Ordination Sermon

March 18, 2006

I met "Bala" (T. Balasaraswati) and her family when I was 23, as a young dancer. She has remained an abiding inspiration for me.

The form that Bala lived in and taught us was Bharata Natyam, or Classical South Indian Dance. You are probably thinking, “What?” It is how most people in this country respond. Bharata Natyam is a whole language of the heart, the body and the hands—a language that is not much heard of or understood in this country. This ancient form of Hindu temple dance is yogic and transformational in its intent. It is every form of yoga rolled into one, in the form of dance.

Bharata Natyam is the most impossible, humbling, demanding, joyful, elevating and enriching world I have known—till now. It is a form carefully designed to invoke Presence. Infused with the genius and heart of Bala, it has challenged me over and over again to move from fear to love, to tranform grief into joy, to rest in my vulnerability as the only possible way to continue to engage the form, and to let go—into life!

This practice has shaped much of my life story. Bala-ma really took me on, deeply taught me, and cracked me open spiritually, emotionally, and physically. My work as a healer has grown out of my experience of and surrender to Bharata Natyam.

It has been an amazingly rich journey, and also a lonely and isolating one. It has been an awkward place of identification for a Jewish American white girl. I have spent decades now, trying to translate, back and forth, the experience of Bharata Natyam into forms and teachings more accessible to Westerners. In many ways, the situation has mirrored my sense of displacement in my family of origin and in my geographical grounding, as well as—being someone who grew up during and in the aftermath of the Holocaust—my uneasy relationship with my Judaism.

When I reached the place in my life where I had little of the healing work that had nourished me for so long, and was suffering the loss and the transition, I discovered chaplaincy. From this place today, the Guidance that was happening then is so apparent! It was my hope that chaplaincy might be a way to bring the essence, the heart of Bharata Natyam and the work with Bala, deeper into the world, and a way to give back some of what I have been given.

I hoped that chaplaincy might be the gathering up of all I have been about. Actually it is more than that—more encompassing, more beautiful—and more like Bharata Natyam than I could have imagined. Or perhaps it is that the teachings begin to pervade my living more and more completely. Both forms of expression are about living fully in the moment…being real...being that which cannot really be expressed, except in poetry, or silence, or prayer, or song, or dance. The yoga of chaplaincy…the yoga of becoming.

Through this work in the Chaplaincy Institute and and training as a chaplain in hospital, I have stepped deeper into the world, and deeper into myself— deeper and with more comfort into my mother tradition of Judaism—and deeper into the moment.

I am amazed and delighted to find myself standing in a profession of spirituality, healing, and service grounded in the Western world, widely recognized in my own American culture, with a huge community of peers and mentors that speak the same language! What a blessing! It speaks to a level of integration in myself and in my life that I thoroughly welcome. It is a deep healing.

On behalf of Dori, Scott, and myself, thank you! Thank you to all those who are here, and to those who have passed, who have helped us reach this moment of spiritual recognition and commitment……to the teachers and community of Chaplaincy Institute, to our hospital supervisors and mentors,…to our dear families, who are our finest teachers and our support…to our heart friends, clients and students…to the patients at the hospitals, who have broken our hearts open over and over, inspired us, and blessed us… and to Bala.

May my life be my ministry.

Amen.