Galen Blum – Living on the Cutting Edge of Myself

  Galen Blum grew up the daughter of a professor in a rural upstate NY community. She was the only “believer” in a family of staunch intellectual atheists. Her inner world never matched her outer world. Her family lived abroad numerous times where her dad taught, but her restless soul needed wings. At the age of 16, she ran away and never came back. She traveled to Canada, New York, Boston, England, Turkey, and India. She spent 20 years as a theater teacher, composer and star in a one woman show of her own design, then reinvented herself and became a history teacher for the next 25 years and moved to Santa Fe. The cosmic “nudge” hung around the edges of her soul until 6 years ago she entered a Methodist seminary. She completed that degree in 4 years, while also taking care of her parents and being with them till the end…or “an” end. She became a deacon of her church and then a priest, but one day had to stop to address the enormous meteor sized lump in her throat, which she later found out to be God calling one more time to not only think outside the box, but go one step further and ask “What box?”!!.

 “For many of us, the inner call to challenge ourselves never grows old. We feel this nudge to explore beyond the limitations of our cultural norms. My whole life has been like that and yet there is a very real and valid part of myself that wants to crawl under the covers and hide…especially these days! So here I am with you in the magnificent netherland of possibility dancing on the cutting edge of myself, discovering quietly my Judaism and all that may mean or not mean to me. I so look forward to sharing this with you…one of the few vestiges of experimental spiritual exploration in our little world.”