“Don’t take it personal (just one of them days)”

“What, you don’t think this is funny?”

So went a conversation with one of my 8th grade guys today after school. He had me watching some comedian about whom, in that unique-to-middle-schoolers-way, he’d harangued me until it seemed that my choices reduced to either a) no longer enjoying the benefits of oxygen or b) watching this video.

“Oh, you don’t really laugh, do you”?

So went his followup.

On any normal day, I’d likely have engaged him over this, as I laugh more than most teachers I know. I’d like to think myself a pretty joyful guy as a whole, especially amongst students.

Wasn’t really the case today, though.

“What, you don’t think this is funny?”

Today I didn’t, no.

For no real reason, the peculiar place in which I found myself as I cast my soul prostrate before the clock was one in which, for my guy’s sake, I saw fit to go ahead and feign laughter.*

I guess it seemed peculiar because I was blatantly, transparently casting forth a false impression… basically, the one my student wanted, heck, maybe even needed, for all I know. Inside though I was crying, my soul had collapsed and it was taking a turn for the desperate (as my depression had come along a bit earlier in the day to catch up on old times).

This too, however, shall pass.

It always has.

“Oh, you don’t really laugh, do you”?

Not on days like this, no.

I just can’t.

Try me tomorrow, once the disaster has passed.

I owe you a smile.

*I have a strong suspicion, however, that under even non-depressed circumstances I still wouldn’t have been laughing.

The night I called it a day.

Well, today I finally pulled the trigger, as it were, on ending my seminary career as I’ve known it so far. I’m still a seminary student, don’t get me wrong, but I’m pursuing a much different degree, which will yield far different options as life carries me forward.

Compared to stuff on other folks’ minds this ain’t much but for me, it is a pretty big move.

The short of it is that I changed from the Th.M. (Master of Theology) degree to the M.A.C.E. (Master of Arts in Christian Education). The Th.M. is a very prestigious (and incredibly long and bloated) degree, and the M.A.C.E. is well, a lot shorter and clarifies my “long term ministry goals” a great deal.

I started my DTS adventure in the fall of 2004 a deeply confused and unstable person, and didn’t really give much thought to the degree, or even ultimate plans I had for my life. I knew I loved academics, I knew I loved people, and I knew I wanted to serve others in a way in which those two giftings might come together. I knew coming in that all this would just sort of work itself out, probably after I graduated. And that was as far, as impassioned, as specific, as things got.

From almost Day One of my current job I have battled the tension between how much I loved that gig and how much, well, I hated having to deal with my interminably long commitments at DTS.

Something was very obviously broken, and I feel like this past month or so something very obviously has gotten fixed.

One virtue I’ve really revisited over this past month is that of just slowing down, to think, to let things stew, to partake of a rest stop once in a while. Because of that, I can say that I am excited and that I am cradling a deep peace over tomorrow, next week and next semester.

I promised myself I’d keep this short, so I am scuttling every urge I have to torture some meaning out of the form I faxed to the DTS Registrar this morning at 10 am. There’s a story, a lesson, some point to be made in all this I’m sure, but just like a cherry pie that isn’t quite cooked all the way through I’m gonna just let those scattered fragments dancing ’round my brain bake a while longer. I think I need to do a lot more of that.

So for tonight at least, I’m calling it a day.

A Life More Honest.

Well, a funny thing has started happening this week.

Think of it as simple “out of sight, out of mind” I guess.

Think of it as hope delayed fulfilled at last perhaps.

Think of it as the perfect set up for “well, what took you so long?!?”

I’ve started thinking of myself as a “former seminary student.”

I’ve started saying things to friends like “back when I was in seminary,” or thinking about no longer having my student discount at the Angelika, or noticing the ever louder din of that drip drip drip asking me again just what makes exegeting from the Greek so important.

And I’ve started doing normal people things, like stress only about my job when I’m at work, ponder things I’d like to do with world class friends I’ve neglected, get all Wahhabist about my finances, try and talk to a wonderful female friend from college regularly on the phone (it’s platonic, Mom), get some new recipes, read with more depth, think about picking the guitar back up…

Simply put, just be alive again.

I am not going to try and put you in my shoes to see how hard I pushed myself, and how far out of balance the cost of what I was willing to sacrifice for the thing(s) I had decided to pursue was compared to simple life affirming things. My life was pretty empty when the days were all said and done, and now well, I’m trying to fill them up with the things I’ve thought only true heroes neglected.

I’ve got a lot of stuff to replace, however. You probably remember this post from few weeks ago. Yeah, that’s one of my more bare, and stupid, moments-but it was honest then and I’m trying to live honest now.

In the honesty department I’ve been doing no small heavy lifting as of late, but I am convinced to my core that the best God has for us is found when we risk a life lived more honest.

I’m not entirely sure what’s next for me, school-wise. I’ve got 81 of the 120 hours I need for my degree in the can, and most of what I’ve got left to take, well, it will apply to any other degree I pursue; the only unique part of it are my last two semesters of Hebrew. There was a time when I was nuts about that Hebrew, any sort of theology, trivia about NT manuscripts, what fed into Martin Luther’s thinking on Bible translation, what a Mike + the Mechanics song being sung in Christian circles these days says about everyone you and I know, different theories on the nitty gritty of the Incarnation, etc. and etc. and etc.

Those parts of me are on hiatus right now, or, to use a recent phrase in my world, “indefinite bedrest”. That one turned out okay for my friends, and I suspect it will for me.

So what I’m doing in the meantime is simply loving my job and slowing down enough to apply all these years of school and daydreaming about “when…” to well, now, and doing a life more honest.

We probably haven’t seen each other in a while, so here’s a picture I shot just tonight:

Me, 11/1/07

There’s more stirring behind those glasses than in a long time, that I can promise you.