I remember walking onto the Close for the first day of class in September 1998 and feeling like I was exactly where I was called to be and exactly where I never imagined I would be. I’d assumed I was done with being a student when I finished my PhD at Fordham years before. But now here I was, feeling irresistibly drawn to this new and unexpected learning opportunity.

The spiritual direction program was called Thursdays at General. I’d rearranged my full-time work as a community college counselor to fit into four long days so I could spend entire Thursdays as a student. The fourteen members of our spiritual direction class represented four or five Christian denominations and an interesting cross-section of careers. Nine were women and most were laypeople like me. We quickly formed a warm and supportive community.

Under the leadership of Prof. Bill Doubleday and a team of outside spiritual directors, the spiritual direction practicum course met for six hours a week and had experiential components in addition to seminars and lectures. Even the lunch break included time with prayer partners. Outside of class we were expected to have several spiritual directees so we could receive individual and group supervision. Each term we made a weekend retreat at a monastic guesthouse. And the academic courses that followed the practicum were some of the most challenging I’d ever taken, taught by superb scholars like Drs. Elisabeth Koenig, Judy Newman, and Deirdre Good (laywomen like me!). It was a relentlessly rich and demanding experience.

Thursdays at General was not entirely integrated into the life of the Close. We were once-a-week commuters in an era when most students and faculty lived at the seminary. The year I started was the first year we had lunch in the refectory rather than takeout from Frankie’s. We were welcome to attend chapel, but it wasn’t easy to figure out which hymnal, prayer book, leaflet, flyer, or loose-leaf notebook to use at any given time. We earned certificates and degrees from our program, but we didn’t sign the matriculation book.

In my experience, it didn’t seem difficult to be a woman at General in that program and in the company of my classmates and faculty mentors. The interpersonal challenge for me was the insider/outsider dynamic that so clearly valued residential, ordination-track students. On the Close there were innumerable situations where we were subtly or not so subtly talked down to or treated as invisible. There was a lot of talk about “community,” but often it didn’t feel like it included us.

Nevertheless, I persisted. In fact, after spending two years completing the Certificate, I wasn’t quite ready to leave, so I stayed for another two years for the MA in Spiritual Direction.

After graduation I assumed I was done with General. But in 2007 I was invited to teach a course about lay ministry for MA students, and I accepted. Not long thereafter I was invited to assist in creating and teaching courses as an adjunct in the spiritual direction program, and I accepted. In 2015 I was invited to be in charge of the Center for Christian Spirituality, and I accepted. And now, almost a quarter of a century after I first arrived, I’m still here! What keeps me here now, what fuels my joy, are all the opportunities to offer spiritual welcome and to help others find new ways to do the same. I am exactly where I’m called to be.