Tonight I kindled the Chanukkah lights for the seventh night in a row.

At my hospital work, I had a full day of attending calls to visit patients and led a group in our hospital’s psychiatry department. I realized that now I’ve gone and done it; I am officially a ‘working stiff’, as my grandmother, who was the breadwinner in her household and marriage, used to call herself.

 

It’s been over 30 years since I last worked full time. Many of my friends are either beginning to retire from employment, counting the days, or have begun independent practices of whatever their working career was. Myself, I am just beginning to re-enter the work force while I complete my professional education.

 

Today was a day of real work. I recently finished my fourth and final unit as a student Clinical Pastoral Education, now ahead lie nine months of clinical residency; time to spend time integrating and serving in the work I have trained for, as a Spiritual Health Practitioner, sometimes called a Chaplain.

Tonight, the kindling of lights meant more to me than ever before. As a milestone of education has passed, I now see that more milestones lie ahead on the horizon. As I light the seven candles in my urban condo window, I remember the story of the people long ago who would not give up their identity and practices in order to fit in with their foreign overseers’ wishes. I remember what a miracle it was to persevere and succeed in regaining their prized spiritual tabernacle, and how the simplicity of the contents of a found cruse of oil could symbolically extend the light of success beyond the ordinariness of a single night.

This has been and will continue to be an ever revealing and paradigm-challenging trajectory on a ship that pulls me along through space and time.

 

I chose to formalize as work what I do so well naturally: my former life of creative time and Jewish values and observance are now forever altered. I’ve stymied my preference to march to the drummer of my inner calling and outer cultural heritage in order to meet the scheduled production of easing spiritual distress and enhancing medical healing my work requires. Like the Maccabees, my inner life though, has started to rise up and challenge the administrator who dictated the need to repress creativity and subjugate it to writing reports and playing other peoples’ music.

I called a friend for comfort, and I’ll admit, a kick in the pants. He said, ‘play your oboe and write’. I’ve been getting these lectures for several weeks now from friends, both my outer world companions, and internal voices. It’s so easy to let it all go and slip into the frame of work, yet as an artistically gifted co-worker said to me, it becomes toxic if you stop creating and keep it all inside.

 

 

I’ve missed you all, my readers, my keyboard, my blog, and my oboe.

 

I had a dream that a famous Jewish musician came to play music with me. Here I am, back on board. All the orchestra Christmas music stayed in its folder this evening, and I played my circle of 5ths, embouchure and tone exercises, and gifted myself with release in my own bath of freigish veygeshryn’.

 

The work won’t go away, there will always be patients and seekers to visit, a ceremony to create, another memory to honour, a co-worker to support. That is my chosen work; I now see it is not a substitute for visiting myself; creating my own ceremonies and memories, and sharing love and mutual support with friends.

As I remember my promises to myself, my prayer is to not lose myself along the way ahead, and I thank God for this Chanukkah time of remembrance and rededication.