Who Am I?
Some days, I don’t know who I am.
Audacia Ray wrote a post at Feministe this week about American Sex Worker Activist Projects and mentioned Star Light. She wrote, “There is also the now sadly defunct Starlight Ministries, an outreach ministry to exotic dancers that was totally awesome and not in any way a creepy paternalistic shaming religious group.”
Ever since I resigned from Star Light Ministries, the organization I founded as an outreach to sex workers, I have struggled with my concept of who I am. It’s not so much who I am inside, but who I am outside. What do I tell people I “do for a living?” How do I express my passion for people deemed “unacceptable” by the Church, by society at large, by whatever social circle I seem to find myself in, and still be “just a pastor.”
The church that I pastor is amazing. They are smart, funny, easy-going, committed, and so accepting. I really love being around them in a way I haven’t felt in church in a long time. And my love for them seems to grow.
And yet, there’s me. Who am I? WHO AM I?
Many, many years ago I read a story in a book of Russian fables about a student who goes to Minsk to study. But he’s miserable. So he searches out a hermit Rabbi in the woods and says, “When I was in St. Petersburg, I prayed. I read books. I studied. I was happy. Then I moved to Minsk. Here, all I can do is cry. Tears is all I have.” The Rabbi answered, “Maybe what God wants from you now is tears.”
So maybe me not knowing who I am right now is precisely what God wants from me.
Tags: church, ministry, Star Light