I am neither like them nor different from them…I simply am.  Figuring out what that means and where that leaves me is the hard part.  Because there is comfort in knowing that the ones who surround you have been there through the ages of your years.  I lack a certain sureness that reality is not false. 

So I turn to things that I believe will bring me hope and comfort but never do.  Each time my master plans fail, I regroup.  Like a weary sinner, I begin anew, vowing that this time I will be different, that I will succeed in finding happiness within myself, apart from the support of those around me.  Convincing myself that the rawness is nonexistent, I begin to craft out of a vision for what my life should look like but does not.  I have become so skilled at dishonesty that even I believe the lies I tell myself. 

Since it is impossible to craft reality, I usually don’t get very far.  As talented as I am at playing pretend, the charade can only continue for so long.  After a while, exhaustion seeps in and I give up the act. 

forget an apt…let’s just move here.

Up until this year, I had lived in the same house my entire life.  I changed schools just three times in eighteen years and learned to drive in the same parking lot that I learned to ride my bike.  Nashville seems like it would be pretty big but as I’m sure you know, its really not, especially if you live in Green Hills.  My comfortable childhood of familiarity was wonderful but left me completely oblivious to how often life changes, how quickly we are forced to adapt, how many people make up this world.  Obviously I knew all of these things but I’d never experienced them as reality…in other words, it turns out I didn’t really know them at all. 

Going to college served as my personal culture shock. 

It was terrifying but wonderful, necessary but shocking, and ultimately joyful. Having now emerged on the other side, I can’t even begin to express how weird it is to be back in this city, away from the place with which I was finally beginning to fall in love.

They say that when God closes a door, its because He’s opening up another. But in my case, it feels like He’s yanked me away from the doors I was just beginning to discover. Why did I have to leave Richmond right when He was showing me why I went there in the first place, right when He was not closing, but opening so many new doors, introducing me to some pretty incredible people? 

I’ve been back almost a week now and I’ve had a lot of time to ponder that question. I’ve walked through Hillsboro village, still amazed at how many people are willing to line up in front of Pancake Pantry and still enthralled by the Fido culture. I’ve run on the Boulevard at an absolutely absurd hour of the morning.  I’ve had coffee with friends whose stories of their college experiences are vastly different than my own and eaten froyo with sweet Adelaide. In writing and even in reality to some extent, it all seems the same.

I don’t think I realized how much I would grow this year because I thought I already knew myself pretty well. I had a firm grasp on what a good life looks like and how I would attain that life in Virginia.  I thought my growth was pretty much done. 

A camp friend gave me a quote by Carl Rogers at the end of last summer, a quote about growth that has taken on a whole new meaning for me:

“This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the fainthearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one’s potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life. Yet the deeply exciting thing about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming.”  

Looking back, I’m so thankful that I had no concept of what it means to become and of how much stretching this process really involves. Having been launched into the stream of real life, I’m already amazed at how much work it takes to make the decision to be who you want to be. I spent a lot of time first semester writing vigorously and praying, wondering why the heck I was in Richmond, Virginia. I had no idea, looking back, how influential these times were in preparing my heart for the wonderful second semester that awaited me. For the wonderful people- Meredith, Abby and all the rest I’ve talked about- that would touch my life. It was a transition, for sure, but a necessary one.

And now I’m in yet another period of change. Lots of people tell you about the transition that college is but no one warns you about moving home. Nashville might appear the same, but my experiences this year have given me a new view of my hometown. I hope that this summer, I can come to better appreciate the place in which I grew up.  Maybe that’s the new door and maybe that’s why I’m here. Hopefully our Fido dates will help make it clearer. ;) Love you dearly.

I don’t know that I’ve ever really stopped to think about what Easter really means.  Even now, having taken the time to let the truth of this day sink into my heart, I probably am still not as blown away as I should be by what Jesus did for me 2000 years ago.  This morning in church, the pastor talked about surprises and asked us whether or not we like to be caught off guard.  Personally, I love a good surprise.  Events and revelations seem so much more exciting and unbelievable when I am not expecting them.  But the Gospel ruins the surprise that Easter Sunday was so many years ago.  We cannot fully comprehend the sadness that permeated Good Friday and Holy Saturday because we live through them knowing the joy that Sunday brings.  I wish that I could experience the kind of wonder that Mary Magdalene must have experienced upon discovering an empty tomb.  I wish that I didn’t settle into accepting Christ’s resurrection as normal and expected.  Because it was so far from normal and so far from expected- it was an incredible event that means everything to me today.  I’m so thankful for the beauty of Easter and the opportunity to sit and reflect on its wonder…because my failure to understand the meaning of this day doesn’t change what happened. 

“It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. It’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can’t be packaged, and it can’t be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.” Eugene Peterson

A powerful movement.

Reading through your post the other day, I began to process the meaning of the phrase “pure submission.”  It’s one of those churchy sayings that I heard a lot growing up but never fully understood.  For a long time, I thought it meant saying certain things, acting how people expected me to act, essentially being “good,” whatever the heck that means.  Looking back, I was so incredibly wrong.  I also assumed that, in submitting purely to my faith, I would finally cease my incessant analysis of the world and everything in it.  In case you couldn’t guess…wrong again.  Because thought and submission, they’re not separate entities; one without the other breeds an aimless wanderer. 

This morning entailed a lot of analyzing, of thinking, of praying.  I naively supposed that the hardest part of volunteering would be waking myself up at 8, finishing my Spanish homework, and somehow making it to the bus stop by 9:45.  Thankfully, I managed to flag down Landon (the shuttle driver) at promptly 9:47 and we proceeded to drive off campus, onto the interstate and very far away from the University of Richmond.  In reality, it only took us 15 minutes to reach the North side of the city but it might as well have been hours.  I knew a lot of things coming into volunteering: Metro Richmond schools have far less resources than are needed to successfully educate the thousands of kids that walk through the various school doors, Henderson Middle School is located in a low-income area with copious incidents of crime, many children are not blessed with the resources I took for granted as a 4^th grader, the list goes on.  But I didn’t actually understand any of these things that I knew so well.    

The minute I entered my assigned middle school classroom and attempted to assist the 6^th grader staring me down from across the worn and wobbly wooden table, I realized my mind was finished for the day.  The thing that got me the most was that she, along with half of her class, didn’t care that she was reading on a 3^rd grade level or that her 11 year old friend was being taken out of class by a security guard.  It later occurred to me that maybe they care too much and in the face of what seems like imminent failure, it’s easier to feign indifference.  Either way, there was no chance I’d be able to leave that classroom thinking all of the normal college thoughts: psychology, spring break, midterms. 

Walking back to the shuttle, I wished I wasn’t such a thinker, that I could just SUBMIT already to His will and to the go with the flow lifestyle that I sometimes pretend I lead.  All day, I was frustrated with inequality and constantly switched back and forth between desiring to change the world and feeling hopeless to do so.  Why do all of the white kids in this city go to one school and all of the black ones to another?  I honestly thought this was the 21st century.  Why was the teacher I shadowed understandably worn out, frustrated and lacking in her drive to educate kids who don’t want to be educated?  The more I pondered these questions, the more I simultaneously hated and loved my brain’s insistence to do so.

In the end, I guess questioning, analyzing, praying, all the things that I spend my days doing, are firmly interwoven with pure submission.  My skepticism and frustration aren’t me turning away from Him but rather trying to better understand why in the world I chose to turn towards Him in the first place.  Being “good” is good but it doesn’t help me figure out why I believe what I believe and it certainly doesn’t help the 6th graders at Henderson Middle School improve their reading skills.  So basically, I’m destined to be a purposeful wanderer, whatever the heck that means. 

Michele

While my tendency to always be thinking was once captive to me, it seems as though I now lay at the mercy of its whims as it drags me through periods of worry and valleys of doubt. I use my thoughts as a tool, fervently grinding the machinery of my brain as I attempt to work through the questions of faith and the existence of God. It is as though I am convinced that upon finding the perfect formula or a flawless proof, I will at last be able to relax in the assurance of God’s existence and truth.

However, as the year dragged on, my efforts continued but yielded little fruit. I found myself still lost in my faith and stumbling through the darkness of doubt. My fruitless efforts exhausted me; I craved liberation from the weight of my thoughts. I needed to live, to block out the constant deluge of questions that was pounding my brain and to float in the calm waters of peace. My mind was a window, clouded with the clutter of constant thinking. I wanted so desperately to wipe this window clean; to remove the specks of worry, fear, and doubt from my brain so that the truth of God’s light could finally shine into my soul, filling the dark corners of my mind with wisdom and the long untouched crevices of my soul with hope.

Unfortunately, this peace seemed a millennium away from the constant turning of my mind; that is, until I stumbled upon my sanctuary. On the campus of a seminary near WashU, I found a hill that sweeps the land, giving those at the top of the hill a bird’s eye view of life and a sun-drenched, grassy place to sit. As I rested one morning in the glory of this hill, the lines of the following poem, which I was given this summer, alighted on my memory.

Terns

Don’t think just now of the trudging forward of thought,

but of the wing-drive of unquestioning affirmation.

It’s summer, you never saw such a blue sky,

and here they are, those white birds with quick wings,

sweeping over the waves,

chattering and plunging,

their thin beaks snapping, their hard eyes

happy as little nails.

The years to come — this is a promise —

will grant you ample time

to try the difficult steps in the empire of thought

where you seek for the shining proofs you think you must have.

But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding,

than this deep affinity between your eyes and the world.

The flock thickens

over the roiling, salt brightness.  Listen,

maybe such devotion, in which one holds the world

in the clasp of attention, isn’t the perfect prayer,

but it must be close, for the sorrow, whose name is doubt,

is thus subdued, and not through the weaponry of reason,

but of pure submission.  Tell me, what else

could beauty be for?  And now the tide

is at its very crown,

the white birds sprinkle down,

gathering up the loose silver, rising

as if weightless.  It isn’t instruction, or a parable.

It isn’t for any vanity or ambition

except for the one allowed, to stay alive.

It’s only a nimble frolic

over the waves.  And you find, for hours,

you cannot even remember the questions

that weigh so in your mind.

                                                                        - Mary Oliver

As the lines of this poem streamed through my mind, their truth and wisdom slowly wiped clean the window of my soul, allowing God’s light to filter through. I felt the rays of the morning sun and this inner light align, and I finally began to understand the act of submission, the act of clearing the clutter and thoughts of my mind so that God may find a home in the void of my soul.