Back in action

The school year is in full swing now and I could not be more busy or more content. The only thing that is missing from my day to day is…yeah, there isn’t anything. I miss Adam and my family often, but I feel so at home at Wesleyan that I can hardly imagine what May will bring–graduation and ultimately the end of an era.

Amidst all of the joy of seeing old friends, starting class and getting back to work there have been a few special highlights. For instance, when I helped move Ethan Rapking into his dorm. I know that his family’s history here is much longer than my history here, but I felt a very profound connection to Ethan as I watched him walk the Orange Line for the first time. It’s amazing to me over and over again how small my world is, how truly tiny and intimate are my surroundings.

I recently told the PPR that my most educational moments happened in the third pew back.  Between my mom, brother, and sisters and amidst a wealth of fellow parishioners is where I learned most of the good and beautiful things, and it is awesome knowing that that is where Ethan and I both come from…further to know that there is something so affirming at Trinity Charge that we both ended up in this place–Wesleyan. We tend to seek that which comforts us, and if we have to leave home to go to school we want to find a place that is just like home, a place that can become home. It’s no coincidence that that place is Wesleyan for Ethan and I. Truth be told, I haven’t actually expressed these things to Ethan, but he knows them.

Another special highlight is getting to know the people at First Church Clarksburg. I am interning there this semester as a religious communicator. It is going to be a privilege to work with the pastoral staff, especially Elizabeth Baker (as she has taken on a particular role as my field supervisor). The struggles and victories that they face as a church within a changing city, as a church within a stratified socio-economic reach, as a church challenging their identity I will learn what it means to communicate effective and appropriate messages to the people. I’m so excited. I don’t know how much I will be helping them, but I know that they will help me further my scope of the Trinity’s interactions with the Trinity’s people. Praise be to God.

Lastly, it has been an extraordinary honor for me to be a part of Dr. Rev. Marvin Carr’s last graduating Christian Education class here at Wesleyan. Dr. Carr is guiding my experience in Senior Fieldwork for my final requirement for graduation. Dr. Carr is doing this as a semi-personal favor to me, as there is no full time CHED. department faculty right now. Three days a week Dr. Carr and I meet for an hour to review and to learn about Christian Education. Having this one on one time with him is challenging and informative, an experience some would crave. Dr. Carr’s expertise and drive is something of a marvel in this Annual Conference and at this college. I am honored that he would spend so much time for my own, individual education.

I would at this time like to thank the readers who understood my absence during this time of transition. I hope to be more faithful as the school year presses on!

Blog-cation

School will be starting soon, and so will my life. I promise that a more stable flow of information will be coming to you soon.

I’m well aware that my online journal has been suffering lately, but I have been taking a lot in.  I will post some of my thoughts later this evening.

i lied

So, I lied. I did not come back to my “last day reflections” because it was too much for me.

Instead, I have turned to looking forward; what I want this school year to look like, what I want my wedding to be like and how I want to spend my last year at Wesleyan, what I want to learn in my next internship…

School starts back in a couple of weeks and I just want not be sad about this summer ending because new things are starting and when the fall comes, summer isn’t a good place for my mind to live.

last day and counting

tomorrow is my last day. more sad reflections to come.

just packed, so tired…sorry i can’t write it all down right now. Rent, drinks and the Tricky Fish. mmm.

just being us

I was described once as a “shot in the arm.” Not altogether painful, but stinging and surprising. Not altogether scary when it happens, but anxious as it approaches. Hurtful for a moment, leaving peace afterward. Not something I came up with, I assure you. But not something I deny either.

I am a nervous, compulsive, anxious control freak with a weakness for sharp and witty literature. Political to a point, and a lover of all things vanilla. A bit of a mystic, with a head for reason.  Compassionate when it is convenient and self-centered. I like to laugh and sting and frighten and obey. There are a lot of things about me that are broken, and there are a lot of things about me healed by self-awareness. I’m just a big, brown-eyed puddle of a mess looking for mop in the Trinity.  That is me. There is only one (she writes as the world sighs in relief) I cannot be all the people I love, though I have tried over the years of my youth. I can only take pieces of those people. I take the best pieces and let them fill in the gaps, and I just remembered why that was.

When I was in eighth grade Mary Poling made me and the rest of my classmates memorize a famous soliloquy from Hamlet, most defined by the line “to thine own self be true.”  But there is more. There always was with Mary.  The part of the speech that encompasses the “self be true” phrase goes:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee.

I have been thinking about this quotation all day. I used to think that Willy was trying to say that we have to be ourselves, that he was giving advice. Now I see that it was not advice, but observation.  Polonius, the father giving this speech, is telling his son Laertes what works–not what he think works, but what he has observed works.

“And it must follow as the night the day…” that has always been my favorite part, ever since I was 13 hearing it for the first time.  The night follows the day no matter what. Even when you want the day to last forever, the night comes and it comes naturally and beautifully and brings with it a sunset–unique and hopeful.

People cannot help but be themselves, and therefore “canst be false to any man.” It occurs naturally and beautifully. Some people try to hide from themselves, shying away and bringing disillusionment to others, but eventually the day will be followed by dusk and falsities followed by truth.

As you enlightened readers know, what God has ordained us to be is ourselves. Psalm 139:13-14 says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

Sounds like Polonius and the author of the Psalms both saw what worked, and it works no matter the era and no matter the language. It intertwines something like this:  To thine inmost being be true. It follows as the night the day that all your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Willy and God. God and Willy.  God, Willy and me–just being us.

Harry Potter+Jedi=light of God.

I just read this article about how human bodies emit light. The glow to our skin is app. 1,000 times less than the naked eye can see, but nevertheless we are all glowing. You can check out the article for yourself (on the blogroll as “body light”).

Now, as much as I am tempted to make a half-hearted joke about living so close to Dupont chemicals, I can’t. I can’t joke about it because something sacred emerges out of such scientific news. I am a big believer in the relationship religion and science have, how powerful it is to have evidence yet how superfluous evidence is sometimes. I can view theology as an academic pursuit and still appreciate “faith” as it is understood by some. However, every once in a while a story pops up that reminds me that science is decades behind faith. Science is helping people of God understand things they already knew.

Point in case: we are wrapped in light.

Psalm 104:2 says, “God wraps himself in light, as a garment and stretches the heavens like a tent.”   Isaiah 2:5 says, “Let us walk in the light of God.” (how much stronger do you think God’s light is, than ours?)  The scriptures about light are abundant, and now we know why. Jesus is the light of the world and light is with us all the time, science says so. hrm. Light–it’s in us and on us and surrounds us–literally.

For those of you who think I’m taking an evangelical fundamentalist turn with my “faith being ahead of science” talk can take comfort in this: the article claims that the most intense light is emitted from one’s head. I recognize that the most powerful tool, with the most “free radicals” (the cause of the light) is found in our very free thinking-reasoning heads.

What wonderful creatures we are, created in the likeness of an even more wonderful being. Who would have thought that light is coming from every surface of our being. I feel like a cross between Harry Potter and a Jedi. Praise be to God; the God of love, light and free radicals.

aluminum coated.

it is when i expect God and myself to come up with something to say that i cannot.

expectation is a terrible feeling, it’s the realization that my shiny, new intellectual devices are not really plantinum like in the commercials but just aluminum coated, rusting away one layer at a time.

pray for me and pray for others.

artist and Creator

Yesterday when Adam and I returned from our Cowboy Christmas adventure he showed me his make-shift workshop where he designed and shaped the stained glass for my birthday cabinet. He showed me how he cuts the glass and how he measures and smooths and manipulates the glass so that it becomes art. He taught me how to score it and how to crack and break and control it. I watched how careful he was with the glass, how he cared for it and held it.

And I thought to myself…this is why I love the stained glass windows in church. I know that there are churches that meet in warehouses and in school gymnasiums and churches that meet in old skating rinks, but I will always love and miss the glass. I thought for a while that it was just the tradition or just the beauty of the glass, but now I really know.

It is the perfect medium to tell the story of God.

Originally used as a pictorial Bible, stained glass is a powerful medium because of the metaphor it creates. How the artist creating the stained glass design has to know the principles of the glass in order to use it. How fragile and colorful and small the glass is in the artist’s hands.  An invidual piece of glass has to be put with other pieces to make sense. It takes time and careful design. The artist entertains the glass’ whims; you have to break it and tap it carefully for it to become art. You have to nudge the glass, you can’t force it. Adam took something incomplete and lonely and made it whole, made it admirable. He used the glass’ weakness to break it and form it to other glass’ weak spots in order to make it strong enough to be art.

People and glass are so much the same, as are artist and Creator. What a fantastic and powerful tool we have in our sanctuaries. It is glass and it is story at the same time, and I like stories.

Merry Christmas (in July)

I am going on a little Christmas in July camping trip this weekend, so no internet.  However, with or without wordpress I will use my time to reflect on the things around me.

It’s just as Martin Luther once said, “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.”

Amen.