On finding old friends
Mar. 31st, 2003 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiAs some of you know, when I was in high school, I spent two summers at the Duke University Young Writers' Camp. It was one of the best times of my life, for more reasons than I could possibly go into (almost none of which involve writing), but part of what made the summers so great was the number of good friendships that I developed there.
One of them was with a girl named Lauren. We connected right away, and became fast friends and confidantes almost instantly. There was nothing sexual here -- mature as she was, Lauren was still five years younger than me, and there's little that can squick a sixteen-year-old as much as that sort of age gap -- but there was the sort of connection that I've only had with a few people, ever. We talked books, religion, life, whatever (she really was amazingly mature beyond her years, and I suspect that much of our connection had to do with the similarities I saw to myself at her age -- bookish, intensely curious, intensely frustrated at the intellectual roadblocks I'd encounter), and she was one of the only people I've ever had any sort of letter-writing relationship with in my pre-email days. In many ways, she's the closest thing to a true sister I've ever had.
During this time, as I was on my own spiritual path (eventually ending in my current state of agnosticism (although I rather prefer the term Thomas Jefferson used, Materialist)), Lauren was also walking a path. We both started at the same place, at benign Reform Judaism, but although mine took very few detours (I explored many religions, but never found one that called me down its path enough to practice, although I came decidedly close with Orthodox Judaism at one time), Lauren, even as a teen, was exploring many options, and had already seriously flirted with Wicca before committing herself to Orthodox Judaism (and since she wasn't born Jewish -- her mother was Baptist -- she had to fully convert).
When I lost touch with Lauren -- and losing touch with people who mean a lot to me is a bad habit I've developed over the years -- she'd been a fully practicing Orthodox Jew, and also one of the most wonderfully maverick Jews I knew. I last saw her at the 1992 Democratic convention, where she showed up in a dress that covered all of her body (as Orthodox Jews are supposed to wear), and a nose ring. She was also exploring bisexuality at the time, and was still tattooed from her Wiccan days. It didn't seem to matter -- she wore all her identities perfectly, and never seemed the worse for it.
Other than a few emails over the years -- enough for me to know that she'd enrolled at Columbia as a grad student -- I pretty much lost all contact with her (she's long since moved, and I don't have her email address). But a few years ago, I did a search for her on the net, and found that she'd moved on yet again, and was now working for Beliefnet, and had also converted yet again, this time to Episcopalian. I wasn't overly surprised, although it certainly wasn't a path she'd expressed interest in before. I was tempted to contact her then, but her articles had a certainly reactive quality (which, in retrospect, might well have been her response to the inevitable backlash she was feeling from those around her) that said that she wasn't fully comfortable with her choice at the time.
Recently, I decided to do another search for her. She's no longer with Beliefnet (which is too bad, as that eliminates the one email address I found for her). But she's managed to write a book about her experiences. It's called Girl Meets God, and I was happy to find today that the Emory library had it in stock. It's an attempt to reconcile the two sides of her spirituality, and from the reviews, it looks as if she's in a much more comfortable place, spiritually and emotionally, than she was when she first converted. I just checked it out, and it's next on my reading stack. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how she's grown, and what led her down the path she ended up taking.
And, since the publisher is still in business, I might even get the chance to write her a letter after all, to tell her that I'm proud of her. Not so much because of where she ended up (spirituality is a personal thing, and I don't judge others unless they attempt to judge me first or force their beliefs on me), but because I know (just from the few articles and excerpts I read) it had to be one hell of a path.
And besides, it's nice to see that someone's used those years of writing camp successfully. :-)
One of them was with a girl named Lauren. We connected right away, and became fast friends and confidantes almost instantly. There was nothing sexual here -- mature as she was, Lauren was still five years younger than me, and there's little that can squick a sixteen-year-old as much as that sort of age gap -- but there was the sort of connection that I've only had with a few people, ever. We talked books, religion, life, whatever (she really was amazingly mature beyond her years, and I suspect that much of our connection had to do with the similarities I saw to myself at her age -- bookish, intensely curious, intensely frustrated at the intellectual roadblocks I'd encounter), and she was one of the only people I've ever had any sort of letter-writing relationship with in my pre-email days. In many ways, she's the closest thing to a true sister I've ever had.
During this time, as I was on my own spiritual path (eventually ending in my current state of agnosticism (although I rather prefer the term Thomas Jefferson used, Materialist)), Lauren was also walking a path. We both started at the same place, at benign Reform Judaism, but although mine took very few detours (I explored many religions, but never found one that called me down its path enough to practice, although I came decidedly close with Orthodox Judaism at one time), Lauren, even as a teen, was exploring many options, and had already seriously flirted with Wicca before committing herself to Orthodox Judaism (and since she wasn't born Jewish -- her mother was Baptist -- she had to fully convert).
When I lost touch with Lauren -- and losing touch with people who mean a lot to me is a bad habit I've developed over the years -- she'd been a fully practicing Orthodox Jew, and also one of the most wonderfully maverick Jews I knew. I last saw her at the 1992 Democratic convention, where she showed up in a dress that covered all of her body (as Orthodox Jews are supposed to wear), and a nose ring. She was also exploring bisexuality at the time, and was still tattooed from her Wiccan days. It didn't seem to matter -- she wore all her identities perfectly, and never seemed the worse for it.
Other than a few emails over the years -- enough for me to know that she'd enrolled at Columbia as a grad student -- I pretty much lost all contact with her (she's long since moved, and I don't have her email address). But a few years ago, I did a search for her on the net, and found that she'd moved on yet again, and was now working for Beliefnet, and had also converted yet again, this time to Episcopalian. I wasn't overly surprised, although it certainly wasn't a path she'd expressed interest in before. I was tempted to contact her then, but her articles had a certainly reactive quality (which, in retrospect, might well have been her response to the inevitable backlash she was feeling from those around her) that said that she wasn't fully comfortable with her choice at the time.
Recently, I decided to do another search for her. She's no longer with Beliefnet (which is too bad, as that eliminates the one email address I found for her). But she's managed to write a book about her experiences. It's called Girl Meets God, and I was happy to find today that the Emory library had it in stock. It's an attempt to reconcile the two sides of her spirituality, and from the reviews, it looks as if she's in a much more comfortable place, spiritually and emotionally, than she was when she first converted. I just checked it out, and it's next on my reading stack. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how she's grown, and what led her down the path she ended up taking.
And, since the publisher is still in business, I might even get the chance to write her a letter after all, to tell her that I'm proud of her. Not so much because of where she ended up (spirituality is a personal thing, and I don't judge others unless they attempt to judge me first or force their beliefs on me), but because I know (just from the few articles and excerpts I read) it had to be one hell of a path.
And besides, it's nice to see that someone's used those years of writing camp successfully. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-31 01:37 pm (UTC)But what someone said above. Write to her. The past few months have seen several friends email me out of the blue - assuming I'd forgotten about them or something like that. It meant so much! There are a couple of people I've been trying to find online with absolutely no luck whatsoever. I hope that I can find them and write to them, but in the meantime...:)
Good luck!