Well, here I am again, settled in at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, and not surprisingly, I find myself retaining traces of those old fears. All these things: field education time in congregations, heavy-duty classes, more advanced students, a lack of an emotional connection with anyone here . . . it all makes me feel intimidated and small. And I’m not even at a big-league school here like Yale or Harvard! Just little old Gettysburg.
I met with my advisor this morning, and he was helping me try to work out when I’d fit in this Field Ed thing, Teaching Parish, another year, and whether it’d mean that I’d need to stay on for an extra semester or year. I can’t believe that my lack of communication with my candidacy committee could end up costing me something like $8,000+ in extra tuition and fees. I feel kinda stupid right about now.
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Did you not lead worship a few times on Iona, and assist and preach at your home congregation and receive nothing but warm support and enthusiasm? Do you not have good friends who would do anything if they could to help you on your way? Is not God your faithful companion and guide, helping you fill out even the most confusing financial forms and holding your hand as you move past that with which you are familiar?
What’ll I do when the tide takes me
Further out to sea than I care to be?
Go a little further where the shade is not
Go a little further, you might find your heart
Time will do its own thing anyway
The trick is not to get lost in the day to day
Find your way, come feel your way
People act strange and they mislead the way
’Cause only when you turn around you see you’ve strayed
So open up your arms and I will carry you
When things are too hard to comprehend in full
God, help me not to hide anymore. Help me to go forth and lay structures in place for a future of courage, because exiting this dorm room and going to face paperwork and general scrutiny seems to me as difficult as riding a charger into fierce battle. I know I am at war with something, perhaps my weaker self. All I know is that I have to make myself, inch by torturous inch, go out and act confident as I go through the motions of a scheme I’m not sure I want my life to resemble.
Why always so much uncertainty? I miss the sureness of mopping a floor, cleaning a toilet, everyday liturgical responses. My life there was liturgy; the fellowship there was sacrament. My God, my God, where is the sacred here in a small-town community in Pennsylvania, where I feel so out of touch with everyone and everything that is not happening?
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