Chasing Aliveness


I want the things that make me come alive.

I know that means not-Atlanta. It means not-church-ministry, and not-Baptist. It means not-office, not-sitting, not-idling.

What does it mean?

I’m really introverted most days, and that forces me to live with heightened awareness of my energy. Where it goes and when it returns, what things drain it and what things sustain it. I have to choose where I invest it, because when it gets down to the bottom of the barrel, everything else must wait.

My energy drains in the city.

My energy drains in traditional ministry.

I cannot be sustained in an office or cubicle, or in a life of being still.

I’ve been watching how my energy surges in academia done right, in rooms of people with ideas and solutions. Bioethics meetings. Management meetings. The days when I go in and out of yoga classes, ethics classes, running trails, and important work.

I am drained by monotony and jobs that don’t matter. I am drained by words that are too plentiful and meaningless.

I am energized by the ability to work on my own, be in my head, and collaborate afterwards. I am energized by physically moving around, by breathing the better air outside of our buildings. I am energized by being in leadership. Being in the sun. Being with the trees. Being with people in times of great challenge. Interceding. Being a voice for prisoners. Being a voice for the unborn. Asking the important questions. Telling the big-picture story again.

Joseph Campbell says follow your bliss. Parker Palmer says let your life speak. They mean move away from the things that threaten your aliveness.

They mean move out west.
And study ethics.
Work in a hospital.
Get outside.
Fill your lungs with better air.
Go it alone, maybe.
Do what you need to be alive and free.

What do you need to do to be free?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Wednesday Refrain

It's Wednesday today, the smack-dab-middle of the week; I didn't sleep again last night. Before the sun was up, my spirit was already bent beneath the weight of the day, like the trees under this new snowfall. A silent bearing, a stark remaining. My work is hard. I'm three years in, but there were three years before that, and four before that. Maybe it's not the duration so much as the intensity, the all-of-me that it requires, the vigilance and the attunement and the background-app-refresh of working with complex ideas day in and day out. Being a theologian means pondering the unknowable yet not turning away, almost as if what can't be known urgently must be known.  And indeed, it must. Or maybe the hard part is not the work itself, but coming to realize that who I am and what I produce is always going to be at the fringes of my profession. It's a reckoning with loneliness, I suppose. To look around and realize the brightest minds in bioethics are always going...
Read more

Staying Outside

So welcome to mid-September, when pumpkin drinks make their annual debut and candy corn lines the outer walls of grocery stores. But have you stepped outside in Georgia lately? It's still really summer, guys. I always have this frustration with our refusal to see a season all the way through. There might be some mornings when, if you wake up early enough, the dew on the grass and chill in the air talk to you about autumn. But I say let's be here now, in our summer selves, barefoot and warm in the sunshine. Autumn will come soon enough. School will get busier, fall races will be run, pools will close. But for now we have the magic of trees green and lush, tomatoes fresh from the ground, and a sun that flushes cheeks, and my soul isn't ready to come back inside yet.
Read more