ENLIGHTENMENT

Elaine Greensmith Jordan

We hear a good deal about spirituality these days, about spiritual growth and spiritual insights. Books on how to live a fulfilled spiritual life sell by the thousands, books like Your Best Life Now or The Purpose-Driven Life. I don’t read those books, but I’m a lot like their readers: I want spiritual insights so that I might grow to be a finer soul. My need for enlightenment is so obsessive that I began, a few years ago, to dream of going to seminary to study religion.

"I hate your stupid car," my 13-year-old daughter said one lovely fall morning, interrupting my secret thoughts about God. She stood in my bedroom doorway looking formidable in her nightshirt and mammoth high-top sneakers.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, surprised by her loud voice so early in the day. "My car has nothing to do with it. You’re going to school. It’ll be okay."

I finished making my bed, knowing Margaret wasn’t finished.

"That car sucks. I wish I lived with Daddy," she said and stomped off to her room.

We weren’t talking about cars. My daughter had voiced our misgivings about starting the school year—her starting middle school and my beginning a new semester of teaching English at San Diego High.

I sat on the side of my bed to put on my teaching shoes. The black leather flats seemed like the heavy boots of a mountain climber. From her bedroom came sounds of Margaret getting dressed and banging around as if kicking every piece of furniture.

A moment later I saw a 40-year-old single mother in my mirror and wondered if she could face another year of high school students and the irritating man in the supply room. The mirror-lady knew I wanted to leave teaching and study the great religious teachers. Thoughts of leaving my daughter crept into consciousness too. If I were free of her, I could advance toward my spiritual goals.

Daisy, my spaniel, gazed up at me, her sad face reflecting my disquiet. "Cheer up, old girl. I have to go to school. Take care of Margaret." Sounds of fury still vibrated through the walls.

I pulled off the ramp onto the freeway, and my rusty old Chrysler stalled. "O God," I told Steve, the student who rode with me to school. "I’m so sorry."

"Doesn’t matter," he said. Steve had the tanned face and easy-going nature of a genial Huck Finn. "Good excuse to be late."

"I take this as a sign from God."

"Been mentioning God a lot," he said, stretching and peering out at the passing cars.

I persuaded myself in the next weeks I’d had signs from God—in the dog’s face, in the breakdown of my car, and in the discomfort of my shoes. I must leave teaching and go to Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. I’d take my difficult daughter and our dog and slip out of my teaching shoes and into the sneakers of a graduate student. Margaret would grow out of her defiance in the quiet of a seminary in a college town.

"Are you kidding?" Margaret bellowed when I told her my decision. She stomped around the kitchen in her enormous high-tops.

"We’ll have an adventure in Berkeley. You’ll like it!" I said, my voice coming from some absurd place where resides the Great Mother who makes me talk like that. "Maybe some day you can follow your dream too—and go to beauty college." I knew Margaret could never manage beauty college.

"You going to be a priest?" she asked.

"No, no. You know women can’t be priests."

"I hate that stupid car!" she shouted, hoping to frighten me.

I stayed frightened for the next two years in Berkeley while suffering with my daughter’s absences, her hatred of school, and episodes of stealing. I’d walk the dark streets late at night, Daisy on a leash, searching for Margaret and feeling sorry for myself. I was never left alone to study the divine mystics and master theologians.

You can guess the ending of this search for enlightenment. Margaret finished beauty school a competent skeptical adult. Meanwhile after my years at seminary and then in ministry, I’m not sure I’m enlightened yet. I know I’m not qualified to make judgments about spiritual qualities in others. The state of my soul is difficult to figure—and I still drive a stupid car.

—Elaine Jordan is a retired minister living in Arizona. More about her adventures with her daughter will be published in The Chrysalis Reader and The South Loop Review in the fall of 2006.