We Will Know It When We See It

For the last seven months, I have been immersed in a journey toward graduate school. Ever since the cloudiness cleared and this step emerged as the next one for me to take, I’ve been spending a lot of my time visiting schools, preparing applications, writing essays and searching for scholarship funding.

The task often seemed overwhelming, and there were moments when I thought I’d drown in the sea of possibilities – so many schools, so little time. Sometimes I wondered if I’d ever be able to figure out where I should study.

So the road trips began. I visited Duke Divinity School, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Candler School of Theology at Emory University and Columbia Seminary, an almost-next-door neighbor to Emory in Decatur. The mail brought catalogs from other institutions in the Northeast, New England and even California. Each one carried a mixture of tantalizing courses and traumatizing tuition costs. Yet I kept remembering the people who assured me that there was money out there to help pay for seminary education.

It had been clear to me from the beginning that this path would not ultimately lead to ordination into the ministry but would more likely lead to a career teaching religion or theology. For that reason, I did not feel limited to the schools in the Lutheran tradition, my religious heritage.

One’s faith heritage is an interesting thing. I was baptized in the Lutheran church, and spent much of my life there. Since moving to Habersham county, I’ve been worshiping in a wonderful Presbyterian church where I have been nurtured well. Yet when I returned to my Marietta church for a long-time member’s memorial service, I realized how much I’d missed that Lutheran liturgy. It’s funny how seeds planted so young in life grow trees with strong roots that keep one planted in a particular place even into adulthood.

I applied to a seminary where I’d discovered there was a Jungian psychoanalyst on faculty (an area of study that I’ve enjoyed on my own over the years) at a moment of panic when I worried that limiting my applications to schools in the southeast might have been a mistake. When that school accepted me but offered no merit scholarships, a dear friend suggested I give the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago a closer look, as they might be able to offer more funds.

A little over a week ago, I got on a plane to Chicago, planning to visit two seminaries there. Prior to this trip to the Midwest, I’d not yet had a strong sense of pull to any one school. I’d connected very strongly with a professor at Vanderbilt and recognized that I could get an excellent education there or at Candler, both places to which I’d been accepted. But I found it curious that I’d not yet come away from any school with the feeling that it was the place I should go. But as soon as I walked into the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, I had this sense of coming home.

In his poem “Little Gidding,” T. S. Eliot wrote “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Yes, this school was a place I knew – I knew this way of worshiping, I knew these friendly people, I knew that this light coming in the big windows was glorious and I knew the feeling of community here was something I would treasure.

Though nothing is yet written in stone, I have a strong feeling that I will be moving to Chicago this summer. It looks like it’s time for the country mouse to become a city mouse once again.

Out of the Box

This essay was written in May of 2007 and was my first published in "The Northeast Georgian" newspaper (Habersham County)

Until this past December 15, I lived in a box with limited windows that was high above the ground. No, I’m not a former resident of one of the state’s prisons, just of a condo in Marietta. Maybe some would see that as a jail of sorts. For me, what felt most confined in that space was my soul.

Don’t get me wrong, it had been a great place to live. The mortgage was low and it served me well for 25 years. But after a while, it felt like all I did after I parked my car was walk across pavement and up the stairs into a Habitrail® for humans. And though my home didn’t have an actual hamster wheel to run on day and night, Metro Atlanta has a way of making you feel like everyone around you is doing just that.

Today, I live in a 100-year old farmhouse in Demorest on eight beautiful acres. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. That’s especially true when I see red-tailed hawks circling on updrafts overhead or hear the frogs peeping from the lake. It’s then that I feel my heart leap out of my chest and I thank heaven that I live here.

This is what speaks to me now – old barns, big trees, even the small green anole lizard that graces my front porch and is sometimes perched atop the statue of the Virgin Mary as she stands there welcoming me home.

I’m not Catholic. I’ve worshipped in Lutheran churches most of my life, and you don’t see statues of the Virgin there. But I love the Holy. I love the Mystery. And my journey has been blessed by that Divine Mystery in ways I’m not nearly as appreciative of as I should be. So when I came to look at this house to rent and saw Mary here, I felt like I was being encouraged by a comforting God to let go of what held me to my old way of living and risk being turned upside down once more.

For fourteen years I visited the northeast Georgia mountains and wished I could live here. But I couldn’t make it happen. In 2003, I was downsized from yet another technology marketing job and decided I’d had enough of corporate life. I’d released my first solo CD and was ready to give this music thing a go. So for the last four years I’ve been on a financial roller coaster (more downs on this ride than ups), surviving by cobbling together musical and speaking engagements with marketing project work. It kind of put a kink in the works when I got nodes on my vocal cords and couldn’t sing for eight months last year. That, plus a host of other odd events left me feeling a little battered. So I finally decided that since I had no security in Marietta, I may as well live where I want to live and have no security. I mean, what’s the difference?

My calendar says that December 15 was the first night of Hanukkah – the Jewish festival of lights. That holiday commemorates a time of rededication of the Temple after it had been ruined by enemy soldiers. Even though there was only enough oil to keep the eternal flame lit for one day, it burned for eight days – just enough time to press the olives and consecrate new oil.

So far here, I’ve found a little bit of work to do but I can’t tell yet how long my monetary “oil” is going to last. Yes, it’s a little scary to throw oneself at the mercy of the heavens to keep the fires burning, but I love it here. I love that I see familiar faces at contra dancing and at church the next day. I love the sight of moonlight washing over the farm fields. So even though I feel a little looney for unplugging from everything I knew in Marietta, when I see that moonlight, all I can do is pray to be allowed to stay here.