Skip to main content

She Does Seminary: Almost Done Year One

I am one exam and zero classes from the end of my first year at seminary. One little teeny tiny totally cumulative Greek exam.

No big deal.
(ha)

But seriously. The last eight eight months have flown by. The last year has been just as fast. To think that this time last year, I was training my replacement at my job, counting down the days to unemployment, travel, summer freedom, and SCHOOL.

And now here I am. A whole year smarter, and a whole year more aware of how little I know.

Many people have asked how I feel at the end of this year, whether it's been a good one and whether I like being in school... my answer to all of it is YES.

Yes. I like school.
Yes. It's been a good year.
Yes. I feel like it has been a year of Yeses.

Last weekend, I went to a retreat/workshop led by my spiritual director. It was called "Pray Through Play" and talked about the principles of improvisation and how they relate to our daily lives and relationships with Jesus. One of the foundational things that makes improv work is the choice to say "Yes, and..." to what another person contributes or offers.

That's what I've been learning this past year. To say an enthusiastic, "Yes, and..." to the opportunities, feelings, people, and ideas that come across my plate. (Of course, one can't say yes to everything, but saying 'No' well is also an important tool - especially learning to say it when you mean it, instead of saying, "Yes, but..." as a way to avoid saying no. But I digress.)

This is the point: I am happy with my life. Maybe the most content I've ever been. Is it perfect? No. Am I perfect? Aitch-to-the-Ell, no.

When I think back two years, to the spring of great anxiety, and another two years before that, to quitting my job and moving across the country, I'm amazed at the internal changes that have happened. I'm excited about the direction of my life, and, quite frankly, I (mostly) like being me.

So let's all high-five. Celebratory high-fives for all of y'all who've been around for this whole time, and high-fives for those of you who've joined my life more recently, and high-fives for those I don't even know are reading.

It's just a good day for high-fives.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Simone Weil: On "Forms of the Implicit Love of God"

Simone Weil time again! One of the essays in Waiting for God  is entitled "Forms of the Implicit Love of God." Her main argument is that before a soul has "direct contact" with God, there are three types of love that are implicitly  the love of God, though they seem to have a different explicit  object. That is, in loving X, you are really loving Y. (in this case, Y = God). As for the X of the equation, she lists: Love of neighbor  Love of the beauty of the world  Love of religious practices  and a special sidebar to Friendship “Each has the virtue of a sacrament,” she writes. Each of these loves is something to be respected, honoured, and understood both symbolically and concretely. On each page of this essay, I found myself underlining profound, challenging, and thought-provoking words. There's so much to consider that I've gone back several times, mulling it over and wondering how my life would look if I truly believed even half of these thin

I Like to Keep My Issues Drawn

It's Sunday night and I am multi-tasking. Paid some bills, catching up on free musical downloads from the past month, thinking about the mix-tape I need to make and planning my last assignment for writing class. Shortly, I will abandon the laptop to write my first draft by hand. But until then, I am thinking about music. This song played for me earlier this afternoon, as I attempted to nap. I woke up somewhere between 5 and 5:30 this morning, then lay in bed until 8 o'clock flipping sides and thinking about every part of my life that exists. It wasn't stressful, but it wasn't quite restful either...This past month, I have spent a lot of time rebuffing lies and refusing to believe that the inside of my heart and mind can never change. I feel like Florence + The Machine 's song "Shake it Out" captures many of these feelings & thoughts. (addendum: is the line "I like to keep my issues strong or drawn ?" Lyrics sites have it as "stro

Esse - Czeslaw Milosz

I'm on a bit of a poetry binge this week, and Monday afternoon found me lying on the luxurious shag rug of a friend's tiny apartment, re-reading some of my favourite poets (ee cummings, William Carlos Williams, Czeslaw Milosz). It is an adventure to re-open a collection and wonder what will pop out, knowing something you've read before will strike you afresh, or you will be reminded of a particularly moving line that you had somehow forgotten. Like this piece from Milosz, which floors me. Every. damn.* time. The first time I read it, I lay in a park with a friend (this same friend who offered me her rug as my reading burrow) and demanded that I share it with her. I spoke it carefully, and then, into the post-reading silence, I slammed the book shut, and dropped it as loudly as I could onto the grass. "I'm never reading anything again," I declared, "What else is there to say?" Esse I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro st