Monday, August 23, 2010

Drawing to a Close

It's going to hit like a storm.  I don't feel ready.  I don't feel prepared.  But maybe, just maybe, that's exactly how I'm supposed to feel right now.

This Saturday, I'll be moving back to Michigan.  I'll be moving back to where God's called me, even if just for the coming year (but ultimately, I just don't know...).  It's crazy, to say the least, how fast this summer has gone.  And I don't feel ready for the coming school year.  Perhaps what's worse than that, is that I don't know how to feel ready.

I'm excited for what's coming.  I'm excited for the coming school year because I know great things will happen.  They always do.  But I just don't feel ready to embrace life on my own again.  I don't feel ready to embrace a regular schedule and the challenges that will surely arise....soon.

But I must be ready.  Because here we are and I can't think of anything more I could do.  I can't think of anything more I could prepare.  Really, right now, I can't even think of any more fund development work I could do.

It's just a matter of packing and a matter of moving....and I'm not packing all that much, I'm not moving many things.  Just my self...and my frame of mind.  Starting Saturday, I'm back in the saddle, so to speak.  The semester will probably be over before I know it, but right now, it feels like it will be here much sooner than I ever thought it would.

I enjoy working on a college campus and not being a college student...but it would be a lie to say I don't miss college....often.

It's hard to believe that as much has changed as has changed in the past year.  But it has.  And here we are, here I am.  Last August, I was hoping to make it on campus by October 1st.  This year, I'm definitely getting into the swing from the outset and that's the best feeling ever.

This time last year, I still had some $30,000 to raise (maybe more)....now, I have less than $9,000 for the rest of the year, and that's not keeping me off of campus.

Things are falling into place, so to speak, in my life, in my world.  But it's a constant journey and things falling into place is far from a reason to be at all sedentary.  Things will constantly be falling into place, and it's our job, in this world, to constantly be taking all of those falling pieces and seeing what we can do to improve, seeing what we can do to move forward.

I've called "Meet the Robinsons" one of the most overlooked movies of the past decade, and part of that comes from how great it is, all the way around.  But perhaps the most important part of my love for the movie comes from a simple phrase that sticks with me still: "keep moving forward."  It doesn't matter, so much, how we do it, it doesn't matter, so much what happens...but what matters is that it happens..that we always keep moving forward.  It is the sedentary life that kills much faster than the dangerous....or something like that.

The next year will be full of risks, of course, and full of challenges and opportunities.  But even in the face of failure, as long as I "keep moving forward" I'm sure I'll be okay.

But I can't neglect, despite all of that, that there's a lot more to it than simple forward motion.  I'm called to a divine purpose in this world, and above all else, I've got to keep that in mind, to seek daily what I'm to do from the word of God and by his will.  I know it's his well, because so much of my life wouldn't be what it is if I did it by my own.  But even so, somehow, someway, where I am is what is right..and I'll keep moving forward from there, by his good grace.

So this Saturday I'm moving, moving back to Michigan, and moving back to the place from where I can move forward in this grand adventure God's placed me on, even if just one semester at a time.

But between now and then, I've got to pack and I'll be packing away an amazing summer.  Who knows what will be next summer?  But I know from experience, and faith in that it's always been the case, it will be another glorious summer.  Between now and then even though, I've got another glorious year in the service of the Lord to get underway.

To God be Glory Forever,

-Zack

"We could do more than dream; we could start it off with this"
-Anberlin

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

To Span the Sea of Time

For most of my time on InterVarsity staff so far, I've often felt like I'm drowning; drowning in a sea of seemingly endless and dead-ended fund raising, drowning in having no idea how to meaningfully do anything on campus at Hillsdale, drowning in a sea of incapabilities to connect with students on some level, and drowning, perhaps overall, in a sea of personal failings and inadequacies.

I've told myself, all along, and not incorrectly, that I can cling to God, cling to his promises, cling to the knowledge that he wouldn't call me to something he wouldn't equip me to accomplish.  Cling is, most certainly, the most useful verb.  It comes and goes in waves, the thoughts that I can't even dream to have what it takes to be a "good" staffworker.  Largely though, I've probably been more in line with thinking I'm desperately skill-less than like I'm on the divinely appointed mission I, come to find out, actually am on and have been on from the beginning.

I realized today that we, I, probably pray the wrong way a lot.  Maybe I'm wrong in thinking and saying this, but it seems to me that we shouldn't pray for God's will in our lives as much as we should pray for his will in the world and pray that we would be used by him to accomplish it.  Maybe that's splitting hairs, but "thy Kingdom come, thy will be done; on Earth as it is in Heaven" doesn't even mention one's own life and work.  It's probably the least we can do, to pray in the same direction as Jesus.

So somehow, and I probably know less now than I did this time two years ago, going into my senior year at Wooster, God's got me on InterVarsity staff as part of his divine mission to redeem creation.  It's so heavy.  It's so true.  It's so much the only thing I can be doing with my life.  It's also so small, so meticulous, that my small striving in a small school is somehow interwoven with the eternity of all of everything.  But it is.  I believe it is.  Human's can't create their own grand-narrative theory because we're by nature full of holes.  But God fills them.  I don't know how, I just know he does, and I'd rather have faith in that than try to figure things out on my own, try to create a box by which to understand God and whatever it is he's doing.  I probably can't comprehend it and I'm ready to give up trying.  I'll simply be, and I will participate in this wondrous rush toward eternity.  Because he is Love, and deep down, love never fails.

-Zack

"But suddenly now I know where I belong
It's many hundred miles and it won't be long"
-Ben Gibbard and Feist    

Friday, August 6, 2010

Perchance to Dream

Summers come and go, and they mark the rhythms of our lives.  Turning the corner you could say, or the page, toward the rest of the year, to the rest of our lives; summer its own kind of space.  Where we go, who we are, who we will become; they trot out in parade fashion as the world rotates around an axis of summer as eternal transitional space.  Here, at least, in what we call the west thanks to how we chose, long ago, to be oriented.

It has been a full summer.  It has been a short summer.  And too, it has been a long summer.
August is a summer month if there is a summer month, but somehow, it is always the beginning of the end of summer.  I had a conversation with my supervisor today about how he is beginning to mentally turn the corner back toward campus ministry, and that's exactly what I've felt like I've needed to do because my mind and heart just aren't where I know they need to be for me to get back into the swing of Hillsdale life and work.  But, perhaps a little, I'm starting to turn the corner too.  But part of me never wants summer to end.  Even with more normal jobs, there's a sort of mystique about summer and I'm not sure I ever want to lose it.  (That's not to say I have an, in any way, normal job).

But there is so much to look forward to with the fall as well.

It will cool down.
Football will return (and eventually basketball too).
Order will come back as school picks up.
Ministry will begin again (and we'll see more tangible ways of God working in students that I've been missing all summer long)
Life will once more feel like it's moving.

I love fall because I love beginnings and endings.  Summer is a three month space of liminality and transition.  While I love it, I am looking forward to what comes next.  For whatever reason, it never quite feels like "what comes next" ever comes in the summer.

I often hear talk about "summer reading" but I'm so organized in my reading that I've been pretty horrible at doing it regularly without my more regular schedule.
What I've finished this summer:


How to Give Away your Faith
Undiscovered Country
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The Hobbit
Snow Crash
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The Small Group Leaders Handbook
The Art of Loving
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
A Little Princess

That might seem like a lot...but it's only 1/3rd of my total reading for the year so far (and much less if you count pages)...that's about right as schedules go, but it doesn't quite fit the "more time to read in the summer" mantra.

Anyway, I recommend basically all of those books, especially Undiscovered Country, which is by Lin Enger.

I never really ask for comments, but I would love to hear what you've been reading this summer, if you feel like contributing.

My favorite movie from the summer is Toy Story 3...it's actually more a coincidence than intentional that it actually came out this summer.  I haven't seen much in theaters lately and would pick a DVD I've seen if any of them outshined Toy Story 3.

But none have, not quite.  It's pretty great.

Like life, I hope this gets more regular come fall.  But summer 2010, you will be missed.

-Zack

"When you run make sure you run to something, not away from"
-The Avetts