This is part of my ongoing effort to collect notes, postings and longer writings from Facebook and other social media sites into my WordPress blog site.
The Wayfaring Stranger Comes Home
Paula E. Popper, Chaplain and Hazzan (originally posted in 2018)
Once, quite a few years ago, I learned to sing the song, “The Wayfarin’ Stranger”, in my chorus at a performing arts school in Cincinnati, OH. This song so completely resonated with me, even at the age of nine, that I have continued to sing it in its many versions ever since. It is one of the private labels I have given to myself over the years. I found myself on a twisting road with many high and low areas. Perpetually wandering, perpetually a stranger, looking forward to “goin’ over home.”
I have had many labels given to me and have received them with frustration, recognition and amusement. The wayfaring stranger is one I gave to myself as I traveled through spiritual terrain and moved around the country. I grew up in a predominantly evangelical Christian home, with a father in the Navy, and afterwards moving around my parents’ hometown of Cincinnati as he found work and we found new places to live. Surrounded by extended family, part of a large church family, I felt like a stranger. My soul was not home.
I dove deeply into the Christian scriptures and tried to understand, to fit in, to be home.
In a job working in a library, I wandered through the religion and philosophy sections, reading endlessly, trying to understand the music in my soul, looking for a spiritual home.
One day I read a book about Jewish traditions. There was resonance and harmony here. I remembered a series of books I read in elementary school featuring a Jewish family of all girls. I remembered the warmth that I felt reading that series, wishing that was my home. I continued to study Judaism and found that my home was there, within a vast ancient tradition that had room for so many expressions. I was home.
I soon discovered that I had not found a home community even though I found my spiritual home within Judaism. There was often something missing , either I was too observant, too liberal, too mystical, too practical, too iconoclastic. I asked too many questions and accidentally shook up the status quo. I didn’t get invited to Shabbat dinner or holidays much, so I began to host them with my husband. We looked for those who were strangers, on the outside, on the edges, in the between spaces. We tried different congregations and minyanim. While some parts were wonderful and delightful, it wasn’t yet home.
I met Elana and discovered we had many things in common at our core. We recognized the resonance of home in each other. We both knew, separately, our friend Bean. He was also looking for a home, a community, and we found we three were looking for the same things. We have chosen to share our vision of community, naming it Yeshiva Shalem. A place to learn and to pray, to share meals and socialize, to do good in our world, to be our whole selves, to be at peace. Home.
© 2018 Paula E. Popper
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