Home.

Once I was finished with the semester, I spent a couple of days finishing things around Holland, worked a couple of hours, and then headed off to enjoy my 'free' time.

I was lucky enough to have wonderful and gracious friends in Chicago who let me stay with them for three whole days and two nights, which was probably the single best way to start off break that anyone could have dreamed up. They were all working at different points, which meant that I got some time to breathe, wander, and bond with Biscuit (the cat.) 

Then it came time to drive back to Fulton.

I decided once I got in the car, though, that a pit stop was in order.  I knew it would be slightly out of my way, but I didn't particularly care.

This is where I went:



"The Well"

Major bonus points if you know that this photo comes from Camp Manitoqua, where I spent a large chunk of my childhood summers.

This place was a home away from home for me growing up--it's the place where I was introduced to faith in a way that changed something in me. There, I saw people who loved Jesus not just because that's the way things had always been--but they had real stories, and real lives, and Jesus mattered in them. In a lot of ways, this place is responsible for who I am today.

I hadn't been there since 2007, when I was last a camper, and I probably looked like a huge creeper wandering around on a Saturday in December and taking photos with my phone.

I still don't care.

I wandered past the dining hall, the Well, the chapel, and Cabins A-F, across the bridge, and all the way up to Vesper Hill.  I just stood there for a minute, freezing, and remembered.

That hill, campfire burning on a Wednesday night, was the first place that I said 'yes' to whatever it was that God had in store for me.  I couldn't have been more than 9 or 10, and really had no idea what was going on, but I had a strange feeling that this was right, somehow. 

And it was.

And it still is.

And it always will be.

Obviously, a lot has changed since then. I've changed (thank the Lord!), and the world has changed.  Sometimes, that change is just overwhelming. I deal with change well, I think--I'm sort of used to it--but this year was just ridiculous.  As I drove westward, I spent some time thinking about 2012, and realized just how many times I turned my life upside down because something wasn't quite right. I dropped out of seminary, moved from Michigan to Illinois, got a job, got a different car, quit that job and started a new one, made new friends, reapplied to seminary, quit my job again, moved back to Michigan, made more new friends, and finished another semester.

All of that probably sounds borderline insane. But seeing this place again, and remembering how all of that insanity started--in a specific time and place, where God broke into my life in a very specific way--that gave me back my footing. 

Because it's easy to lose myself and my sense of call in all of this abstract God-talk that goes on in the seminary, I need that sometimes.  I need to remember where I've come from to remember that someone has control of where I'm going. Standing on top of that hill in the cold, I remembered all of those particulars, and all of the times that something entirely ridiculous and strange has happened to bring me here--to this moment, in this place.

Like that Stephen Colbert speech that introduced me to Knox College, or that Facebook ad that got me a job with SummerShine, or the time I spent planning InterVarsity's Large Groups that fostered in me this crazy sense of call. 

And now, I have photos and memories long forgotten from a place that changed everything.  That strange sense of rightness comes along with them.

"The Lord works in mysterious ways," says Elwood Blues.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

One year in.

As of Wednesday at 9:30 am, I have finished an entire year of seminary.

It took me a year and a half, but hey--who's counting?

And in the spirit of "thank God I'm done," here are a few things that I've learned over the last year and a half.  I've certainly learned a lot more, but these are the things that come to mind.

One. I'm a giant control freak. I really like to micro-manage everything, which leads to lots of neuroses when you have nothing to micro-manage.

 

Two. I'm a cat person.

 

Three. Living alone is the weirdest thing ever after being surrounded by people all of your adult life. 

 

Four.  I actually like the "real world," whatever that means.  I like being able to wake up and go to work every day and do something productive. On the other hand, I rather dislike waking up and realizing that I have a full day of class ahead of me.  There's only so much that I can fit in my brain in one day, guys.

 

Five. There is nothing more boring than inventory in the library basement. Nothing.

 

Six. What you do affects who you are, and who you are affects what you do. It's a giant circle that just keeps going and going and going.  One can completely derail the other, but they are forever and inextricably intertwined.  This has all sorts of implications for how we make choices.

 

Seven. If you find yourself asking questions related to the above, Desiring the Kingdom by James K. A. Smith is the best book ever. See also: Shaping the Christian Life: Worship and the Religious Affections by Kendra Hotz and Matthew Matthews.

 

Eight.  Humans are weird creatures, who do things like name their children Matthew Matthews. Who thought that was a good idea? 

 

Nine.  Humans also do terrible, awful things. Humans have a penchant for killing one another, it seems, on massive scales.  Humans abuse and neglect their own children, and others'. Humans mistreat one another so often that simple kindness is now a virtue heralded as wondrous.  We don't seem to understand that our lives are bound up with the rest of humanity's, and that we are not simply individuals coming together out of free will.  We are dependent on one another, and that's the way it ought to be.

 

Ten.  "Faith seeking understanding."  Faith seeks understanding without dismissing it because it's inconvenient. This means accepting things that we don't want to accept because they don't fit neatly into our lives. Things like climate change, like Calvin's thoughts on the sacraments, like discussions on gun control laws.

 

Eleven.  I have very little patience in general, and very little patience for purposely unclear messages.  If one has something to say, why not simply say it?  (I'm looking at you, textbook authors.)

 

Twelve.  I'm still a speech kid at heart.  I spent eight years of my life catching a bus at 5 am on Saturdays during speech season, and I miss it.  I still carry a lot of the lessons I learned there with me, particularly to seminary.  Words are important.  Inflection is more important.  Gesture only above your waist, and only when it adds to what you're saying. Be prepared, know what you're doing, and make sure you're on time. When others are speaking, pay attention. I could write an entire list of just the things that I learned from speech competitions, most of which I didn't know I was learning!

 

Thirteen. I'm slightly addicted to Facebook. This might be problematic in 2013.

Humans.

My mother told me for years that "you can't fix people."  I know that in my head, but I still act like I can. I want to make the pain go away, I want to give out hugs like anitbiotics fighting sadness, and I want people to wake up enjoying their lives.

But I can't make that happen.  No amount of smiling, (even though it's my favorite), no amount of holiday cheer, and no amount of wine can make that happen.

This is extraordinarily difficult for me to accept.  I mean, who doesn't want to make people happy?

But we can't fix.  I can't fix things like depression, or illness, or dementia. I can't take away grief, or hatred, or ignorance.  I can smile, I can encourage, I can give out all the hugs I want, I can make food, I can talk, I can argue, and I can simply sit and cry with people. But none of those things will fix the problems that this world brings us.  They just numb the pain a little.

The risk comes when you sacrifice your own sanity to give others happiness.  When you worry that sharing your problems and struggles in life might make someone else unhappy, so you simply keep them to yourself--that's when you've crossed the line. Eventually, you wind up curled up in a ball in your apartment for two days, afraid that calling someone would be an unfair intrusion into their lives.

So many struggle daily with this self-negation.  It's that little voice in your head that says "you don't matter." That little voice that continually says: "you exist only for the benefit of others."

And it's a hard cycle to break.  I'll argue that it's a harder cycle to break in the Church, with all of its (good and rightful) glorification of humility.  We talk about "emptying ourselves" and "giving selflessly." Those are good things to talk about when the problem is pride, but that sort of talk also feeds into this cycle rather easily. The problem is compounded when self-negating people try to out-self-negate one another to help.

What's the theological response to this?  What's a pastoral response? What's a human response?

I have no answers. I would love to just flip a switch and fix it, but...(see beginning of post.)

self-care fail.

Right now, I'm seated in a quiet corner of the library.  I'm working on a chapel service for tomorrow, contemplating the annotated bibliography that's due next week, attempting to work on my Holy Spirit and Christian Worship project due in less than a week, and sneezing all over the place.

Yes, I've caught the cold that seems to be everywhere. 

That's what happens, apparently, when you consume very little real food over the course of a week and drink coffee instead.

This is by far my worst self-care fail since starting seminary.

I am not a college student anymore.  I cannot avoid sleep to work on homework, I cannot consume more caffeine than food, and I must make grocery lists that include vegetables.

Lesson learned.

Worship and life

If you regularly attend a religious service or gathering of any sort (Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, whatever), I have a question for you.

How does what you do there shape what you do elsewhere?  Do you find that you think differently about the world than those who don't share that experience? How so?

God is faithful and good...

...even when I'm not.

"The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair."

falling in love with worship again

Worship planning is what brought me to seminary in the first place--it's where I found my sense of call. This is how I best tell God's story.

I'm not one for much in-your-face evangelism. Although when done well, it can be a really good thing in someone's life, it's just not me.  I'm more of a behind-the-scenes, planning and organizing, covert-messages type of person.

I particularly enjoy worship planning because in the absence of any formal training in theology, Bible, or Greek, this is how we learn who God is and what God's doing in the world.  Worship is not an obligation to add to our weekly schedules, but a gift. 

And this week, as I help to lead chapel for Advent at the seminary and work on end-of-semester projects, is all about falling in love with worship all over again.