The Reverend

I sit in a small office, one chair facing the next. A few feet in front of me he sits, asking questions, getting to know me, allowing me to get to know him. Two individuals' lives cross paths for the first time, and now they share their past stories and try to understand what the future may bring.

He is a minister, a reverend, seven years my elder. As I sit and listen to him share with me, and then begin to offer myself back, I realize just how rare this moment is. How often do I venture outside of my self-imposed ghetto - the superficially open and pluralistic world in which I conduct my daily life? When was the last time I spoke about life and values and everything that matters with, God forbid, someone not of the tribe? And, of all people, a reverend?

And it comes time to share my story. What brings you here, he asks. I begin to talk. And so quickly I notice how much information I must explain - about the meanings of movements and organizations, the differences of various groups, the intricacies of the world I live in every day of my life, and how this has anything at all to do with me sitting in an office on the ground floor of an Upper East Side hospital.

It gets me thinking. Thinking about how we build up as so important otherwise meaningless aspects of our lives. How we come to believe that otherwise inconsequential details, unimportant barriers and trivial distinctions, are actually significant. How we frame our life around walls built out of playing cards, which can come crashing down with the smallest gust of wind.

I sit there, explaining what it means to live life on the fringe, yet begin to wonder what it all means in the first place.

In a post-modern world of fluid identities and revolving loyalties, maybe these terms and distinctions and entire systems of ways through which I have come to define my life are, actually, nothing - merely a sum total of hot air that disperses as soon as its container opens up.

Because, to Reverend David, at the end of the day I'm just a Jew. And at the beginning of the day I'm a Jew. Just one simple Jew, trying to live his otherwise simple Jewish life.

I wake up and aim to craft a daylong adventure in learning, prayer and world-fixing. I make friends, I lose some, and enjoy each day to its fullest. I change people, people change me, and the world goes on. Problems are fixed, hopes are achieved, and we come one step closer to Redemption.

It was thanks to Reverend David that I began to achieve some perspective. Perspective on what success may look like. Perspective on what it means to be you. Perspective on how to be patient and roll with the punches - how to take a step outside your life and look back in, unencumbered by other people's definitions of "correct" and "how things are supposed to be."

It let's you be free. Free like the homeless man who just spent five minutes of his time drawing a picture of this Jew typing on his computer. Free like the odd mix of people sitting across the subway car from me - the shaved-headed woman, the bearded chubby man talking about joints, the kippah-wearer dancing on the car's pole - all friends, all Jews, all challenging assumptions and standard notions of reality.