I had a dream last night...
Round 1: Preaching with a manuscript. Total success.
Round 2: Preaching without notes. Total failure.
I think it's funny how our conscious and unconscious play with each other. Am I so inundated with seminary life that I actually dream about preaching? My preaching class was over 2 months ago! Eff...never underestimate the layers of affect our environments carve into us.
I'm currently writing a history paper on the relationship between christianity and empire from the church's conception to contemporary times. There's just a little bit of research included. As I see the braided relationship between imperialism and religion surface in the annals of christianity, I can't help but wonder what my dreams will be in a month from now.
What we choose to expose ourselves to matters--really really matters! I feel deeply penetrated by the information in front of me. I feel it restructuring my knowledge base, synthesizing itself with already held concepts, moving into opinions, ad infinitum. The intellectual enterprise--both external and internal (if one can draw such a dichotomy)--is fascinating!
The subjects of scholarship can impact a scholar in ways totally unbeknownst by her. And yet, we are free in the choosing. We had the option to choose the topic for this paper. Clearly my worries (and outright fright) about american imperialism colored my choice in this instance. And yet I am seeing strands of economics, nationalism and religion within empire in new ways. I chose what would form me and yet am being formed in ways I could not predict. (Perhaps a polemic on the relationship between control, freedom and choice.) Funny how a look back can shed such illumination on the present. I love history--albeit always a myth, no matter how objective the historian purports to be.
On another note: It is my spring break this week. I will be spending most of my time writing this history paper along with creating my middler paper. I say "creating" because this is no ordinary expository assignment. Any PSR peep will understand me. For the rest of you: the middler is a mid-seminary assessment process that includes getting 2 faculty (Benny Liew and Randi Walker), 2 student colleagues (Wade Meyer and Courtney Brooke), a denomination representative (Jane Quandt), my internship supervisors (Debra Salan and the honorable Glenda Hope!), and my on-campus supervisor (Marjorie Wilkes) all together in the same room to read, reflect on and evaluate a 15-20 page paper I have prepared that covers everything I should have learned in seminary by now. In essence, it's an event that helps the student discern what she knows, what she doesn't, and how to go about further academic preparation for what she desires in her future.
Courntey was generous in pointing out how reliant I am on the middler to decide my future for me. (She's always generous in her "calling out"--the sign of a true blue friend. This is also something Wade is capable of doing; hence the selection of these two as my student colleagues in the process.) I keep saying to people "I'll know a lot more when the middler is over this spring" hoping my own cluelessness won't be sniffed by the inquisitive. The truth is, I really want to stay in school but don't feel smart enough and worry about the accumulation of yet more student debt. They say fear should never be a decider, but they also say to avoid debt like the plague. "They" say a lot of shit. I also feel drawn to social work, certain kinds of ministry (like Glenda Hope's kind of ministry) and greater training in Tai Chi Chuan.
The world feels like a spring of unending possibilities to me--my own fear the only non-nourishing factor. There's something scary and daunting about choosing one career path over another, especially when feelings of self-doubt and reluctance to decide (anything) are personal norms. I tend to forget that most people have 4-7 career changes within a lifetime. Something about that does not appeal to me. Perhaps having watched a father dabble with vocation and grad school for 10 years (right before he died!) while my mom suffered the economic consequences is underlying my fear here. I want to do the right thing, but don't know what it is.
In the present moment, the "right thing" is to keep researching the byzantine empire for my history paper.
And so I shall.
Gladness in the mist of clouds...
Peace,
Ejoye
No comments:
Post a Comment