1996 - 2004 The Graduate School Years

The average time it takes people to go from B.A. to Ph.D. in Anthropology is nine years. I took exactly that long. There are a lot of reasons it takes us so much longer than it takes those in other disciplines, and this isn't really the place to go into it, I suppose. But some of the reasons are that anthropology is holistic. Instead of studying just a piece of the human experience (political science studies politics, economists study economics, psychologists study cognition, emotion and behavior, etc.), anthropologists study the whole thing - how do politics, economics, and psychology influence each other? How are they integrated with religion, sociology, history, and geography? And how are all of those things influenced by the fact that we are animals, physical beings with DNA, neurons, and pheromones? It just takes longer to learn about all of these things from all of these different disciplinary perspectives and then integrate it. Then there is the way we go about doing research, and funding it - stories for another day. Suffice it to say, it keeps us extremely busy, it is intellectually challenging, if not gruelling at times, and it takes a long time.
By the midpoint of my second semester, I had started to skip some Sundays because I was in the field doing research (though I sometimes went to church as part of that research). I skipped others because I just had too much reading and writing to get done and needed every hour I could cram in during the weekend and evening. I had my new husband Jim to talk to and debate with, so didn't feel the need to write in my journal nearly as often, and in fact I needed that time in the morning for work, anyway.
In many ways I stopped growing spiritually for a long time. I guess that isn’t really true, we are always growing, but it wasn’t conscious. My conscious attention was directed to my growth in other areas for nearly a decade. But on vacations and at other times I dove back into my study of religion and philosophy, and continued, always, to think about and discuss questions of faith, theology, and doctrine.
I think it was in 1998 or '99 that I was offered the opportunity to teach the introduction to world religions, and I jumped at it, seeing it as a chance to both improve my own understanding and help others see the wisdom I had come to recognize in other faiths. It became one of my regular courses and I taught at least one section of it every semester for about five years. That really motivated me to deepen my study of all religion, focusing primarily on the “Big Five”: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

October 14, 2000 (31 years old)
I’ve been reading/grading my students journals from Intro to Religion. It is amazing to me how little some of them understand what they are reading. The brightest aren’t making much of an effort, and the others are working hard but not getting much. It doesn’t help their bigotry when, during a crisis in Israel, Billy Graham’s son comes to town and preaches that “All Arabs hate Jews, “ that “they won’t rest until every Jew is dead.” What a way to sow the seeds of love and forgiveness, hope for peace.
On the same note, last night Jim told me about what he has learned is going on in his parents’ church. Apparently the members have been sending very ugly hate mail to all of the interim pastors they’ve had. Isn’t that sickening? And they call themselves Christians. How in the world can they justify their actions with Christ’s message of love? I don’t get it.

September 25, 2001 (32 years old)
Have more questions about the coming war, but not enough time to do it justice. Maybe tonight or tomorrow. A quick thought – Jesus said to turn the other cheek. Would he have said the same thing about a person who was torturing children? Just give them more children? Or are there times when he would have condoned violence in response?

April 8, 2002
The unsettlement I’m feeling doesn’t come from any of my life’s circumstances. It is old stuff. I guess that’s why I’ve been feeling it out, trying to figure out where it is coming from. Unfortunately, it means that there is no obvious solution. I can’t change something about my life and make it all go away. At least, I have no idea what to change. Ben trying to figure that out for more than a decade. I suppose the one thing that wouldn’t hurt is spending more time in prayer. Guess I’ll have to try that again.

September 5, 2003 (34 years old)
Dad and I had a long conversation last night about ordaining gay ministers. He’s deeply conflicted. I didn’t say much regarding my own opinion, because it was so interesting to hear his. He’s torn between the order to love one another, and the tolerance Jesus preached, and his own firm belief that the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin. It puts him in quite a difficult position. He is really quite biased. I don’t think he’s know very many gay people. He said he didn’t think he’d want to listen to sermons week in and week out from a gay or a lesbian. I asked him why, and he couldn’t explain. I said he probably had, and didn’t even know it, trying to make the point that it isn’t as if gay people are fundamentally different. He said maybe.
I asked him how he felt about the Episcopalian’s recent confirmation of a gay bishop. He said it was good for the gay community, but he just didn’t know if it was good for the church. He thinks it is an instance of the church capitulating to the culture, and thinks the church should be doing more to change culture, rather than being changed by it.
I said the church has always been affected by culture, at which he bristled, saying the early church wasn’t. I argued only a little, even though as an anthropologist I could have pointed out that all religion is firmly rooted in culture. But I didn’t because I agree with the larger point he was trying to make, which is that the church is in crisis, and that Christians in general are not living up to their responsibility to act and change their communities with love and service.

September 9
Wow. Got up at 5:30 and it was still dark. I sat by the spa and watched the sun rise. Very beautiful. Wish I could feel as close to God as I used to. But it made me feel a tiny bit closer.

March 31, 2005 (35 years old)
I have been having the most amazing dreams from the fever. “I found God at the end of a sentence,” I said to Jim yesterday when I woke up. Then, “I mean literally, in the period.” I wish I remembered what it meant, because the dream had been long and profound.

As soon as I finished my dissertation and defended it, my thirsty soul turned straight back to the question of God. But even though I hadn't written it all down, the intervening years had taken a toll on my faith in Christianity. I was back to feeling that all paths were valid, and that my affinity as well as my intelligence pointed me toward the Sanatana Dharma, Hinduism. But I also still felt that it was difficult to adopt a religion so foreign to one's own culture, and I thought I still might salvage my relationship with Christ. I thought I should give it one last try.