Ember of Curiosity Under Heavy Logs of Disillusionment and Cynicism

My eye caught a glimpse of an email that arrived unexpectedly amid the rush to ‘airplane mode’ on the phone, for my flight. “Historic” “Task Force,” “Board decision” “repentance for participation in slavery” were some of the words I caught before the flight attendant came by to check on us all. An African-American woman, with striking hands, beautiful nails, well-trained kinky curls in her hair. I had little phone battery left, so turned it off and decided to read with interest when way opened after the flight. Pat Schneider’s ‘beginning again’ writing exercise asked me to sit with her question, “What matters, then?”

I find myself befuddled, to be honest, with seeds of hope and a slight ember of curiosity underneath the heavy logs of disillusionment and cynicism well familiar to the mid-career theological scholar. My relationship to Princeton Theological Seminary is a convoluted and conflicted one, rife with painful and pleasurable memories both. It was a time in which I made use of father’s-daughter transferences, becoming the model ‘good-girl’ with just enough innovation and charm-ster in me to be interesting and succeed in intellectual, social, and political ways. Unaware of the cost to my whole Self, I fed their hungers too, seeing now the cannibalism of my own work and voice by unconscious, well-intentioned father-figure scholars-mentors. Faithful men. Good-hearted men. Men doing what they had been trained to do, supporting me while relying upon my exuberance in less-healthy ways too.

I played my role well, at various stages of my 11 years there—student, intern, PhD candidate, administrator, adjunct/designated lecturer, student’s wife, etc.—until I didn’t play it well within the necessary norms. I advocated for a grant program, on behalf of all those we had said we would serve, forcing my direct supervisor’s hand in the privilege and political-capital I had with the standing president.  Unknowingly, I signed my exit papers in that passion, but not until the grant program (which was of course successfully funded/won) was well on its way. This institution paved the way for me to do what I do in theological education, for which I am inexpressibly thankful. This institution was also a desert without in-depth spiritual and emotional nourishment for me as a contemplative, as a woman, as an old-soul on an unknown but familiar path outward, forward, inward.

Ten years after my husband and I left Princeton for sacred callings in Dayton, Ohio, I was finally free of both attachment and aversion energies with the institution. I had traveled outward and inward paths to see more clearly the attachments I had had that drew me there in the first place: Ivy-league associations of privilege and intellectual prowess, commonplace in the Midwest, where I grew up; beautiful grounds and comfortable settings in which to explore my own intellectual interests; high acclamation in my family of origin, who boasted “Lisa’s at Princeton” in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Going to Princeton bought me intellectual, social, political, and familial capital that heightened my status and my interactions with those for whom those things mattered.

And I was as lonely as I ever knew anyone could be. I knew people’s call stories and their personas for ministry, but never felt known myself, or deeply connected to others around me. I attended chapel and learned the practices of worship for this community, but rarely felt seen or heard in who I was. All the forms of community were unfolding around me, but few touched the deepest parts of me. Until David Weadon. Until James Loder. Until Wentzel van Huyssteen. Three men who saw my musical heart, my love of philosophy and science. Three men who were lonely in their own ways, encased in the privileges and politics of a functional-academic ‘community’ with high performative norms.

Some of this loneliness was staved off when I reconnected with my first-love from college-days and got married. My husband and I were our own emotional island in a sea of polite, lonely Presbyterians, most of whom would never articulate a loneliness, deep to the bone. The entire eleven years I was in Princeton, only one person ever used the word ‘love’ in a personal-relationship way, like good friends say to one another, or prayerful Christians share amidst suffering. The only one to speak love to me in Princeton was the man I imported into the town by marrying him, my husband. Eleven years of bible-studies and prayer meetings and deep conversations…not once did I ever hear the words, “I love you Lisa.” Not even from a close friend. It simply wasn't the culture of the place at the time to honor deep feelings so vulnerably.

So when it was finally time for me to depart, for me to be freed from my successes, trials and tribulations in this academic community, I had a huge aversion energy that would erupt whenever any reference to Princeton arose, or Princeton would contact us as well-oiled marketing machines do—calls for money, etc. I had no awareness of how bound I was in this negative energy, how overwhelming it was of everything I was trying to grow into as a young theological scholar. Eventually, along with the help of a Buddhist sangha and a deep dive into Buddhist practice, I began to see that aversion was simply the negative expression of attachment. I was still deeply attached to Princeton in its sizeable gifts to me and its deep body wounds as a woman in the fields of theological education, practical theology in particular. I began to do the work of healing into non-attachment, of release and relinquishment, of acceptance and allowance.

[One amusement in this path was having my eldest 1^st-cousin marry the fellow who would then become the President of Princeton Seminary. After ten years of deep inner work to finally be free of the institution in question, it freakin’ married into my family. I have very little contact with that cousin, though I see her Facebook feed from time to time, catching glimpses of her implicit work offered to that institution today. This convergence has often brought discomfort for me, for a variety of reasons. One, my husband and I have refused all contact with the institution, including offering financial support to it. Money and privilege are the problem and wounding of community, in our experience of the place, so though we actively support other institutions (college and other), we have not given a cent to Princeton. Over the years, I have written the alumni/ae and development directors to inquire if there are other ways to give back that would honor our experience of Princeton’s light and shadow sides. None has ever responded with any communal or truly relational connection, rather proving our point. Princeton is not about relationship or community in our experience; it is about privilege, performance, and a certain brand of Presbyterianism I have since left behind.]

But…having it marry into my family did facilitate the inner and outer work to “Let Princeton be Princeton,” to allow and honor it to be just as it was, and to have no attraction to it, nor any aversion to it. Equanimity. Non-attachment.

Christian sisters and brothers might ask me at this point whether this kind of work was really about forgiveness and reconciliation…but my gut-instinct is to say, “No, it has not been of that ilk at all.” That work would require repentance and alteration of behavior, at a level that human institutions are simply unable to manifest at this point, unconscious and unwilling to look hard at systemic and ‘socially architectural’ aspects of institutional life and function. I do not know of any institutions, to be honest, that have repented—of the treatment of women for centuries, of the dehumanization of people of color, of the rape and pillage of the land. Institutions are corporate entities without personal characteristics (though I think another cousin has made a philosophical case for corporations as ‘persons’ in our legal currents today…Not sure…).

So perhaps that is the seed of the ember of curiosity and even hope? Is this the energy of ‘what matters’ to me today?

I read, briefly, an email that spoke of institutional repentance written by a man 'in my own family' yet with whom I am very careful to cloak association. It has pricked a scar in my bodysoul that I haven’t had to tend or even consider for years now. This scar that has spear-headed so much of what I do and how I do it today: circle-work, creating alternative realities because the current ‘wine-skins’ or ‘containers’ I know are declining and sinking into irrelevance (for me). One elder’s words that landed deeply in my bodysoul: Don’t go to war with the way things are; create alternative realities. This thickened scar-skin has allowed me to delve deeply into collaboratively-birthing circle communities in Dayton and Columbus Ohio. This sizeable disillusionment has driven an idealism and passion to create alternative realities of human collectives able to be fully human—being-with, present to, strong-for the ‘other,’ the wounded, the silenced.

Over these two decades, then, Princeton became blessedly irrelevant and non-existent for me. I demur my association with the place. I refuse it entrance into my awareness or my work, mostly because its spiritual vacuity (for me) makes it unnecessary and not of much interest.

And yet...and yet... I read: An institution is repenting of its participation and support of slavery in our country’s history. A place left purposefully in my past has acted within a stream of my own values and current spiritual journey-work.  Hmmmm….