Two Perspective Shifts I Experienced This Summer That I'm Taking With Me Into Next School Year...
...Along with a few questions to help you ponder with me
I sometimes think the only reason we Americans have the concept of summer is because we have schools and teachers, colleges and professors (bless them all). If we lived in a hunter/gatherer sort of society we’d likely have “the-time-when-meat-is-plentiful” or “the-long-days-before-the-rains-come.” If I used these sorts of descriptors for the past few months in Texas, I would call the entire collection the “season-of-apocalypse.” Seriously friends, it’s been so hot.
While there were plenty of seminary class offerings during this interval, after beginning my school journey in the Spring I decided not to take any new courses until Fall semester. I wanted to digest all that I had learned, not just from books, students, and professors, but also about myself. This is a new era in my life, after all, one in which I am asking vocational questions and leaning into what my “calling” might be.
Questions I’ve been asking myself include…
Who am I? What are my boundaries? How do I recharge? What exactly is the nature of the work I would like to do? What work am I doing already? How do all the parts of me fit together into one whole?
In the midst of all this soul-searching, I came across a thought by Richard Rohr (his Center for Action and Contemplation emails are my favorite morning devotionals) which is serving as a sort of compass, reminding me to tune into and trust that inner voice of mine:
“If we can trust and listen to our inner divine image, our whole-making instincts, or our True Self, we will act from our best, largest, kindest, most inclusive self. There is a deeper voice of God, which we must learn to hear and obey. It will sound like the voice of risk, of trust, of surrender, of soul, of common sense, of destiny, of love, of an intimate stranger, of your deepest self.”
In that vein, one of my goals this next school year (in all areas of my life) is to remain present in each moment, so as to suck the life out of life, to see all there is to see, and to learn all that I can learn.
As I continue my journey, here are two perspective-shifts that are bringing me life (read to the end of each for some ways you can join me in pondering them):
1. On rest…
My Dearest Rest,
You are to me as reservoir to root,
Restoration-resuscitation.
In my youth,
You coaxed,
I fled,
Even when you padded my bed.
Then you made life first-chair,
Benched me.
Cheddar ages with repose,
Then tastes better,
Everybody knows.
You are an acquired taste.
You know I couldn’t live without you.
Yours truly,
Me.
Rest and I have a complicated relationship. Mainly, I struggle to take time off from the go-go-go knowing there are so many other folks in this world who wish they could recharge but cannot. The sort of interval of “no work” I took this summer is indeed born of privilege. Is it wrong to enjoy repose when other people can’t, I have often wondered?
Yet if I look at this another way, will me not resting help other people sleep?
I remember reading this book about houses and architecture and the stories dwellings tell. The author pointed out there was this period in English history where church leaders didn’t really have to do a lot of work; everything was provided for them— housing, a spending allowance, food. And because of that, many of them got busy learning and creating. Some of them invented things and some of them wrote things, and some of those things went on to make the world a better place.
Then there’s also the perspective offered by “thenapministry” on Instagram: “We believe rest is a form of resistance and reparations,” the caption reads. If you’d like to learn from Tricia Hersey what it means to rest (and what resting has to do with dismantling white supremacy), follow her and see what you can learn from her.
Take-aways:
What feelings does the word “rest” conjure in you? Why? What keeps you from resting? Do you think rest could be a form of resistance? Spend some time this week learning from Tricia and see if you can figure out what she’s trying to communicate about white supremacy. Can you understand her perspective? What emotions does her point of view bring up in you?
2. On identity crises…
It’s been new for me to enter spaces in which I am not known first as a mother and then something else. In the evangelical churches I’ve inhabited for most of my life, I unconsciously absorbed a “mom first” identity, allowing my role as parent to define all of me.
I thought I had become liberated from that point of view until I went to my first seminary orientation, where no one knew me as a mother. Suddenly, people were looking at me and seeing, just, you know, me, and I could decide when and how much to divulge about myself to these new friends and colleagues.
Then, when the semester came to a close and I returned to more of a caregiving role with my little ones in these past months, I did it from a place of wholeness. I saw my mothering as a choice, not as an identity which was being thrust on me by my culture or religion.
As I return to school this fall, it is with this wonderful sense that all the pieces of me (including a third one that has to do with an identity as a third-culture kid) are what go into making me who I am.
I am many, I think to myself lately, but the many are all me. And that feels good.
Take-aways:
Are there any pieces of yourself you have to tuck away to feel whole? Is this relegated to specific contexts or all of them? Why do you think that is? What would it take for you to feel you could bring all of you to every situation? What barriers are you placing in your way and what barriers does society, your cultural context, or your religion place before you? Are there ways to subvert those or safe places you can go where all of you is seen and accepted?
If you, like me, have a “mother’s heart,” or mother people in some way, no matter what your gender identity is, consider reading the book, “Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change” with me. I plan to read this book and write about it at some point in the future.