Ever Shifting Life

Now that I am happily home with my second of 10 M.Div distance learning 2 week long "Intensives" under my belt, it seems a good time to process my "ever shifting life" as I understand it. I always leave for intensives with a few feelings. First, I cry as the stress of exams has mounted and leaving my whole life for two weeks is a less than thrilling thought because I love my life! I always arrive in Holland, MI at Western Theological Seminary and am "half present" for about the first three days. As one professor often quips "I gird my loins" for what I think I know is to come (as I expect "weeping and gnashing of teeth"... A very Matthean quip to add to your bank). I go to the opening dinner and start to become more fully available to my peers. I then go to the opening "spiritual formation retreat" totally not ready. It's a funny thing about "retreats"... if you are not ready to retreat, then it is no treat at all. In the case of this year, the two weeks prior to the intensive were "killer", so I was still cramming in all sorts of coursework. Also, I find that I like guided meditations and conversations and don't ever do very well with "go be still" (just ask my mother).

Then the intensive begins. Classes begin. Learning becomes official and academic. I have found the first three days to be the best time to get the most important knowledge in. I am "all on" and want nothing more than to learn. Each day we have mid-morning worship which has a way of warming me to my surroundings. I find that I slowly wind each day until I am so very keenly aware of my peers, the place that I am, and my Lord and Savior, that all I can do is cry at the insurmountable wonder of it all. This generally goes on for about 4 days mid intensive. I revel and enjoy. Then I get to a place where I am "stir crazy" and can't seem to cram in anymore knowledge. My notes get more and more sporadic and I feel as if I just need a day to reflect on all that I've learned so I can "file" it in the proper place in my brain. I start to check out from my own "all on" intensity, but I still LOVE spending time with my peers. I learn from them, I enjoy their company, and I hear the good news of what is happening in their ministry contexts and home lives (I also find dissent, but that is a conversation for another time). They become part of my world in such a way that I wish I could take most of them back to Pella with me to continue the journey in a more present way together.

Also simultaneously happening as the academic, social, and spiritual bits occur are peer group times, a written paper due regarding present spiritual place, psychological tests become due, formation is pushed from "mold" to "must". I enter ready to be formed...a "tabula rasa" and leave feeling as if under a microscope that I would like to gently push away for a while. Then a curious thing seems to happen each time. I become so happily engaged in my surroundings that I actually feel as if I have a double life. I have friends, supporters, wise peers (and not so wise), learning, & teachers, all that my husband are not a part of. By the time the last day comes I am so sad to leave it all because it has become a sort of "home", guilty that it is "my" place and not "our" place, and so happy to be going to my actual home and to my life that I adore to prevent it from turning onward without me any longer.

Yet, in all of that I find the most tiring part of the journey to be that we all seem to think that we both know and can explain God. I get to a place where God is SO MUCH BIGGER than our feeble attemps at understanding and I feel exausted just listening and watching others as they either share what they think they can know about God in a way that is foolish and arrogant, and those that guard themselves so closely that you wonder what dagger scares them so. I wish we could get to a place where we could share more deeply, honestly, and passionately without being rooted in camps like "left" and "right" and forcing corners in round places. I hope on one of my next 8 trips I will not only see God in others, but will hear other talk about Him more often and in a way that lets Him know that we long to know more and not that we think we already know it all.

Thus you have it. What it is like to journey from your life for two weeks twice a year to grow and learn in a "distance learning" M.Div pastoral training program. You also now have a more concrete understanding of why I love my dogs and long for their whistful, easy, bubbly, constant, affection.

MIA- This is Work!

Dear Blogger.com... I have missed you so. Sadly for you, you come after all of my friends. I forget what they look like now, so you too are neglected.

Yikes is all I can say. This week has been HUGE. (HUGE, HUGE, HUGE). For starters I am taking three courses this semester that I really enjoy at present (a bit of a turn from last semester). I am taking my second semester of Hebrew, an Old Testament course, and a Spiritual Formation course. They are challenging (which I both love and despise at the same time) and awesome, but each decided to kick it into mega-hyper-drive this week. In Hebrew we went from basic grammar lessons to here parse out the first nine verses of Jonah, I had an "extra paper" do in formation (and have not even cracked my book for the intensives that start next week), and I really have to know every detail of every line of the penteteuch if I plan to eek out in OT (btw, we had an exam this week in that class). Don't forget my dear friends, that I also have a full time job and sadly not the kind where I can check out at 5pm. I have had evening engagements all week long on top of the 8-5. It's funny, I am in a study group at my church and we just talked about how God calls us to "life with margins". At that point one month ago I thought "boy, I should probably find some more margin space in my life". Now that is such a far cry from my reality that it must be a joke. Before I can try to find margins in my life I need to try to condense it down to just one page first!

Sometimes it's hard to know if I should laugh or cry. For now I think I'll blend the two. I won't stay long... it's back to painstakingly parsing out Hebrew verbs for me. All that to say, I miss the blogosphere...and my margins.