“Something that isn’t myself and my own dreams and goals.” Yupp. Also, as someone who’s done different summer missions during my college summers, I find it exhausting on the heart for communities to just keep ending - don’t know much about creatio, but I assume you bond with groups of people for short periods of time over and over and then never really see them again - does this affect you much / is it a reason you long for a more permanent life / how do you deal with the repetition?!
I was thinking about that the other day, and I'm actually surprised at how well the whole team (myself included) handles it. We're forming new communities with people on trips constantly, and then just like that, we reach our destination and may never see each other again. I wonder if it has something to do with the pilgrim mindset. You're never really anywhere for that long because you have an end goal, you're heading home, you're heading towards Heaven, and so the people you share your time with (who are also headed in that same direction) are part of the story, certainly, but the communion is different and deeper than we really know. At the same time though, it definitely is a big part of my desire to settle down. Somehow, mysteriously, it's both. We are pilgrims without a true home in this world ("the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head"), and at the same time, made to have a permanent place and a people for however long we're here. Maybe we somehow need both the wandering and the settling to understand even a bit of what we're made for.
yes that tracks so well- my friend recently was telling me that in the garden, there was a perfect union of spontaneity and structure, so we crave them both. He said it pertaining to poetry, and says we are healed in a deep sense by submitting the cry of messy words to the structure of poetry because that is the union we are made for. I think that applies here. allowing the pull of the tension to make more space in our hearts for the Holy Spirit... somehow practically with our lives? hm. and to keep letting the goodbyes hurt instead of numbly getting used to them... hope your transition goes well.
It seems we're meant to participate in the "mysterious suffering of the Father" (a phrase I'll take from Wellspring of Worship by Jean Corbon) through that tension, and especially through letting goodbyes hurt. Only to keep the paradox all the way through to the new life where spontaneity and structure are married again, where some kind of perpetual movement (perhaps a longing that persists while fulfilled) and home are in the same place. There is a reason God has bent the universe towards poetry.
Thank you, pray for me and I'll pray for you in whatever your next transition happens to be.
“Something that isn’t myself and my own dreams and goals.” Yupp. Also, as someone who’s done different summer missions during my college summers, I find it exhausting on the heart for communities to just keep ending - don’t know much about creatio, but I assume you bond with groups of people for short periods of time over and over and then never really see them again - does this affect you much / is it a reason you long for a more permanent life / how do you deal with the repetition?!
I was thinking about that the other day, and I'm actually surprised at how well the whole team (myself included) handles it. We're forming new communities with people on trips constantly, and then just like that, we reach our destination and may never see each other again. I wonder if it has something to do with the pilgrim mindset. You're never really anywhere for that long because you have an end goal, you're heading home, you're heading towards Heaven, and so the people you share your time with (who are also headed in that same direction) are part of the story, certainly, but the communion is different and deeper than we really know. At the same time though, it definitely is a big part of my desire to settle down. Somehow, mysteriously, it's both. We are pilgrims without a true home in this world ("the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head"), and at the same time, made to have a permanent place and a people for however long we're here. Maybe we somehow need both the wandering and the settling to understand even a bit of what we're made for.
yes that tracks so well- my friend recently was telling me that in the garden, there was a perfect union of spontaneity and structure, so we crave them both. He said it pertaining to poetry, and says we are healed in a deep sense by submitting the cry of messy words to the structure of poetry because that is the union we are made for. I think that applies here. allowing the pull of the tension to make more space in our hearts for the Holy Spirit... somehow practically with our lives? hm. and to keep letting the goodbyes hurt instead of numbly getting used to them... hope your transition goes well.
It seems we're meant to participate in the "mysterious suffering of the Father" (a phrase I'll take from Wellspring of Worship by Jean Corbon) through that tension, and especially through letting goodbyes hurt. Only to keep the paradox all the way through to the new life where spontaneity and structure are married again, where some kind of perpetual movement (perhaps a longing that persists while fulfilled) and home are in the same place. There is a reason God has bent the universe towards poetry.
Thank you, pray for me and I'll pray for you in whatever your next transition happens to be.