Florence D. Amamoto wanted to teach since she was in the first grade, but the insecurities of a female Asian-American first-generation college student led to a somewhat circuitous path. Being in college during the Vietnam war--and during the rise of the Black Power and women's movements--shaped how she teaches American literature and how she thinks about the purposes of higher education. The four years she spent helping with biological research (and birdwatching) widened her world, as she prepared to head off to graduate school. Helping a professor with a survey of the educational use of the Southern California deserts reminded her there are many things one can do with an English major! She feels lucky to have spent her career at an institution that has supported her interest in vocation, diversity, higher education, and religion. On the cusp of retirement, she knows she will miss the students but is looking forward to doing more reading, traveling, English country dancing. . .and further vocational exploration.
When Jacqueline A. Bussie was little and people asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she always answered "authoress." The thought of becoming a princess made her gag, while becoming an author(ess) gave her goosebumps. As a first-generation college graduate and the first woman in her family to go to college, Jacqueline never dreamed of becoming a professor, let alone a theologian or director of an interfaith center; but, blessedly, she's discovered that those vocations give her goosebumps too. Today, Jacqueline is the award-winning author of three books--The Laugher of the Oppressed (2007), Outlaw Christian: Finding Authentic Faith by Breaking the Rules (2016), and Love Without Limits: Jesus' Radical Vision for Love With No Exceptions (2018). As Professor of Religion, Co-Chair of Interfaith Studies, and Director of the Forum on Faith and Life at Concordia College-Moorhead, she is amazed and grateful that every day she actually gets paid to do what she loves most: 1) interact with incredible students, 2) write, and 3) try to make the world a more compassionate place.
Jeffrey Carlson went to college right out of high school and bombed out. A commuter with a sick father at home, he would divide his time between helping at home and staying out too late after working at a restaurant. He often arrived late for his first morning class, took a nap in the car, and then, later that afternoon, was awoken, chastised, and drummed out of his vehicle by his best friend. When he quit that university after one term, he went from office to office, collecting signatures; he remembers that no one asked him why he was withdrawing. He tried again the next fall at another school, where things went better. Later, when he was a faculty member at that second school (DePaul University), he found himself deeply involved in the reinvention of the general education program. Soon enough, he was hooked on the "why at all" questions of higher education, later becoming a department chair and then associate dean at DePaul, and then a dean and interim provost at Dominican University. He now lives by twin mantras: "Ask why," and "Get out of the car."
Growing up in a small city on the plains, David S. Cunningham's idea of "interreligious encounter" was having some friends who were Lutherans and others who were Methodists; his most radical act was dating a Catholic in high school. Things changed at Northwestern University, where a few students wore turbans, some fellow dorm residents had no pictures in their rooms, and, on one day in October, his workaholic debate partner suddenly did no work at all. David was fortunate to have professors (and an envelope-pushing university chaplain) who helped him think of his own faith in non-exclusivist terms; still, his eventual academic specialization (in Christian theology and ethics, at Cambridge and then at Duke) meant that he learned less about other traditions than he would have liked. Fortunately, the last five years have provided him with many interfaith encounters, particularly through his friendships with the authors of this volume. His own ongoing process of vocational discernment led him to Hope College and to the directorship of NetVUE, where he is learning to navigate the most challenging interfaith endeavor of all: being taught how to do his job by the NetVUE program coordinator (a Calvinist!).
Rahuldeep Gill was still a minor when he was dropped off-from a sedan and a minivan-at University of Rochester by his mom, dad, two sisters, and grandfather. They left him to pursue his pre-med track as expected, but medical school was no longer on the agenda when he left five years later (Hey, it takes some of us longer, ok? And I earned an extra certificate!). Instead, he chose to pursue a prescription-free doctorate on the Santa Barbara coast. He was born in Chandigarh (Punjab, India), and raised in Cambridge and Billerica (Massachusetts). He now plays rec league basketball (badly) in the Western San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles (California), where he teaches at California Lutheran University and lives with his family (including a new puppy named Z-Bo that his wife let him adopt).
Katherine (Trina) Janiec Jones was 11 years old when she started reading two books at about the same time. She had often heard people say that she should read the Bible, so she sat down on the sofa and started on page one, but soon started skipping around. She did find the Psalms to be interesting, so she made an appointment with an Episcopal priest to ask some questions. She was miffed when she received a dismissive verbal pat on the head, rather than the deep exploration of hermeneutics that she wanted (though at the time, she didn't really know what the word meant). The second book was Pearl Buck's Mandala. She hasn't read this book in over 30 years and doesn't remember the plot, but she does remember it as the beginning of her life-long fascination with India. After Davidson College (more confusing and interesting books) and the University of Chicago Divinity School (where she finally learned about hermeneutics), she now helps students at Wofford College to realize that it's okay not to understand texts at first glance. Her current plans involve re-reading Mandala to see what her adult self thinks of it.
Rachel S. Mikva was raised with the benign illusion that she could be anything she wanted when she grew up. Although born with many privileges and blessed with loving, supportive parents, it wasn't quite true: alas, becoming a ballerina wasn't in the cards. At age seven, she briefly entertained becoming a nun (after watching a film with a wonderful vestal heroine), until she learned all that was involved. In junior high, an English teacher thought she might become the first female president, but after the 2016 election, she was glad she didn't try that. Rachel was a designer and production manager in the theater before becoming a rabbi-a progression that makes more sense than one might think; theater and ritual both have the capacity to transform our perspective through the power of sacred drama. Eventually, believing that a rabbi is above all a teacher, and remembering that the people who made the biggest impact in her life (outside of family) were her teachers, she became a professor. She currently teaches at Chicago Theological Seminary, where she serves as the Rabbi Herman Schaalman Chair in Jewish Studies and Senior Faculty Fellow at the InterReligious Institute. Not a ballerina, but it keeps her on her toes.
Younus Y. Mirza started college thinking he was going to be a lawyer and make a lot of money. He envisioned a future of tailored suits and power lunches, rather than nights of endless grading. However, the next year 9/11 occurred-and suddenly he was intensely aware of American misconceptions of Islam and about the disconnect between the United States and the Muslim world. He embarked on a course of study in Arabic, International Relations, and the Middle East; he also lived in the tiny Gulf State of Qatar for two years, studying and teaching Arabic. But he got homesick and returned to complete his PhD in Arabic and Islamic studies at Georgetown. He then travelled to the deep south of Mississippi for a post-doctoral fellowship at to Millsaps College, where he learned that Muslims were not the only ones who cared about scripture. He soon developed a strong interest in the relationship between the Bible and the Qur'an and their common stories and figures. The following year Younus moved to his current position at Allegheny College, where he teaches college students who are searching for their callings and trying to better understand the world that we share.
Many meet Anantanand Rambachan for the first time in his role as a medical examiner-visiting crime scenes, meticulously examining evidence, and engaging in intense discussions with his team of investigators. He is admired for his ability to remove a shoe and put on a wading boot while standing on one foot. He teaches his associates never to see corpses, "but complete human beings that don't exist any longer in this particular time and place." Or is this perhaps all an allegory for the life of scholar of religion? After all, he studies people who have passed on, collects evidence meticulously, reads between the lines, formulates reasonable conclusions, and argues about these with his academic gang. (He also has occasionally read manuscripts in advanced stages of decay.) His training as a scholarly examiner took him to a Hindu monastic ashram in India, the University of Leeds, and, since 1985, St. Olaf College. Vocation is a new subject for his reflection but, like every challenging case, he sees it as a wonderful opportunity to think anew and to learn in deep dialogue, this time with the NetVUE team. He never had so many tasty (and lengthy) meals as a medical examiner!
Tracy Wenger Sadd grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where her primary memories are of a Christ-centered, hospitable, service-oriented community, whose ministers and teachers always wanted her to button her coat in winter and stop asking so many questions. Believing that everyone has many possible callings in both work and life, Tracy has traveled to more than 40 countries, wondered what life would be like if she had been born in another place and time, and hopes to live long enough to see time travel become a reality (yes, she likes science fiction). She knows she could have been happy pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology, being a lawyer, running a large-scale ranch, or consulting in the non-profit sector. Her latent vocational dream is to live in a house in Maine overlooking the ocean and to write books; yet everyone who knows her would say that, within ten minutes, she would be out and about, looking for a new adventure. She said she would never return to Lancaster County; and yet, here she is-teaching and doing ministry, at Elizabethtown College.
Blessed with a short attention span, Matthew R. Sayers has been a serial hobbyist as long as he can remember (baking, writing, carpentry, quilting, woodworking, camping, and painting, among other distractions). In college, he mastered the art of moving on, meandering from Engineering to Computer Science to Philosophy to Religious Studies to Asian Studies. His capacity for being distracted by new shiny objects was channeled into an interdisciplinary approach to various . . . ooh, sociology! . . . Oh yes, theodicy is an interesting problem. . . . Oh look, Sanskrit! After thirty-two years in school, from preschool through two community colleges and three state universities (each at least twice as large as the previous one), he found a position as a religion professor at Lebanon Valley College; only then did he grow up and figure out what he wanted to be (besides entertained). He brought with him the privilege to ignore the world outside the scope of his own interests; but ironically, at this small, isolated institution, he learned to look beyond a wealth of entertaining distractions. He now works to channel his creative urges and eclectic interests toward helping students see the world beyond their own assumptions and perspectives. He is trying to be a teacher.
As the oldest son and middle-child of a psychiatrist, and grandson of a psychologist, Noah J. Silverman missed his calling to go into mental health professionally, but has amply contributed to the profession as a patient. Growing up near the campus of the University of Chicago, where both his parents worked, he further unconsciously rebelled against the life choices of his parents by becoming a thespian; his portrayal of Barnaby in his high-school's production of the The Matchmaker is still quoted by his mother to this day. Sensing too much parental acceptance, upon graduation he traveled to Israel/Palestine, where he serendipitously discovered what would become his long-lasting vocation in interfaith engagement (for a far more detailed account of this episode, see Noah's chapter in this volume). Ultimately resigning himself to the wisdom of his progenitors, both immediate and ancestral, he embraced his academic and Jewish identities and pursued undergraduate and graduate degrees in religious studies. Along the way, he encountered and joined Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), where he has had the blessing of working the bulk of his professional career, most recently as the Senior Director of Learning and Partnerships. His parents have (mostly) forgiven him for his erstwhile transgressions, while he is slowly learning to do the same for his own son.
Homayra Ziad is a writer, dreamer, scholar-activist, and mother. She was raised within Islamic spiritual traditions, with a love of God grounded in music and verse. Her vocation lay on the crossroads of spirituality and poetry, but she tried for years to ignore it. Instead, she applied herself with great stubbornness (and a shocking lack of interest) to a number of other "practical" disciplines, including economics and international relations. At some point in her mid-twenties, when the writing was clearly on the wall, she found the courage to study religion full-time. As a God-seeker and activist, she hoped to "find herself" in graduate school; but while her doctorate from Yale was fodder for the intellect, it was not as productive for her creative soul. Still, she taught Islamic Studies at a liberal arts college for six years. Looking back, she was indeed "finding herself" at every step; as her spiritual journey unfolded, she was drawn to the affective work of building interreligious communities. Homayra currently leads the integration of the study of Islam and engagement with Muslim communities at one of the oldest freestanding interfaith organizations in the country. More recently, as a mother raising Muslim children, she has rediscovered her creative soul. She is returning to the crossroads of spirituality and poetry that once nourished her, creating resources for artful living that spring from Islamic traditions.
