Running, Rain, Race

You know your life is crazy when a class has to schedule a working brunch on a Saturday.

You know you're an introvert when you nearly cry one night because you feel like you have too many friends--and too many parties of people want to schedule a fall foliage roadtrip with you.

All week, there has been rain.  That may be the only consistent thing about it.

Monday night, before the rain started, I went running with a friend.  3 miles, longer than I've run in a good while, and I felt invincible.

Then, a sore throat Tuesday morning.  Subdued atmosphere at the Divinity School, due to rain.  Something feels off in the community.  But at least my class downtown, in the undergrad American Studies department is wonderful and life-giving!

Wednesday, another life-giving class at Yale Law School, followed by lunch with our artist-in-residence, a playwright.  Afternoon finds me sipping sherry at the Institute of Sacred Music's weekly colloquium.  What a collegial atmosphere of musicians, artists, literary-types, and scholars!  We have a house dinner in the evening, and it's less awkward than our first--we're warming up to one another now.  Although, I go to bed that night wondering if I'm starting to become a bit like a Tiger mom in the house, what with reminding my younger house-sister and brothers to do their chores and pay me back for the cleaning supplies I purchase.

Thursday is a roller coaster.  Sitting in class in the morning, there is this ache in my heart.  It won't go away, so I decide to.  I leave school and head home to give myself a minute in solitude.  When I finally return to campus, I run into two of my dearest friends.  We talk in the hallway.  We go into the chapel to pray.  More talking, more of the Spirit flows through our communion as we meet more people and continue to talk.  Then, I go to a class on Contemporary Christian Spirituality, whose topic is of utmost interest but whose instructor and class format drains the life out of me.  I can't wait to go to my church home group at night.  When I finally make it over there, there is food, fellowship, deep sharing, and listening prayer.  

Friday, and I've slept 10 hours as I continue fighting off this cold that has been encroaching upon me all week.  I have lunch at a local church, which I do not attend but where I feel very much at home.  I get some work done--first inside my car while it rains outside, and then in a coffee shop.  I come home for dinner.  I attend an evening event, held inside our chapel--one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement has come to Yale Divinity School, and the students who have shown up--as well as members of the community--are ready to talk about and not around the issue of race.  The energy is so incredibly positive; it lacks the cynicism and bitterness that I have often felt at YDS.  There is new wine ready to be poured out into our community, and the new wineskin is being stretched and formed.

We hang out for the reception until late.  I don't feel drained.  I feel energized by the people who are here.  My pastor and his wife have also come--he is a YDS alum.  There is spontaneous singing and dancing as one man plays the piano and leads us in call-and-response lines.  There is a lot of laughing.  And hugs all around.  This is what community is.  This is what it means to be a people.

The rain continues to pour as I head home, but I'm unfazed.  Something has broken through tonight.  All the oppressive humidity and cloudiness is behind us.  The rain is coming down, and new life is going to spring up.  YDS, get ready.  Change is coming, and we're all going to be a part of it!

A Snob

I am a snob.  A condolences snob.

It occurs to me that perhaps some people find it good to feel that others understand what they are going through during a time of loss.  "I know how you feel...I've been there before..." or, "This reminds me of the time I, similar to you, had this kind of experience."  Perhaps there is a sense of solidarity in knowing that the comforter has gone through something similar.

I'm not that kind of person.

I believe that one can never fully understand what another person is going through.  Anyone who has ever read anything about bereavement knows that when someone else is going through something excruciating and difficult, there are no words you can offer.  Just sit there and listen.

During the difficult times in my life, only a few friends have known how to be an empathetic presence. They have acknowledged that my situation is unique to me, and have sought to understand ways in which my losses are particular to my person.  I am forever grateful to those friends!

A Rant

When I'm tired I rant, and I'm feeling chronically exhausted these days.

So, some thoughts:

The church tends to favor:

Males
Married
Musicians

I'm not male, I'm not married, and I don't like to market myself as a musician.  I've always felt like an outsider to church leadership, even though I've always known that my spiritual life is much stronger than many in church leadership.  This is why I have no interest in going into "ministry." My work is always more valued and appreciated in the secular setting--hence the pull towards chaplaincy.

Yale Divinity School tends to enable:

Episcopalians
Extroverts
Egoists

I'm not Episcopalian, I'm not an extrovert, and I'm continually asking God to work on my ego.  I thrived at Yale Divinity School last year because I refused to be a part of the system, and my refusal to get sucked in gave me the freedom to blossom and be myself.  This year, I am an unwilling part of the system because of my role as Community Life Co-Coordinator, and my task is to be a humble yet bold agent of change in the culture of this school.

A friend asked me last week what I was looking forward to this year.  I said, "Graduating!"

As much as I've loved the opportunity to study at Yale Divinity School, I also feel that my first year was too wonderful to be repeated, and I'd like to move on.  Year Two has been tiring already, and most days I'm too exhausted to even put my rants into writing.  So whenever you see that I've blogged, you'll know that I actually got enough sleep for once and have enough time to sit down and actually write!  Thank goodness for that on this Sunday =)

Swimming by Moonlight

Quarter-mile, low-tide Sound
Four friends under moonlight found
Our titles, stress, and clothing shed
Into night's warmth and water--led,
pulled by spontaneity,
We ventured far as eye could see
No fear of sharks or drowning, for
Our salty swimming pool's floor
Was firm and soft beneath our feet
And night's dark shadows just as sweet
As friendship's bond--a baptism
blends past and future like a prism.

Relaxing

Oh, the joys of having the house to myself for the day!

My four roommates are all at Orientation--two of them are volunteering as returning students, and two of them are attending as new students.

I used this opportunity to do some cleaning, wiping down countertops and stove tops and doing some bathroom cleaning.  There is something quite cathartic about getting on one's hands and knees to scrub a bathtub and clean a dirty floor.

It will all get dirty and messy again, but it did my soul good to take care of the spaces that I (and my roommates) inhabit. If only cleaning one's heart were so easy.

My weekend was jam-packed.  Orientation all day Saturday for the Institute of Sacred Music, where I met tons of interesting people and felt incredibly privileged to be invited to a community of scholars of the sacred and the arts.  The Professors in the ISM are wonderful, and I gleaned so much just from the cursory introductions.

On Sunday I attended 3 separate church services--making up, I suppose, for 3 Sundays in August when I traveled to and in California.

I've also had meetings for my new Community Life Coordinator job, and those will continue onwards until graduation.

I have bitten off way more than I can chew for a year's worth of work and community involvement, and I have no idea how I will do this.  I keep turning to the hope of finding rest in Sabbath, whether that involves scrubbing bathtubs in an empty house...or fleeing to Nature when the weather cools.

School has not even started yet, and already I am looking forward to being done with it next spring =)

Returning, Part Two

I'm back in New Haven, and I've hit the ground running.

It was so hard to board the plane in Los Angeles--California was just so nice and I didn't want vacation to end.  I prayed my way through the hours in the air, and by the time I landed on the East Coast, I felt like my heart was finally in a place to look forward to the new school year.

Once I got going my first day back, I was right back into the swing of things.  The switch flipped from "off" to "on"!

I knew I needed to see a few individuals--those that I've connected with spiritually and through prayer--as soon as I got back, and thankfully, I did!  Their fellowship and prayers over me have helped me feel strengthened and ready to face my upcoming schedule.

It's been wonderful to bump into other members of my community here at YDS, too.  I'm ready to challenge and be challenged, and to both give and receive.  There are good things in store for this year, and I want to be a part of whatever change and growth is coming our way!

Reconnecting

This is the first time in my life that I have so many friends who are younger than me in age.  Ever since I was a girl, friends have either been around my age or older.  The year I turned 25, I hung out quite frequently with some friends who were up to 15 years my senior.  I was constantly absorbing life lessons from my friends.

Now, I'm living with housemates who finished high school the year I got my master's degree.  Oh my!

Back in California--or elsewhere in the world outside of New Haven--friends are having babies and buying homes, adjusting to married life and getting job promotions.  Because I'm a student, it sometimes feels like time stands still, and age doesn't matter.  What matters more than life experience in the academic context is often the ability to have and articulate ideas, to reason and to feel--and not necessarily to do.  The rubber doesn't hit the road the same way in school, and it is certainly a privilege to be suspended in a space of exploration and reflection--without immediate real-world consequences.

I've learned so much from my young friends at YDS.  They are much brighter and more confident than I was at their age.  They seem to be less handicapped by certain things in American culture that seemed inescapable when I was growing up in the '80s and '90s.  Their futures are bright, and they have the privilege at being in Divinity School at an Ivy League before they've even hit a Quarter Century.  This makes it exciting to be a student again--my world has expanded by being in close contact with younger souls.

It's nice, though, to come home to old friends, many of whom also happen to be older.  These past few weeks have been a nice counterbalance to my past year.  There is something so comforting about conversing with friends with whom one has history.  Whenever I come back to LA, I know there are friends welcoming me with open arms.  It isn't hard to reconnect and be refreshed by their presence.  And for that, I am grateful.

An old Girl Scouts song sums it up perfectly!