Today, with Linda Brinkworth at the helm, we embarked on chapter one of Nine Essential Things I’ve Learned About Life by Harold Kushner. Kushner, during rabbinical school, was confronted daily by great minds, professors who asked questions for answers, then challenged the answers. Ordained in 1960, and exempt from the draft as clergy, he had the exemption waived and was commissioned a first lieutenant. The post psychiatrist taught him to understand and respond to the problems the GIs brought to him. His learning was personal and first-hand.
Later, when his congregants came to him with questions and problems of the faith, he found that, again he was not prepared to answer. But Kushner was gentle and logical in all things.
Also the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, he discovered that, while the original rules of religious life were difficult to apply in the twenty-first century, human nature had not changed much. And that his job was not to simply perform or inform, but to transform.
For Christians and Jews alike, we may need to change our observance, to “peel away its ancient outer shell so that the message at the core could more easily emerge.” He writes, “When I was ordained at age twenty-five, they told me I was ready to go forth and teach. The truth was, I was at best ready to go forth and learn.”
Written by: Carolyn Wall
