Bloodstream

This last week I had my summer classes. In the summer, all the teaching sessions are squished into one mad week, then you go home and write the papers. So I had six hours of teaching every day, some lunchtime meetings with professors, and I slept on my friend's living room floor for the week so I didn't have to commute. I got so tired I didn't think I'd make it, and it took me two and a half hours on various buses and trains to get home, but get home I did and here I am.
I took a class on missional theology and one on the 'poetics' of preaching, for which I had to give a sermon, to a room full of ministers no less. It went fine, actually. Several students and professors said they thought I ought to consider seeking ordination to be a minister. Now, this is obviously nice to hear but I'm putting those comments in a box for now, for two reasons.
First of all, I have in the past done things because I could do them, and because people told me I could do them well and that they thought I ought to do them. I'm still learning to distinguish what I think I should do from what other people encourage me to do, for their own reasons, and/or with the best intentions. Not that I disregard others' voices, because it's good to have their views, but I'm wary of giving them too much importance.
Secondly, I spent time years back with missionaries who would sit around and say things like 'oh yes, I'm going to the Congo next week and I'll be there two years' and no-one would bat an eyelid, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. I ended up going all over the place because if you are immersed in that environment, it does seem normal to fly off to Azerbaijan or Ouagadougou or wherever for months or years. It's only when you talk to people outside that environment that you realize it's not that normal at all. I felt the same being immersed in seminary for the week surrounded by ministers. It seems easier to imagine being a minister when you're surrounded by them.
So, I'm putting the comments in a box for a while. On the other hand, all of my profs, in regard to the papers I have to write for them, told me, in a meaningfully similar way, that the most important thing is that I write about something that I enjoy. This is good advice. Vocation is what you're good at and what others see in you, but it's also your deep gladness. It's what you enjoy, what enlivens you, where you are at home in your own soul's veins.
Our preaching professor preached to us from Ezekiel and these words held me (1: 14).

I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, 

and I will settle you in your own land. 

 image by me (c)