And it just tickles me so

...when they call me "Father." It's doesn't happen that often, so that when it does it's still a bit of a surprise; but it happens often enough now that I'm kind of learning to like the sound of it. Father, Brother, Sister...such familiar, familial language in an attempt to capture and express a profound commitment to a very special kind of relationship...although mostly I suspect it just happens out of childhood habit, an unforgotten token of reverence and respect.

Much more rarely am I addressed as "rabbi," although in many ways that is a title I would much more proudly embrace. I honestly don't feel like I'm smart enough to be a real rabbi, although now that I'm into my third decade as a UU minister and with a PhD in hand, I'm starting to feel like maybe I could sit in the same room and listen attentively. The Hebrew alone would kill me, although I suppose If I'd been raised with it, it would be different. And no doubt I romanticize the role, just as I'm sure many people romanticize my job: a room full of books, and a life not only devoted to scholarship, but a lifestyle of Devotion AND Scholarship -- and study itself as a form of devotion, or even prayer. I'm drawn as well to the idea of a true Sabbath, with no work of any kind...not even to light a fire. How different from the "Day of Football" so many Americans observe on Sundays in this season, with its associated gambling, drinking and snacking, and hours squandered in front of a television.

Brother & Sister have so many other connotations: the monastic life, or an hermetic one; or perhaps simply participation in an "unprogramed" silent Quaker-style meeting. What does it say about me that the kinds of religious life that appeal to me most (besides the one I've already chosen for myself) are ones that would put me out of a job? Can't explain it, and don't want to try.

In any event, HERE is an amusing little something that I found on another site, filled out for myself and posted over at The Eclectic Cleric, which was my original blog when I first got started doing all this back in 2006. Wasn't all that sure of what I was doing way back then, and I'm still not all that sure now. But since then I've started and stopped perhaps a dozen blogs, including ones for my mom's memorial service and an archive of my letters from Denmark, sermon-blogs for Nantucket, Carlisle, and here at First Parish, a pick-up basketball blog (Obi Wannabe Kobe) which I described as "Old School reflections on the Meaning of Life, Popular Culture, and the Essential Wisdom of Pick-Up Basketball," and of course now this cancer blog, which has accumulated both more readers and more posts than any of the others in so much shorter a time. But I guess there's nothing like a real human interest aspect to gather attention. And this blog certainly has both....