i have been exceptionally retrospective in recent weeks. there are more factors for this than i care to go into detail about right now, but it has been interesting to look at how i have changed and been changed over the last several years. over the past two months i have re-established a friendship that is teaching me more about myself every day. i have connected with two freshmen at belmont who remind me just how un-cool i am (which is a good thing, really). i am working close to full-time while being a full-time student, and if it kills me, at least i will die enjoying both parts of my life. i have found a church that meets every qualification i have been yearning for.
all of these things have me looking backward. that friendship has me thinking over my life as a whole and the many things that have shaped who i am.
those freshmen have me thinking over my years at belmont holistically, filing through memories connected with myriad moments in my college career.
my job has me working with people who really don't care how quirky i am because we share a common passion.
my classes have me looking at the future and realizing that i really could actually use any part of my degrees successfully...and enjoy doing it.
my church is teaching me how to love christian community again and how beautiful the body of christ really is.
it is fun, in the midst of all this, to see where i was this time last year and before that. luckily, i have maintained blogs since my senior year of high school. recently, i converted all of them to this blog and retro-dated them for when they were originally written. so where have i been in september all these years?
well, one year ago, i was drinking tea and eating bagels. who knew a year later i would be working for the company whose tea i was, at that time, only a novice in.
two years ago, i was in love with the writings of brian mclaren. though i still love what he has to say, i am no longer the stringent acolyte of the emerging church movement i was once so enamored by. in fact, i have grown to love barth and merton and del torre so much more. and it is very possible that the ancient fathers and mothers of our faith may have more to say about the times we live in now than anyone living now could possibly discern.
three years ago, i had just had my first taste of what a new kind of church could look like. in fact, i proclaimed that i had truly found my church. the place that i would call home in nashville. interestingly, both the size and my own self-made complacency led to my abandoning that church for another. of course, the church that followed was an amazing community that helped me reconnect to the body of christ. however, this all confirms my claims that my relationship with the church (the institution anyway) is exceptionally cyclical.
four years ago, i was a senior in high school, a distant memory from the person i am today, reflecting on what would seem to be fickle assertions. interestingly, none of those things have changed. i was also barely 3 weeks away from encountering belmont for the first time.
so there it is, a quick look over the last four years. time really doesn't change everything, but it does change a lot of things. i think it is safe to say that, perhaps, when we look back over those things, that is when the reconciliation happens. that is when we are able to bring together who we were and who we are now.
