they did to me?  Do their lives trump mine?  Are their beasts of mental illness stronger than mine?  Are their beasts allowed a greater freedom than mine?

In order to answer those questions I realized that I had to turn to my own learned behaviors and how I have enacted them throughout my life journey so far.  Up until recently my preferred method of dealing with emotional conflicts was through passive-aggressive mutters, whines, and rants along with physical isolation, hiding, running away, driving at unsafe speeds, and putting my loved ones and myself in danger.  I reenacted almost all the scenes from my childhood with minor adjustments to fit the situations.  I got stuck in that loop of ugliness and just kept going around and around it until people around me moved farther and father away from my reckless spinning through life.

These frightening revolutions have been devastating to my personal and professional life over the years.  Much the same way as they were for my parents.  That cycle of unworthiness that sometimes seems to ooze right out of my skin has been at the foundation of my sense of self.  I loathe myself, and then I loathe others, and then back to loathing myself.  It is like a tire stuck spinning in mud, sinking deeper with each revolution.  The more you try to gun the engine to move in any direction, the more you are sucked into the mire below you.

It is an ugly truth of my life, the mud I have spun myself around in has led me to abandon those I love for selfish and self-centered reasons.  And in the end it comes down to a single word that I fear more than most, choice.  If I have choices to make and I make poor ones, and I have mental illness, am I accountable for the consequences, and to what degree? Some of my choices have indeed been driven by my beast of mental illness when it was untreated.  But many of my choices have been driven by me.  The hard fact is that I am the one who is ultimately accountable for my beast's actions, because I am the one who can choose to let it run boundless in through my world.  I am also accountable because I can choose to go to therapy, take medications, make healthy living decisions, have a spiritual life, and pay attention to myself and others when my beast tries to raise its wild and flailing self in the middle of my life.  Whether I like it or not,  I have the choice to let the madness take over, or I can choose to keep the madness in check.

And this is where I choose, I choose accountability as a husband and a father, as well as the numerous other titles I use throughout my travels.  Instead of blaming my mental illness for the mistakes I've made, I am learning to own them, to claim them, to grieve the harm I've caused, and to celebrate the ways in which I have helped and can help others in the future because of my experiences.  I am beginning to see that I am responsible for what was, and for how I acted in many situations, and that each one is in the past and I no longer need to dwell there.  I am learning that I can make different choices whenever I want to, in word, in thought, in deed, and even in my perceptions of what is happening around me.  I can be that man, that father, un homme de dieu - a man of G-d - in heart and in vocation.  As I make choices, rather than believing that I have made sacrifices, I am granted control of myself and my beast.  I am finally the one telling my beast what to do rather than allowing it to tell me what to do.   

So, what am I telling my beast to do?  I am telling it that it doesn't need to fear being a father to my sons.  Now, I have been their parent since the day each one was conceived, albeit through extra measures that did not include my DNA.  And when each beautiful, wonderful, and miraculous son was born I was there, laughing, crying, present to the moments of becoming for all of us.  What I wasn't was able to be listed on their birth certificates, because at that point in time my own birth certificate still had the wrong sex listed on it.  I was also not legally married to my wife because gay marriage wasn't legal yet.  When we did legally marry as man and woman, after my birth certificate and driver's license were corrected to say Male, the State of Maine recognized me as my own children's step father.  In the legal analysis we determined that I would have to adopt my sons in order to correct my status as their father and to get new birth certificates for them.  

Now, what does my beast have to do with all of this?  It turns out, that the answer is, everything.  I/it was afraid that my wife would leave me, and take our boys away from me because of my mental illness.  My beast was trying to convince me that it would be less painful if that happened, if I was never legally their father anyway.  My beast and I were terrified of losing two of the greatest joys in my life.  And after much therapy, I saw this for what it was.  It was an excuse to stay in that cycle of unworthiness.  By allowing myself to believe that the worst would happen I was perpetuating the model that I had learned and lived - I am not worthy of love - and would punish myself and others because of this.  

As I cried in therapy, literally for the first time after 2 years with my therapist, I realized how much I do love my sons and that I am accountable for my role as their father.  I saw that I must show them that they are truly worthy of love by my choice to adopt them.  That I am choosing them over my own anxiety, fear, feelings of unworthiness, and my beast.  I can model that they deserve to be people who can receive G-d's love and shine it back out into the world.  That their worth is more valuable and precious than anything else to me.  I can give them exactly what I was not given, unconditional, affirming love from a parent who had to make a conscious effort to do so.  I am stronger than my beast and want them to feel that right down to their very cores.  That is what I am accountable for.


So, as I enter the legal and financial process of making our family whole on paper, I am committed to making our family whole in love.  As I break that vicious cycle of pain, suffering, and deconstruction, I find that I can grow as a man, and that I can then help my sons grow into men as well.  Perhaps this is the greatest gift, to be the father I am called to be and choose to be that man, no matter what.  I thank G-d for being a G-d of second, third, fourth, and even hundredth chances.  I thank G-d for the chance to be a part of a real family, created on a foundation of dignity, respect, and worth.  I thank G-d for calling me into choice.

Thank you for being present to my accountability.

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

-Ari

Of Sandwich Baggies Filled with Pennies, Glitter, and Angel Wings

Hello My Dear One,

My apologies for not writing sooner.  With the beginning of summer and the end of the school year it has taken a few weeks to adjust to my new routine.  It has been an evolving one and given my usual resistance to such things I believe I'm doing as well as can be expected.  

So, I've wanted to write about Borderline Personality Disorder from a slightly more academic perspective for some time, but somehow I just can't seem to do it.  I simply cannot wade through millions of words telling me what I already know.  

Still, I know that I need to explore what this illness has done to me from a different vantage point. I need to find my own answers, to bring a spiritual voice to the scientific one, to know that there is an inherent gift within the madness that balances the destruction of the fury.  Simply put, I need to see G-d within the storm.

So, the other day, as I delved even more deeply into the memories of my past, during a therapy session, I saw the core place of brokenness within myself.  I've long dealt with a crippling belief that in order to keep the peace I must sacrifice my own wants, needs, and desires to be happy so that the other person(s) I am in relationship with will love me.  It is a debilitating condition that has led to hurt feelings, mistrust, anger, resentment, depression, and a host of other complications.  It has always been my job to make others happy, and throughout my life it has usually been at the expense of my own happiness.  One of the most devastating memories resurfaced during the EMDR session and I saw that it was still playing out in my day to day life even though the event occured nearly 25 years ago. 

I was a young 14 year old, a freshman in high school, awkward, and with massive underlying mental, physical, and emotional disturbances that were yet to be diagnosed and my family had just undergone a radical upheaval.  My grandfather had passed away less than 4 months before and that summer I had been biking around town and found my father embracing a woman, who was not my mother, at my special beach.  There in plain view it was obvious what was happening, and after getting his attention I pedaled home as fast as I could to tell my mother what I'd seen.  They soon arrived at the house and the lies began.  Everyone knew they were lies.  But they continued anyway.  Within a month, this interloper was living in the apartment above our home along with her son who was only 8 months older than I.  Suddenly I was living in an obviously polygamous home that no one dared claim for what it was.  

Within a few months my mother finally garnered the courage to confront my father and his mistress about the truth.  I had gone to my grandmother's house next door, and was working in the basement shop to feel connected to the grandfather who had died too soon.  I was sad, but also hopeful and expectant that this hell I had been plunged into would be over.  Once the truth was out, there was no going back, and I would be free from the nightmare of this love triangle.

As I sat and fiddled with the tools in my grandfather's workshop, I heard my mother come in and she sat down on a wooden stool next to me.  "So?" I said, and she stated the truth of the affair, all the gory details of the confrontation, ad nauseam.  "So when is he leaving?" I asked 15 minutes later as her ramble had slowed to a dull roar.  "He's not."  she said.  "WHAT?!?!?!?" I screamed?  And in her Borderline Personality Disorder reality she explained why he was staying, that she had been unwilling to force him to make a choice between the two of them.  In fact, I remember the comparison that he gave to her, saying that having to choose between his wife and his mistress would be like having to choose between vanilla or chocolate ice cream.  

Seriously.  Even at 14 years old I knew that this was a blatantly ridiculous and infantile response to being caught breaking your wedding vows and that any damn fool who believed it was as pitiful as the one who said it to them.  Yep, my 48 year old parents had reverted to being 4 year olds, unable, unwilling, and irrational toddlers who along with a 40 something year old mistress had decided to throw a collective temper tantrum in the sandbox of my already horrifying life.  

I was put into an untenable position, informed that my happiness was not important and that if I wanted any attention at all I had to play along and sacrifice what I knew was what I wanted and needed in exchange for "love."  This message was the one I incorporated into myself and have continued to play out all these years later.  The why of it all became clear as I saw the "adult" players in the drama.

My mother was incapable of facing the truth that her marriage was over and that despite the financial hardships that were possible, she actually had monetary and emotional support from her extended family.  But the beast of BPD stood its ground and bellowed and hollered at the prospect of being abandoned one more time.  It was in that moment that the person whose only job was to protect me from harm had decided to abandon ship and save her own warped security over mine.

My father's mistress, a woman who had her own traumatic past and mental illness was driven to believe that this arrangement was a perfectly viable option.

My father, the adult alpha male of the pack, not wanting to lose out on the attention and sexual rewards of finally having 2 women fighting for him chose to hide within the perverted gratification of his new life.  Having grown up knowing he was unplanned, that his mother wasn't supposed to be able to have more children, that his older sister was the golden child, and going through puberty at the age of 8, led him to crave the all of the encompassing insanity that passed as "love."  Now, at long last, he had 2 women, the madonna and the whore, the replacements for the mother and sister who treated him as less than, and he held onto it for 6 long years clinging to belief that he deserved this reward for all that he had suffered and sacrificed.  My father once confessed to me that he had moved away from his academic opportunities, friends, colleagues, and his own parents, because a doctor had told him the only way to manage my mother's instabilities was to move her as close to her parents as possible.  He bought a house 1/8 of a mile from them and regretted it until the day he sold it more than 25 years later.  

But here is where I can start to see G-d in the storm.  In all of this madness there was a home, next door to me, the very one I was sitting in that day, where my grandparents moved when I was 3 years old.  It was my refuge.  It was my sanctuary.  It was my safety.  And there was G-d enfolding me with the love that I needed through my grandfather and grandmother.  Although Grampa had just died, the love and caring he gave me still filled my heart.  And my Grama, who was literally right above me at that moment, continued to support me for the next 3 1/2 years before her own death.  I was loved, and it was in part because my father had taken the advice of random physician so many years prior.  Were it not for that act of Divine Intervention, would I have known the grace that my grandparents gave me?  I don't have an answer to that question, but I am grateful and grace-filled regardless.   

So why now?  Why am I revisiting all of this now? Why did it come up in therapy when I felt that I was nearly done with this mess?  Probably because I have almost finished emptying out the house that my mother drove away from nearly 6 months ago.  I've been packing, cleaning, hauling, dragging, loading, selling furniture, planning several yard sales, online sales, and picking up the pieces of rubble that surrounded her home.  I have literally collected the broken shards of glass, seashells, plastics, etc. that were spewed around the building, one by one, and I have thrown them away.  Discovery During one of the last times I was there, I was cleaning out a dresser and found a sandwich baggie filled with pennies and glitter wedged behind one of the drawers.  Inside were maybe a dozen coins and over a hundred beads, and multicolored stars, doves, and angels made of shiny plastic and metal.  It was the perfect metaphor for my mother's life.  This see through plastic bag, tied off with a weird knot, full of valueless items mixed with sand, grime, and who knows what else stuck in an obscure location, almost lost and forgotten had someone not chosen to clean up the mess.  This discovery said it all.  Her life has always been in full view for everyone to see, and it is filled with things that a child reveres, but an adult knows to be too little to support a life.  It is shiny and filthy all at the same time and the painful emptiness of it is hidden away from the outside world.  Her beast had stashed it away from the peering eyes that could have seen the truth of who she really is.  And it was I who found it, just as I always have, and always will. And this is where I truly find G-d at the eye of this storm.  It is my nearly 40 years of living on the edges and often in the middle of the whipping winds of her hurricane that I have learned compassion for others with mental illness.  I have struggled through my own beast's madness, and I have absorbed the only gifts my mother was truly able to give to me.  Her crazy has made me tolerant and accepting of individuals who have fallen victim to their own beasts' sadistic ways.  More importantly though, it has given me the compassion and love for myself and my own beast that she could not.  I can finally see the crazy in myself, accept it, tolerate it, love it, and manage it because I know that G-d is present. As I reprocessed the traumatic event in therapy, my therapist asked me what the 14 year old me needed to know to help deal with the event and the subsequent pain.  I said aloud "Little One, you are already loved, and you will make it, you have made it, you are surviving the madness, and you are choosing to live in spite of the deconstruction of your life around you."  I continued on, "You are so loved, you will be able to show and give this love to others who need the compassion that no one else will give them.  This is a gift.  You will spread out your grand white wings, surround yourself with G-d's love, and then be able to enfold others with the graceful feathers that will soothe and comfort each and every person you meet."  I told that 14 year old kid to know that the 38 year old was ok, and that in time those horrible years would be relegated to the past.   "Hold fast, Little One, you are loved." And those are the words I say in my heart each day when I meet grown and little ones who don't yet know that there is hope for them.  That is my gift.  I thank G-d for being in that storm of my life and in the lives of others, letting us find our own wings to prevent more damage to our fragile selves.  I thank G-d for the chance to embrace each person I meet with my wings, and to attempt to help them find their own in the process. Pennies, Glitter, and Angel Wings And so, as I looked over the baggie filled with pennies and glitter again, I finally saw the angel wings gently surrounding it.  I saw that my mother's uncontrollable beast had left behind a secret hope, that one day someone would love it too, that someone could see the value and the worth of its seemingly meaningless and disconnected contents.  This tiny capsule of madness was a reminder to look beyond the obvious, to search for meaning in chaos, and to remember that G-d  is always in the storm.   And with that I begin the process of freeing myself from the madness that was only surrounding me.  And I can finally unpack my own sandwich baggies of mental illness and search for the gifts my beast and G-d have hidden away for me.          Thank you for sorting through the pennies, glitter, and angel wings on the journey. Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself. -Ari

Of Progress, of Call, and of Footwashing

Hello Dear One,

As the end of my work year approaches, I am faced with being assessed and of assessing my own performance over the past months of my employment.  Needless to say this is not really my idea of a good time, however I understand it's importance, and that there are incredibly valuable life lessons to be processed and absorbed from the positive and negative experiences I've had.  I'd rather treat my supervisor and myself to ice cream and talk about the crazy stuff that happened, but that's not how public education actually works.  Rather, I must rehash the last six months of my work life, in too often painful ways, and hope that I will do better next time around.  That said, I will continue to repeat my mantra "water off a duck's back" as my "growth points" are highlighted for me.  And I will do my best to hear and incorporate the positive words and reinforcements that I know I will receive as well.

So, what have I experienced over the past six months?  As a student replied to me not long ago, when asked how many monkeys were dangling above the plastic barrel, "A lot."  And although the answer was correct, I happened to be going for a specific number value, and I suspect that my supervisor will be doing the same thing.  And yet, I also suspect that my supervisor will be looking at the "a lot" just as much as at the numbers.  You see, in public education, specifically special education, there is much that we cannot quantify with numbers or letter grades, despite the efforts of legislators, governors, and other elected officials.  The fact that I have been able to foster a relationship built upon trust, consistency, and genuine concern for the well-being of another person who desperately needed and desired this, simply cannot be summed up by any written symbol.  This remarkable evolution between two people is beyond the scope of ratings systems.  It is quite frankly beyond a great many people's comprehension.

More importantly, it is something that neither individual in this situation is expected to be able to do, based upon medical and/or psychological diagnoses.  Though I will never violate the confidentiality of my students, I can discuss my own struggles with making friends and forming appropriate relationships with other people.  I can and have discussed some of my past trials in education and the traumatic ways that it shaped me.  I was bullied as a child because of my "differentness" and I continue to work to build my self esteem and believe people when they compliment my efforts and my work.  Having learning disabilities, being on the autism spectrum, having a mental illness, having a parent with mental illness, living with the secret of gender identity issues, living with the secrets of intersex condition symptoms, and just plain being quirky have all shaped the man I am today.  And they were all reasons to bully, separate, harm, ostracize, exclude, and hurt me as well, most often by peers.  I did not have many friends growing up and my students rarely do either.  We are often just a little too different to be able to make, keep, and sustain traditional friendships, largely because our brains are not wired that way.  

So, the dorky, nerdy, geeky, dweeby, etc. kids eventually become friends with each other and find kindred spirits.  Sometimes they go on to wreak havoc in the world, committing crimes, seemingly senseless acts of violence, endangering others, and not "living up to their potential."  Sometimes, though, they turn out to be Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Dr. Temple Grandin, Albert Einstein, or an Ed Tech in an elementary school working with kids diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.  As the old joke goes, "It's either Jail or Yale..."

It is a great irony that is not lost on me that I hated, truly hated, going to school as a child.  And now, I get up every day excited and enthusiastic about going to work, in a school.  Yep, I have chosen to go to the very place that had a stranglehold on my young psyche, a place that I believed that I would never succeed in, no matter how hard I tried.  And G-d knows I tried.  By the time I was in high school I spent 3 times as long on homework and reading assignments as my classmates did, and although I was considered "smart" I struggled with written exams and being able to express my thoughts on paper.  My only real successes came in playing tuba in the marching band and being involved with the behind-the-scenes work of theater.  School was simply a nightmare for me.  I never imagined that someday I would find myself right in the middle of that environment by choice.  And yet, here I am, loving every minute of the educational team and practices that I am in.

And as I look back over the past 6 months I see other things that I have learned and incorporated into my life as well.  First and foremost I have learned to remove myself, or more specifically, my ego, from many situations.  I have learned that when something is bothering someone it is better to find out what is going on with them, rather than assuming that it has something to do with me.  Because as it turns out, very little of what the people around me are concerned with has to do with me in any shape, form, or matter.  Most people are focused on themselves and spend far more time and energy thinking about what they are doing and almost no time on the people around them.  So, I've learned to step back, breathe, repeat my mantra "Water off a duck's back," and wait.  Just wait, and find out what that person needs, if anything at all, from me.  I don't have to have all the answers.  I don't have to have any of the answers.  My job is to wait, to listen, and to do what is asked of me.  I have learned how to do that more successfully over the past 6 months than in any other setting in my life.

Second on the list is that I have learned to let things play out, to unfold as they will without my intervention, and if necessary to let the system itself fail.  Sometimes in life we believe that we know the answer, or we have the best solution, or that we are right and the other person is wrong when it comes to a particular challenge.  And in fact, sometimes we do.  Sometimes we are right about an outcome and could have altered the result to something more productive.  At the same time we cannot deny someone else the opportunity to fail, or the system that this individual is working within to fail.  Rarely do we learn from our successes that came without trial and many errors.  It is a vital life lesson to learn how to fail and be able to recover.  Each time I do not accomplish a certain goal I am able to reflect on why it didn't happen and what I can do differently in the future.  So for all those individuals who say that "failure is not an option" I believe that sometimes failure is the best option and it will lead us into greater triumphs if we are willing to follow the new direction we are offered.

The last major item on the list of what I have learned is that I have at last found my calling, and have been granted the human and the Divine approval that I need and deserve for reaching this place on the journey.  It has come in many forms to me that I am called to a life of behavioral and mental health ministry within the context of public education.  I am acutely aware and in support of the separation of church and state, particularly in the elementary schools of the United States of America, as ours is a pluralistic nation that has not been able to embrace a universal moral code of ethics to truly guide it.  There are a multitude of religious options available to the people who choose to live in the U.S., yet there is a distinct lack of tolerance and acceptance for the many options and for those who choose options that are not what is considered to be the "right" one(s).  Yet all of that does not alter my own understanding of a call to ministry within a secular setting.  

I have heard the words that came from Dr. Temple Grandin after I had shared with her about my choice to work rather than collect disability payments.  She replied, "That made my day.  Even if I have to miss my plane, that made my day."  She asked me what I did for work and I told her that I teach young children who have been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.  "And I bet you love it," she stated.  Yes, I answered emphatically, I love my job. "Good." spoke Dr. Grandin.  That was the Divine approval I had needed.  I was able to hear that I was following G-d's call for me.

I later found myself in the middle of a Mother's Day project in school.  The classroom teacher painted the hands and feet of the 19 children who then pressed them on to large sheets of paper to make flowers with great leaves surrounding them as pictures for their mothers.  As she applied the green paint with a brush that tickled their feet, she would then place them on the paper, imprints of fleeting childhood preserved as a reminder of the impermanence of these precious years.  And as I knelt beside her I washed each child's feet in the bucket of soapy water in front of me.  I was on my knees, cleaning away the paint, the dirt, and whatever else was on those little feet and toes, and I felt that Divine approval again.  I knew that I was serving.  It was my job to help these children do something they couldn't physically do themselves yet, particularly in a classroom setting.  Yes, the metaphor, the christian imagery, the religious nature of the experience was blatant, but the meaning was far deeper.  I knelt there smiling, happy, relaxed, comfortable, and comforted that I was able to do this and be myself at the same time.  Mr. Hilton was washing kindergarteners' feet.  I was there for them and not myself.   

Awhile ago I had a conversation about faith and religion with a colleague of mine.  She ascribes to a far more fundamentalist and evangelical brand of faith than I do, still she made an excellent point in stating that she didn't have to talk about G-d in school to keep G-d in her heart and share that love with her students.  

And recently while in a room with her during an incident I was reminded of her belief, and consequently my own.  I sat in a room watching another human being, a very young one at that, suffering from the sometimes beast of autism, learned behaviors, quirky wiring, confusion, fear, frustration, and pain that was physically spilling out of this little body and permeating all of us as well.  I sat feeling discouraged that I had not been able to intervene in a meaningful way.  I felt sad that it had come to this point.  I was unsure of my own abilities and what I was feeling as I witnessed it all.  And then I saw my colleague kneeling as she held the child's feet to prevent kicking, and I knew that my role at that moment was to pray.  And I prayed deeply from within myself.  I prayed from within my heart, the room already too crowded with distress, my prayers were silent to all except G-d.  I asked G-d to show all the love, comfort, support, and mercy that is G-d, to this child.  I prayed for safety for the child.  I prayed that the child would feel the love and support from G-d and from us.  I prayed for this child of G-d.  And in what felt like a few heartbeats, the calm, still, small voice of G-d breathed fresh air into that tiny room.  In a matter of moments the meltdown was over and it took less than 4 minutes.  It was a moment of true grace.

All of these things and so many more have been the beacon lights in my journey over the past 6 months and I know within myself how important, valid, and real my call to teaching is.  

21st century java!

And as for the human approval, well, I was nominated multiple times for "Making A Difference" Awards, and I recently "won" and got to choose a prize out of the goody bag.  It's a travel coffee mug with a warming base that plugs into a laptop.  Coffee and geeky.  Great combination.  




In fact, that very differentness, weirdness, otherness that set me apart from peers when I was young, now sets me apart from my peers in a brilliant, rather than in a tragic way.  I understand what my students are living through and I can help them all the more because of it.  I know what the hell feels like.  I understand being on the outside.  I understand being disliked.  I understand not being understood.  I don't have to try to put myself in their shoes, I already am.  And just knowing that is the best progress I can ask for from myself or my students.

Thank you for continuing to journey with me as we walk with the feet we've been given.

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

-Ari

Listening for the Call