Back to School

It's September, and for us students and teachers, that means getting back to the work of teaching and learning.  For the past several years I have actively been and done both things, teaching in a small college as an adjunct assistant professor in Religious Studies, as well as crafting my doctoral dissertation on three texts that tell the stories of early medieval Celtic (and one Anglo-Saxon) saints.  Both endeavors are stimulating and inspiring, both get my intellectual juices flowing. And what's particularly fascinating is that in both settings I find, in Wesley's words, my heart strangely warmed.
  

The 100-level World Religions class met for the first time this semester at 8:00 this morning.  Given the early hour, I'm beginning each class session with 10-15 minutes of breathing and qigong exercises, just to get some energy moving for all of us.  Every one of the 27 students in the room got up and humored me.  And we laughed a bit at how crowded it was, and how silly we felt doing these moves, and then we moved on to touch the beginnings of the course content.  It was relaxed, and several students were comfortable enough to speak, which is always a good thing.  A few students stayed to talk with me after class, mostly sounding really excited about the things we're going to study.  A true heart-warmer for any teacher!

I also got to connect with several of the leaders of our Interfaith Group which was begun last year, and has generated lots of energy and interest on campus.  Our big effort this year will be to host an evening seminar on politics and religion with one of my colleagues.  I can't wait for students to have a chance to dig in to some of the most pressing concerns of our times -- and they can't wait either!

But tomorrow -- tomorrow I will put my syllabus aside, along with the handful of DVDs I need to preview for later in the semester, and get back to my dissertation.  This crazy, sometimes overwhelming research project examining texts written in Latin between 650 and 700 AD by monks in (mostly) Celtic monasteries has become a genuine passion for me.  The chapter I'm finishing up now is on St Brigit of Ireland, abbess of a monastery of nuns and monks in Kildare.  Many scholars criticize the text as being a random collection of mostly pagan-inspired miracle stories.  But the more I poke at it, the more I see it as a collection of parables that portray Kildare as the New Jerusalem and City of Refuge, the fulfillment of all God's promises, and Brigit becomes a Christ-figure who enacts all the miracles of healing, feeding, and liberation that Christ performed in the New Testament.  It's amazing to watch the puzzle pieces fall together, creating a whole new vision of a text that some thought they knew quite thoroughly, and others thought wasn't much worth knowing.

So for the next three months, with not much of a break, I will be teaching my classes, learning more about my saints, and at the same time learning from my students and teaching others to see my saints and their stories with new eyes.  It is a privilege to be able to do this work.  It feels like God's work -- it feels holy to sit at my desk and consider either what to write, or how to prepare for my next class.  It feels all of a piece, as though the random threads are weaving something new on a loom I can't even see.  My job is to keep doing the next thing, and trust that the pattern has already been designed in the Divine Mind.  One day, I may even get to see it.