How do you apologize to your life for being angry for six years? That’s really asking how you apologize to six years’ of people in your life. The question is more artful than the answer. But here goes.
I wish I could explain my family’s basic position of emotional overwhelm. Of all the stories we’ve accumulated over the past century-and-a-half of us, they always tend to fall into two categories: our ability to deeply feel; and our ability to become completely short-circuited by that. Our successes so often become our failures as we fail to allow our successes fully in. For every loving mother, college graduate, career achievement, and long-term relationship, we always seem to see and raise ourselves an absent father, a serial underachiever, an unavailable partner, a rank alcoholic. Not for nothing, but my siblings left this place for a reason.
I’m more squarely in line with my Aunt Juanita. Like her, I’ve spent my adulthood doing my best to make peace with the overwhelm. After my conversion journey concluded, I though I had put most of the demons to bed for good. Regular readers and people who have shared–or not shared–the past six years of my life know better, though, and are shaking their heads right now.
And so am I.
There are many things I don’t regret over the past six years. Growing into my Judaism. Reconnecting with my family. Deciding–or realizing–that Chicago wasn’t meant to be an endpoint for me. Exploring other urban options. Standing up for my values. Trying to push the boulder of consulting work up the hill again. Finally letting that boulder roll back down. I don’t even necessarily regret my disagreements along the way.
But what I do regret is taking the emotional overwhelm of my life out on the people in it. For so many years I knew better and did better. And then, somehow, I didn’t–and stayed that way. I can’t say exactly how I managed to yank my head out of my ass after six years. There’s no easy explanation. No great reckoning. No recovery program. No religious inspiration. I just finally decided to take stock of the things I believed about life, the universe, and everything and realized how much of it was on auto-pilot.
One Herman Schaalman or blessed memory, rabbi emeritus of Chicago’s Emanuel Congregation–our first synagogue, across the street from which Ryan and I still live after all this time–used to say we are the stories that we tell. That means we’re also the stories that we believe. When you don’t examine the storylines you believe about yourself every now and then, how easily they just freeze in place. How hard it becomes to see through them anymore. How quickly you take for granted the feelings and effects that they generate in your life, as if they are random or a plot against you from God–as if what is inside of you isn’t intimately connected with the world beyond your skin.
I followed my unexamined beliefs as far as I could. Faulty beliefs like fear and worry and the idea of a random existence that I tell myself by day that a person like me who considers himself radically grounded in the idea of a safe universe doesn’t hold to. And mostly what they led to was anger–an anger about a kind of unkind world I really don’t believe in. An anger that, left unexamined, can’t be acknowledged, embraced, and ended, but only aimed elsewhere, unfairly, at others.
I’m so tired of being angry. All it does is get in the way of what I really mean to say. And what I should have said a long time ago. Like I’m sorry. Like I was wrong. Like I haven’t known how to say that for a long, long time.
Some teshuvah is private, and some important people in my life of now and then have heard from me recently in this regard. But some teshuvah is public. So I’m putting this here on my blog, where it belongs…
To Emanuel Congregation–to my former fellow congregants, to board members, staff, and clergy past and present–how badly I missed the mark. I have owed you all an apology for a long time. I took my stridency as a newly minted Jew out on you, expecting one synagogue to be the surrogate for the entire breadth and depth of the Jewish people instead of just letting you be yourselves and celebrating you for who you were and are, which is far more than enough for anyone to expect out of any single shul.
I left in anger, made that anger very public, and kept it going for years. You didn’t deserve it. Our differences weren’t great enough to merit leaving, much less laying into you in the manner I did. All I can say is I’m sorry. In the end, my actions were not those of a good friend or fellow congregant. Even given our differences at the time, no matter how great I may have thought they were–and I know now they weren’t as great as I thought they were–you all deserved more from me. But I was too intent on being angry to love and respect you the way that you all loved and respected me.
When I was on my way out the door, the Fleischmans told me something I never forgot. They said not to expect other synagogues to be any different than Emanuel. People are people, boards are boards, synagogue politics are synagogue politics. Those parts may be true. But there’s a part they were wrong about. With no offense intended to any of the places I’ve been since I left Emanuel, nowhere have I found a group of people as honest about who they are, or as radically embracing of others for who they are, too. I wish I could have gotten out of my way long enough to see it at the time.
I have loved and missed you all for years.
In almost a decade and a half, I have never taken down a post on my blog and I won’t start now. I think it’s important to know where you’ve been if you want to really know where you’re going. But starting today, there’s a disclaimer atop the posts that chronicled my angry exit from Emanuel. It makes clear that what’s in my heart and where I’m headed are different now–and it invites readers back here to read the post you just did.
And if ever it is necessary again, hopefully it will serve as a reminder to lead me back here, too.
Categories: Emanuel Congregation
Mike
I’m an #OpenlyAutistic gay, Hispanic, urbanist, Disney World fan, New York native, politically independent, Jewish blogger in Chicago. I believe in social justice, big cities, and public transit. I write words and raise money for nonprofits. I’ve written this blog since 2005. And counting...
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More than five months later, tonight is S’lichot, the doorway to the High Holy Days. And I’m just driving by in this comment thread to note that the love, forgiveness, and welcoming back to my home synagogue family never ended. I think that’s because the well of lovingkindness at Emanuel is immeasurably deep. Ryan and I have been back home for months now, and there is no other congregational family we would rather be blessed to be a part of.
And I’m the luckiest Jew in Chicago.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve been at Emanuel, but I always felt the folks there are nothing if not welcoming and caring, which I’m happy to see at work here. I’m glad to see you’ve found your way back!
Shabbat Shalom!
Michael, you are a courageous and decent man. And you may be a little hard on yourself. Be vulnerable in your journey. Wear it on your sleeve. Few are brave enough to grow in the full view of others. To do so is to share a gift. Carry on.
Thank you, Robert. Will do.
Michael,
You and Ryan are very much missed by Laurie and I. I have always believed that reasons for actions are not as important as the actions themselves so what is most important now is that we reconnect with you both.
I never thought that I was being wronged. I only was sad that you were isolating yourself from so many who cared for you. I don’t need you to do teshuvah to me, but since you apologized I can only say I accept. You are forgiven, but again you both are missed. Please come back.
I also want you to do teshuvah to yourself and to promise yourself that you will do your best to not let your frustration keep you away again. Forgive Michael and return.
I want to tell you what has been happening and to share a hug.
Dave
I love you, David. Thank you. Ryan and I both very much miss seeing you and Laurie.
Michael, I am so very happy that you have freed yourself from the anger. It was a paralyzing presence. I miss seeing you and hope you are well.
Thank you, Carolyn. Miss seeing you as well.
I am so sorry that you were so angry! I missed you. I understand how background can influence our attitudes and hold us back. I am glad that you are feeling better. I accept your apology.
Thank you. I miss you too. We both miss you.
Michael, listen – I have lived long enough, and learned the hard way from enough of my own messes and mistakes to know the courage that it takes to write something like this post, and the gift of the blessing of forgiveness when received. I understand – probably better than you would imagine – the blinding, freezing nature of anger and what it can create in our lives and relationships. So, if you do in fact owe me, and it would be a blessing back on you – you are more than forgiven. You are embraced. Please take me off whatever list your keeping. On we go. I hope our paths cross sometime soon. A hug is in order.
Susan
Susan, thank you. What you said is very much appreciated. The idiocy of living across the street from the synagogue and not letting myself say these things for so long it’s just, I can’t even label it. I was very ad hominem with you when I left, of all people, and I just wanted to own that. I’ll gratefully take you off that list now. And hugs back.
Not that I have any skin in the game, but it was very big of you to admit all that. I hope Emanuel respond in kind.
You’re kind, Jeffrey, but the truth is it was actually very small of me to have acted as I did in the first place.