Idle and Blessed

Today at the yoga studio someone asked me what I did besides this. A moment or two of blank staring later, I replied with considerable stammering: "Uh, besides yoga? Besides working here? I, uh, well, I just graduated. I have my Masters. Just, kinda, doing this for now. You know." *Inner mental face palm* "Oh, wow! What'd you study?" "Divinity. I have a Masters of Divinity. Um, it's a theology degree." "You can study divinity?? I imagine it's kinda hard to make that lucrative, unless you want to be a holy person?" "...right. Yeah. Basically...or like work in a church." At this point I give myself a mental high five for being the dumbest MDiv ever to graduate and have this conversation. It occurs to me I could have said something about being an admin in the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer, but my mouth was still slightly agape at the holy person suggestion, and I haven't started the aforementioned job ...

I've been tired for so long. Grad school is over. The wedding is over. Moving is over. This month is the liminal space between the hurry of the Spring and the settled routine of the Fall, and yet it doesn't feel restful; it feels like the same old exhausting. It feels like tired. There are no ultra marathons, no big events to plan, no challenging projects, no hard jobs. There's just time with my husband, a few hours of work, cooking and baking, cleaning, resting. Running, not too far. Reading, mostly poetry. Doing yoga. But I'm tired. I don't understand the cycles of my energy. I don't know why some summers I feel like going to Russia again and others feel like this. I don't understand the delicate balance between work and rest, people and solitude, noise and quiet, or how sometimes past seasons, when not intentionally processed and prayed through, can drain me like a low-grade fever underneath the surface. But my energy is precious to me, because I ...

This piece is somewhat confessional. In roughly 30 hours my last MDiv exam will be over. I'll close the books, set down the laptop, maybe even sleep a while...and wait for it to hit me that I'm a seminary graduate. The past three years have been a long road, and it's no secret I've struggled here. I've never once been sure McAfee was the right place for me. I only feel affection for Atlanta roughly one day per month. I crave the mountains, and meaningful work, and the kind of community I had in Nashville. Some days I feel like an outsider here. But I've done good and hard things, like get married and run an ultra-marathon, and even though I've spent the last three years wrestling with God and this school, I am not sorry I came. It has been too hard, but it has not crushed me. Here are a few things I learned. 1. Choose wisely. Don't go to a Baptist seminary if you are not Baptist. Don't go to a small seminary if you want an academic religion d...

We must not portray you in king's robes, you drifting mist that bought forth the morning. Once again from the old paintboxes we take the same gold for scepter and crown that has disguised you through the ages. Piously we produce our images of you till they stand around you like a thousand walls. And when our hearts would simply open, our fervent hands hide you. -Rilke Laying down the paintbrushes today, and trying to find God in earthier places. Where and how? I'm still learning.

I haven't been very good about writing lately, privately or publicly. There is only one reason this bothers me, and it is that when I do not stop to write, time and moments speed by me like a blurry train, unexamined and unincorporated. I need to put pen to paper - to make my memories into meaning, and to find God moving in the chaos. Thankfully God does not stop talking when I do not listen well. It just takes me longer to hear anything. Lately every time I get quiet I've been thinking about the boxes I put myself in - for routine and steadiness and reassurance - boxes that paradoxically sometimes bring freedom and enlightenment and sometimes shame and limitedness. Like "I have to run 40 miles a week in the off season." And "I need 'x' amount of money in savings." And "I have to keep my 3.95 GPA." All of my arbitrary goals and shoulds that bring me so much joy when I fulfill them and so much guilt when I fail. My husband often loves ...

"One week." That was my first thought as I awoke this morning. One week till I say the vows we wrote. One week till I hold his hand and walk into the future, into the dark. In many ways I have one more week - seven more days of the life I have been used to living. In more ways, my life has already changed. To us, the wedding is an acknowledgement by our community of something that has already begun to happen. We have already combined our hearts and lives. We are already in the process of marriage. This is the party to celebrate. But of course there are ways in which I will not know what I am doing until I do it. Sometimes when I stop and think about it I wonder how it happened that I am now a week away from getting married. I don't know what it means to be a wife. I think at bottom it means blindly agreeing to walk with this man into the dark - whatever comes, good and bad, triumph and hardship, the complete unknown of the rest of our lives. I imagine it's kind ...

I was the kind of kid who climbed trees. Back before I learned how to be afraid of things, I would stuff a notebook and pen into my back pocket, climb with bare feet, and write poems from the safety and seclusion of the highest seat in our sycamore tree. I liked being able to see farther, the breeze making the branch creak and bend underneath me. I also wrote down by the creek, sitting on large boulders my siblings and I called the King and Queen rocks, because they were thrones to us. I would see the water bend and bubble, keeping watch over my small kingdom, scooping up baby crawdads for fun until they pinched me. Whatever I wrote in those journals was garbage, but I remember thinking I was an artist, and that's what matters. All kids should feel like artists. And the earth made me feel that way. To this day nothing inspires me like the wild of an undeveloped landscape, and spending enough time in one makes me feel like a created and natural thing, mortal and real and ear...