Crossing the Currents, or How I Became a Jewish Postmodernist Feminist.

A journey of the spirit begins in the reprint files of Cross Currents.

Will you cancel your subscription when I confess that this long-time managing editor of Cross Currents did not originally apply for a job with the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life (ARIL) because, like Deborah, she was under the grip of inspiration? The truth is, she was just a Nice-Jewish-Girl from Detroit who was at a point in her life when she was glad to be a mere intern.

I had roused myself sufficiently to return to school at the College of New Rochelle and was majoring in communications and literature when a professor mentioned that Cross Currents was looking for part-time help. At the time I could not have explained the difference between a cross currant and a hot cross bun, and was frankly more than a little baffled when the managing editor, Ronnie Delli Carpini, gave me a copy of the magazine to look at while I waited to be interviewed. Finding nothing but liberation theology, ecotheology, and postmodernism, I was overcome by the hermeneutics of suspicion -- didn't these people ever need to stop for lunch?

I didn't have to wait long for the interview because Sister Nancy Malone, who was then wearing at least three hats (as treasurer of ARIL, co-editor of the journal, and the day-to-day director of ARIL operations), was in a hurry to go to the college chapel for the noon liturgy. The noon what? Ronnie explained that Sister liked to attend the daily Mass, but that did not mean much to me at the time. I began to wonder if the atmosphere would be a bit heavy; could I handle this combination of religious intensity and heavy intellectualism? Frankly, I also wondered about working for a nun.

When they sat me down in a semicircle with Nancy, Ronnie, co-editor Joe Cunneen, and book editor James Giles, I felt I was about to be grilled and served as a living sacrifice. You can understand why I was nervous. It was my first real job interview in years, and I was keenly aware that I was a self-employed designer, a former foot and leg model, a divorc[acute{e}]e, and a near heathen, applying to work for a major international interreligious association run by a bunch of Irish and Italian Catholics. Fortunately, they did not ask me content questions about the issue of the magazine I had just skimmed, and Sister Nancy's realistic description of my duties as intern -- which she described as boring -- did not seem too overwhelming. Then they asked about my qualifications, and, with equal frankness, I answered: "None." Toward the end of the interview Nancy asked me if I had any questions. With my usual subtlety, I blurted, "I'm Jewish and not particularly religious. Are you sure you still want me?"

It seems that at this point ARIL was as desperate as I was. The next thing I knew I was assigned to organize the forty-plus years of Cross Currents reprints which had been recently transported from Joe Cunneen's garage to his office. Since Joe is a devout believer in chaos theory, and organization is against his religion, the Cross Currents folks figured that putting his files in order would at least be a way to keep me out of everyone's hair until they knew what to do with me. To be fair to Joe, however, he did in fact know the year and issue number of practically all the articles that Cross Currents had published and where each had been filed. He reasoned that he would never be fired because no one else could crack his cryptic organizational code. But shortly after I arrived he fled for several months in Provence, leaving me to fend for myself among the stacks and stacks of reprints precariously piled up in an apparent indifference to both order and gravity. When he returned and found I hadn't taken flight screaming in horror, our friendship was cemented. Thanks to his tutelage, I can qualify as a reprint editor anywhere.

My organizational skills improved dramatically and my religious formation accelerated as I crawled around on the floor and climbed the shelves to locate reprints. Like Joe, I derived an insane pleasure from connecting the different cataloging numbers he had chosen with the corresponding article: Elsa Tamez's third world commentary on Hagar and Sarah (#204), or Carol Ochs's analysis of Miriam (#55b). This arcane knowledge -- indeed, the very titles of these essays -- impressed subsequent dinner dates, although I must confess that it might have also been a reason why I remained single.

Progress slowed somewhat when I tried reading some of these articles -- although I did stumble across more than a few that were helpful in my classes, including two by Jacques Ellul (#130a and #157a), and an entire issue devoted to environmental ethics (vol. 44, no. 2). I also discovered that even though the work was unquestionably mindless, my mind was functioning at full speed. Between the stapler and paper cutter, I met many of the century's leading religious thinkers: Martin Buber (#8a), Martin Luther King (#275a), Raimon Panikkar (#24 and #380), Krister Stendahl (#226), Elie Wiesel (#60 and #291); feminists like Rosemary Ruether (#326), Marian Ronan (#308 and #392a), Dorothy Day (#6), Dorothee Soelle (#6 and #50a); such literary giants as Samuel Beckett (#2), Vaclav Havel (#571 and #597), William Faulkner (#147), Annie Dillard (#l00b), T. S. Eliot (#384), James Joyce (#58a), Eugene O'Neill (#162), and Emily Dickinson (#202); and even the occasional useful piece, such as "How to Start your own Religion" (#282). I used to think that one could always find an appropriate quote in either the Bible or Shakespeare; obviously Cross Currents qualifies as a useful reference, too. Intimidated as I was by so many notables crammed into an 8' x 8' room, you can understand why I nearly toppled a bookcase full of reprint folders in my enthusiasm when Cross Currents associate editor and contributor, Eugene Fontinell (#56, #56a, #375), visited the editorial offices and wanted to see the infamous Reprint Room. He was duly impressed -- and tells me he still is -- when I was able to pull out the folders holding his articles with no wasted motion.

It is likely that my job advancement was due to my obnoxious corrections of the editors' atrocious Yiddish pronunciations, demonstrating to White Anglo Saxon Protestants how to kvetch as well as properly articulate the word, reminding ARIL officers not to schedule board meetings on Jewish holy days, and schlepping (my special expertise) mail sacks and buttering up the post office's periodicals supervisor. Perhaps the fact that Ronnie, the managing editor, resigned and moved out of the state also had something to do with it. Nevertheless, I began to take a pedantic pleasure in distinguishing between the journal's original ecumenical thrust in 1950 and its post-ARIL interreligious emphasis. Nor was it accidental that I deliberately registered for a couple of religion courses during my studies for a Master's degree and took special pride in nagging everyone at the office to read my A papers -- one on the Hebrew heroines, the other on the history of Chanukah.

But of course I always used my opportunities to learn. After the baton of leadership was passed from an Ursuline nun to a Presbyterian minister, Charles Henderson, I became even more personally, spiritually, and virtually involved with ARIL's activities. With Chuck's infinite patience I learned how to get on line [less than][e-mail][greater than] and surf the Internet [less than]www.aril.org[greater than]. Despite all I had learned about editing from co-editor Bill Birmingham -- who practically rewrote my first Cross Currents book review until it was publishable -- as well as from Nancy Malone and Joe Cunneen, intelligent and different demands were made on my skills by the new editor, Kenneth Arnold, who is both a deacon in the Episcopal Church and a practicing playwright. I began to see the project of being religious as one that constantly called for learning from those of different traditions, as something that continually stretched both understanding and compassion. Of course, I still did not un derstand some of the magazine's articles, but found myself looking forward to reading them.

Looking back on my experience, perhaps the most useful thing I learned was a more inclusive attitude toward religion. As I had suggested at my initial job interview, I was a haphazardly observant Jew, more interested in tradition (the food!) and ritual than faith. I really did not mind being cajoled to share the Shabbat and holy days with my Orthodox aunt and uncle; but reacting against some overly narrow interpretations of Judaism I had encountered as a child, I suppose I still resented climbing up those steep stairs to sit in the women's section. Of course, I quickly learned that religion at ARIL is neither that of the Christian Right nor the New Age Left. What was even better was that I could see it lived every day with both commitment and openness, discussed at lunch with high humor as well as seriousness. Yes, those very lunches I thought they did not stop to eat meant not only soup and sandwiches at the local diner but broad-ranging conversations -- recent topics included Latin American syncretic relig ions, Falun Gong, and Ethiopian Jewry, as well as The Catcher in the Rye, The Man Who Died, and A Canticle for Leibowitz. Now imbued with the ARIL/Cross Currents spirit, have become a mentor to other nontraditional midlife students returning to college, a soup-kitchen volunteer, and even an organizer collecting knitted goods and clothing for war and disaster victims.

Shortly before Sister Nancy retired in 1997, I off-handedly mentioned that I thought I had become more religious because of working at Cross Currents. "Perhaps," I suggested, "I was not as spiritually impaired as I thought."

With a knowing smile, Nancy said, "I knew that all along."

SHELLEY SCHIFF is former Managing Editor of Cross Currents.