No there there.

Some time in the 2000's, I left the Midwest. I shoved everything I could into my Jeep Wrangler, basically a duffle bag on wheels, and drove West. I had five thousand bucks, and acquaintance who offered me his couch and my sheer dint of will. I had been living in Chicago for a little over a year, working in retail, hating myself, losing whatever dreams I'd had and freezing half to death. I left at the end of April, and it was still Winter when I drove away.

I had been attending a synagogue in Chicago. Perhaps not anything so extraordinary, except that I wasn't Jewish. I'd been once or twice before, but now I was making myself a regular. I was starting to study a little Hebrew. A little Bible. But there aren't a lot of Jews in Chicago. New York or Los Angeles seemed the places to go, but I had no couch on which to surf in New York. Not completely true. I had a couch in New York but it came with a crazy person.

What I'm trying to say here, what I'm trying to express, is the why of it all. I left, I came here, to this bizarre city, is to get away from my family. I love them. I miss them. But I needed to be out of sight, out of earshot, so that I could study this religion. Can you spell individuation?

I was raised Lutheran, in what is now the ELCA, a fairly liberal, mainstream brand of Protestantism. Lutheranism is nice. Lutherans are nice! We lived in Milwaukee, then in a small town outside of Madison, then suburban Minneapolis. Milwaukee has heart and soul. It has it's own culture. But I'm getting ready to start a rant about suburban life and the utter void of culture in a place where housing developments are sandwiched between strip malls of corporate chains and big box stores. I longed for something deeper. Community. Culture. Purpose. We affix this small scroll of Hebrew text to each and every doorpost in our house because we always have. Because this other, bigger scroll we believe God himself delivered to us tells us to. As a testament. I wanted THAT. I wanted a reason for doing the every day things. Why I eat this, but not that. Why I don't answer the phone on Saturday. Why I wash my hands before I eat bread. Even if the only reason is because God says so.

Not in a million years did I think I would be religious. I always equated religious with self-righteous and proselytizing. I'm definitely self-righteous, but that was true before I was religious. But you'll never see my try to convert you.

So that's what this thing has been about for me. I wanted to find a center, something around which I could build a life of meaning. The journey continues.