After the Surrender

It’s been a while since I wrote about the power of surrender, about choosing to “lay down this fight” in which my body was the battlefield, not only for others to wage their wars of domination, but where I attempted to conquer my own physical being, and not out of love but out of loathing.

It’s been a while since I made that choice, and for a few weeks I was able to rest in that place of surrender, trusting that God would bring healing to the deep self-inflicted hurts that had been brought to light.

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.

Love What Is

Greetings, Dear Ones,

Another couple of turbulent weeks have gone by.  Back at the beginning of May I finished a chapter of my dissertation, or so I thought.  Then I met via Skype with my faculty supervisors, and got a real kick in the gut.  Short version is, I am attempting a theological interpretation of the stories of saints of long ago, but my original supervisors are no longer with the university, and my new ones aren't theologians.  They are wonderful, accomplished, and caring historians, but each time I submit my work with an interpretation of the meaning of the text as the conclusion, they freeze.  They tell me quite honestly, "It's not what we do."  And they're right, but it is what I do, or hope to do.

It has taken a couple of weeks for me to recover from their criticism, in part because it feels nearly unresolvable (although that's an open question still), but even more because it strikes so deeply at what I feel I'm really good at.  And it's really important to me to be acknowledged for being good at things that I think I'm good at.  See where I'm going here?

Still Becoming

Hello, Dear Ones,

I've been pondering what to blog about lately, which may be why this one's a little late.  There was the weekend I spent at a conference, where I learned quite a bit, mostly about how well I do (or not) when away from home and my usual comforts and disciplines.  There is the dissertation chapter I sent to my supervisors recently, and the resulting shift of focus, from Cuthbert of Lindisfarne to Brigit of Kildare.  And there's the online course in World Religions that I'm teaching this summer -- a course that I've taught many times now, but in a whole new format.  It took a lot of work to get the course built, and we didn't know whether it would actually run or not.  Today is the first day.

And then I saw the illustration at the top of this column,  "still becoming," with that gorgeous embroidered butterfly.  (Thank you, Louise Hay.) And I thought, that's it.  Taken individually, none of these topics is all that compelling, but all together I think they say something important about a life of faith.  At root, it's all about the process of becoming.  How many grandmas do you know who are working on doctorates? How many adjuncts in the humanities are pushing their administrators to allow them to teach their first online course?  How many academics in their late fifties are attending a range of conferences, not to present, but just to find out which ones address their research interests?  Sure, there are some out there, but not many.  Or at least, I haven't met many.

March 17

Greetings, Dear Ones,

I've been thinking about St. Patrick all day, as I imagine many of you have as well.  Maybe it's the Guinness, maybe it's figuring out what you have in your closet that's green.  Maybe it's just the fun of everyone being Irish for a day that makes this such a popular holiday. But like Valentine's Day, the saint behind the celebration has gotten lost.

The thing about Patrick, of course, is that on the one hand he's been lost to us for a long time.  He lived in the 5th century, and by the 7th century people were trying to tell his story, but for their own purposes, and with precious little to go on.  And on the other hand, we miraculously seem to have two (two!) documents that are genuinely his own testimony to his life, and work, and faith.  Absolutely remarkable, really.  And, whatever we think was important to know about Patrick -- snakes (there weren't any) or shamrocks (no evidence for that one, either), even the lovely 8th century prayer known as St Patrick's Breastplate -- those aren't the things he thought were important enough to write about.