When Doors Close.... (AZ)

For several years, I explored whether working towards justice outside of a faith community could fulfill my calling to help create communities pushing for change. While working as an English teacher in Japan, I founded a non-profit that developed and taught cultural awareness classes and raised funds for local relief groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After Japan, I lived with Burmese refugees and helped them improve their English so that they could appeal to the United Nations and non-governmental organizations for aid. Upon returning to the U.S., I worked to protect access to health care and served as a grassroots organizer, but something in this work made me feel that I was serving others instead of building a community of which I was a part. I felt like these paths were closing to me. I felt empty and disconnected.

The Quaker author Parker Palmer helped me through this crisis with his book, Let Your Life Speak. He wrote about his own unclear professional transition and internal stalemate:

After a few months of deepening frustration, I took my troubles to an older Quaker woman well known for her thoughtfulness and candor. “Ruth,” I said, “people keep telling me that‘way will open.’ Well, I sit in silence, I pray, I listen for my calling, but way is not opening. I’ve been trying to find my vocation for a long time, and I still don’t have the foggiest idea of what I’m meant to do. Way may open for other people, but it’s sure not opening for me.”

Ruth’s reply was a model of Quaker plain-speaking. “I’m a birthright friend,” she said somberly, “and in sixty-plus years of living, way has never opened in front of me.” She paused, and I started sinking into despair. Was this wise woman telling me that the Quaker concept of God’s guidance was a hoax? …

Then she spoke again, this time with a grin. “But a lot of way has closed behind me, and that’s had the same guiding effect.”

I laughed with her, laughed long and long, the kind of laughter that comes when a simple truth exposes your heart for the needlessly neurotic mess it has become. (p. 38-39)

As Ruth taught me, there is as much guidance in way that closes behind us as there is in way that opens ahead of us. … All we need to do is stop pounding on the door that just closed, turn around – which puts the door behind us – and welcome the largeness of life that now lies open to our souls. (p. 54-55)

While the doors of the advocacy world were “closing” for me, I noticed that I loved being at All Souls Church, Unitarian, and that my face would light up whenever I spoke about it. I was drawn to the multiple ways in which I could serve and be present with this community. I accepted a calling to ministry that I had previously silenced. My ministry asked me to foster congregational community because in addition to my passion for social justice, I wanted to address personal and spiritual issues. I saw that once people found healing and support within a congregation, they had the means and developed a desire to go out and transform the world. Vibrant, engaged Unitarian Universalist communities are the bedrock of the social justice work that we perform as part of our collective ministry. They are places of healing, hope, and justice-making. They are the place I call home.