When I was ten years old, I decided to figure out my life's purpose. The answer poured out of me as if I had been pre-programmed: Either I would become a doctor and find a cure for cancer, or I would find a way to end wars forever, or I would figure out once and for all whether there was a God. Well, unfortunately, 50 years later wars are still being raged and cancers are still metastasizing, but I'm pretty sure about God—not the Judeo-Christian God I studied in Jewish Reform Sunday school, but a grand life force endlessly creating new miraculous aspects of itself.
It wasn't until the age of 35, however, after the birth of my son Jason and the beginning of my Jungian analysis, that I met God face to face for the first time. He came to me unbidden and told me that I must immediately speak to His people and tell them they no longer needed to fear His word. Despite a normally disabling performance anxiety, I instantly and effortlessly let go of my self-conscious ego and became an instrument through which God spoke. Meanwhile I remained a conscious Self who was totally one with this ineffable force surging through me. There was a profound sense of coming Home—really Home—to a place of utter bliss, grace, and awe. I felt ecstatic!
Suddenly the alarm clock blasted and I awakened from my dream, only to find that God and our people had vanished, leaving me alone once again with my deflated, now devastated ego. My Jungian analyst quickly reassured me that this was no simple dream but, in fact, a prophesy of my life. It certainly was the first moment that I realized I deeply wanted to become a minister so that I could continue being a channel for this Spirit.
Finally, twenty-one years later—after the birth of my daughter Jennifer, motherhood, and a career in psychiatry—I walked through the doors of ChI.
Now, having completed my studies (I was ordained in April), I am thrilled to be expanding my spiritual psychology counseling practice alongside the practice of psychiatry. In addition to returning to songwriting, I look forward to expanding my ministry in the following ways: weddings and celebrations of all kinds; offering interfaith sermons; and chaplaincy work in a neonatal intensive care nursery.
