When the Student Is Ready, the Teacher Will Appear

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

We don’t really know for sure where that saying came from, probably Theosophy, but it doesn’t matter.

If it matters at all it is because maybe we believe it to be true.

Probably the teacher has been standing there all along, it’s just that no learning actually happens until the student pays attention.

I’m not sure how to start from the beginning, so I will start at the part where I met Reverend Darrick Jackson, then the Dean of Students at Meadville Lombard Theological School. Matthew had gone on a sabbatical in the winter of 2013/14, and one of the ministers he had arranged to preach of one of those Sundays was Rev. Jackson. I was on the worship associate team at that time, and I remember the planning meeting in which we all chose the Sundays we would like to help with service. Matthew had said, “Misha, I think you will really like Darrick. Are you available on this Sunday to work with him?” I had shrugged, and said, sure. And he was right. We were on a two-worship-services schedule, and I remember the first service having gone pretty well. As second service was about to begin, Darrick and I were sitting right there when he leaned over to me and said, “You seem very comfortable in this role. Have you ever considered that maybe you have a call to ministry?” And before I could process that question from the dean of the seminary I had been wishing I could attend, our music director Tim gave me that Tim nod, and it was time for church to start. I was a little bit distracted. I said weird things and tripped over every other word, I think I said something about lighting our firey light-up thingy, because I could not recall the word chalice, and I inexplicably announced that the next hymn could be found in our yellow hymnal. After the service, he hugged me and asked me if I would be interested in talking further about applying to Meadville. To which I replied, “Seriously? After that mess?”

I explained to him over a few subsequent emails why I was totally unqualified to apply to seminary. To which he replied, “Come to the prospective student days anyway. Believe in miracles for once.”

And I pretty much haven’t stopped believing in miracles, depending on them, actually, ever since.

I completed my registration packet, got all the requisite letters of recommendation, and had it all neatly tucked inside a manilla envelope, missing nothing but my admissions essay, which I just couldn’t figure out how to write. It was due by June first. I had decided this was silly, it was ridiculous of me to even try, and maybe I’d just sit on it and try to muster up the courage to do it next year. And then, somewhere around 2 AM on June 1st, I changed my mind. I wrote the essay, added it to my packet, got on a train to downtown Chicago, and hand-delivered my application packet to Meadville Lombard Theological School. In it was the just-written essay, which included this story at the end; reading from the essay now:

“Reverend Dr. Lee Barker told us a story at the beginning of our ‘prospective student’ days in March. It was about his experience of zip lining with his daughter, jumping off the platform without being able to see the end of the line nor the platform on the other side of the trees, having to trust the process.

I was immediately choked up and busy making up my own metaphors. Last summer, I went on a zip lining adventure with my own daughter. I had researched the company, the course, and the requirements to participate. I was particularly concerned that I weighed too much to zip line safely. Turns out, they do have a weight limit of 270 pounds. The morning of the adventure, I weighed in at exactly 270 pounds. I went. I asked the guides about four dozen times if they were SURE it would be safe for me to zip. Yes, they were sure. The equipment had been tested with a much higher weight than mine, and the cut-off number was just to be VERY, VERY sure, although I would probably be fine to zip no matter my weight, as long as I fit into the harness. I fit. It was a squeeze, it was quite a sight I’m sure, but I fit. And so, after self-checking the tightness of my harness and asking the guides to do the same for me many times, I zipped. I zipped to the first platform, and then immediately informed the guides that I felt like maybe my harness had loosened, and asked them to check it. Again. And again. At every new platform, they began to check my harness without my even asking, and would say things like, “Yes, your equipment still holds. You’re still alive! Hey, look at you, not breaking anything yet! Trust the gear! You’re still with us! Nope…nothing ripped or broken or loose.”

Here’s what I learned from that, after listening to Dr. Barker tell his story: I feel like my story might always come with an asterisk or two. Your zip lining story is scary, but MY zip lining story is scarier because of my size. Your seminary experience is challenging, but MY seminary experience is more challenging because of many things including my body and the way it looks and the way it works and sometimes doesn’t work so well, and because of my lack of financial stability and lack of higher education. I’m getting over that. The equipment will hold. If I’m allowed to zip, it’s because the professionals who know their equipment trust that it can handle even me. And if I am accepted into seminary, it is because wise people believe I am meant to be there. That faith is the equipment that will hold me until my feet are on the next platform, and then the next and the next. And, by golly, this time around I’m going to stay in my body…this body…I’m going to look at the scenery and enjoy the zip.”

And that’s how I ended my admissions essay. And they let me in.

Since that day, in addition to the academic courses I have taken, I have spent a year interning with the Senior Volunteer Network of McHenry County, spent last summer in an intensive chaplaincy internship at Good Samaritan Hospital, a Level 1 Trauma Center in Downer’s Grove, served as summer minister that same summer at our sister congregation in Rockton, and have just completed one year of a two-year congregational internship at Tree of Life UU in McHenry. The simultaneous courses I have taken thus far at Meadville include Liberal Theology, Introduction to Pastoral Care, Arts and Aesthetics in Worship, Hebrew Bible, Ministry in a Post Denominational Age, UU History and Polity, and Problems in Public Ethics.

So…what have I learned. I have learned that I’m in love with my roots in Pentecostalism. I have learned that I am more deeply in love with our Unitarian Universalist faith every single day. I believe that I am called to reclaim the sacred text of the Christianity of my youth, and reframe it in a way that makes sense in the context of this beloved tradition we hold dear. I am wrestling with the idea of ever being a settled parish minister, because what I really want is to be an evangelist. I believe that no one Unitarian Universalist church needs Bible preaching every week, but that all UU churches need it once in awhile. I am more and more convinced that embracing our roots is a better path to effective interfaith and multifaith collaboration than many other ways that we have tried. Remember, I am telling you right now of MY journey, I am NOT calling on Unitarian Universalism to come back to Jesus. I believe that it is no accident that I come from Pentecost, and I intend to never stop letting my roots show. I am learning, from my professors, fellow students, ministerial mentors, and the congregations I’ve been blessed enough to work with, that what UUism is craving…what the world is craving…is radical authenticity in leadership. And, heaven help us all, I’m learning to be braver in being my whole self, and inviting everyone I meet to do the same. This is at the core of my calling.

What is at the core of your calling? I can guarantee you that if my own experience is universal, and why wouldn’t it be, since I’m very ordinary, getting to the core of your calling will require some stepping out of old worn out comfort zones, but not as much as we might be led to think. Because we are actually only called to be our full selves. What you bring to the table is always enough. It’s like a UU potluck, Dave Weissbard style. I recall that Dave never wanted sign up sheets for people to specify what they were bringing to the potluck, because he believed that if everyone just brought what they felt like bringing, there would magically be not only enough, but plenty, and the variety would be better than if we’d planned it all out. I think he was right. I don’t like it when the only thing left on the list is salad and paper plates, when I make what I make is really great brownies. This is how I feel about calling. I never did need seminary to have gifts to offer. But I need seminary to relearn how to be the real me, and learn how to direct the gifts I have been given in such a way that serves. But that’s just MY path. I want to know more about yours. What can you do still today to make one micromovement toward being more of who you are called to be? And I really mean it when I suggest micro-movement. Maybe you know in your heart that you are born to dance, but you are scared to death to take that hip hop class you might feel ridiculous in. But, you’re thinking about it. I encourage you to do an online search for dance shoes, and just look at them. Don’t buy them, just look and dream and pick out the ones that make you smile. Then close the computer and go have a nap. And then, maybe tomorrow, you can open a browser up to that dance class registration page. Don’t do anything with it; just keep the browser tab open for an hour.

This…exactly this…is actually what I am learning in seminary. Being real and answering our soul’s call sometimes happens in tiny little increments between naps and showers and watching too many YouTube videos of cats. And sometimes you will do all those things for a little too long, and end up scrambling onto a crowded Metra to get downtown on the day the application is due, because doing the thing the dumb way is still doing the thing.

And, if you want the let’s-wrap-this-up-already version of what I’m learing in seminary, I could just refer you to the words of Unitarian Universalist minister Robert Fulghum, in his immortal essay, All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten.

“ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to doand how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not
at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the
sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some
and draw and paint and sing and dance and play
and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,
hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody
really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even
the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die.
So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books
and the first word you learned - the biggest
word of all - LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.
The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.
Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any of those items and extrapolate it into
sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your
family life or your work or your government or
your world and it holds true and clear and firm.
Think what a better world it would be if
all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about
three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with
our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments
had a basic policy to always put thing back where
they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you
are - when you go out into the world, it is best
to hold hands and stick together.”

Thank you for holding my hand and sticking together with me. Together, we can do really hard things, friends, and together, those hard things end up not being so hard after all. You have shown me this when I didn’t know it for myself. I know it now. I’m sure of it. This is what I’ve learned so far.