Closer to the Edge

Some months ago I made a somewhat dramatic decision. After 36 years serving as a congregational rabbi, I decided to step out of that role (which I've now held in my current community for eighteen years.)  It was almost as if something was pushing me, or perhaps pulling me. I felt a calling to explore a different path, to write a different chapter before I finally settle into retirement, which is a good ways off.  Yet I was feeling the need to grow in a new direction, that I might yet have something new to share in a different way.

Around the time that my decision became public, a friend, also a rabbi who had faced a similar crossroad in his own life some years back, shared a piece he’d found helpful during his transition. It’s by Danaan Perry and is entitled “The Parable of the Trapeze: Turning the Fear of Transformation into the Transformation of Fear.”  I read it, and found that Perry had described my inner landscape quite accurately.

Now it’s early May and June 30^th is on the horizon.  I just finished a coffee visit with a young man whom I’d first met when I came to my congregation 18 years ago.  In the ensuing years, I have officiated his Confirmation, his sister’s Bat Mitzvah and Confirmation; his wedding and the naming of his now 1-year old daughter. He asked me about my role and availability for future life cycles.  That's a puzzle yet to be solved. I assured him that I am not leaving Boston and the broader community that has become home over these 18 years. While my role will change, relationships are the stuff of which successful ministry (and living for that matter) are made. Change is inevitable.  As I clear out my study at the synagogue, discarding files I’ve accumulated over 36

years, and giving away or donating books I will no longer have space for, I’m not discarding the people with whom I have life’s ups and downs.  When we meet again, the terms and context will be different.

For months I’ve been joking when asked about my plans that “As of July 1^st I have nothing on my calendar . . . for the rest of my life.”  That’s not entirely true.  I have some teaching gigs. There a number of active conversations about roles I may yet play elsewhere in the broader community in the year (or years?) ahead.  And I have already begun laying the groundwork for a study project which may evolve into a Scholar gig I might one day offer, or even a book.  I find myself looking forward with incredible optimism. I’m also looking around, and occasionally backwards, with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the people and opportunities who have been so much a part of focus of my life over these 36 years.

I’m nearing the edge of the platform.  My hands are about to grasp the bar I will use to leap from the comfortable perch which has been my professional life for a long time.  I don’t quite see the next bar out there ahead of me.  Rather I see a myriad of possibilities and, I pray, opportunities which will enable me to grow as a person, a husband, father and now grandfather.  And yes, I hope, to grow as a rabbi. These have been months of letting go and refocusing. The true journey hasn’t yet even begun.  But it’s close now. 

The thing that has sustained me more than anything else, along with my family’s love and support,

has been my spiritual practice, Mussar.  It nurtures me and calls me to work at strengthening the traits of my soul: humility, respect, gratitude, and so many more.  And among the Mussar soul-traits upon which I have been focused, it’s bitachon (trust) and emunah (faith) that have helped me steady my feet, my mind and prepare for the leap with a sense that in ways I do not yet know or understand, my hands will yet rest on another bar which will carry me to my new place in the community.