theological naval contemplation

Well, the great experiment is going well! Well, well, well. Okay, maybe not completely as wholly well as all that. Actually, it isn't going anyway at all.

Patience, Jen, we must have patience. Patience is a virtue after all.... We will sit quietly here and listen to the voice of God, and.... Ah heck it. Who am I kidding? I wouldn't know the voice of God at this point if God knocked me off a horse and shouted at me. Don't worry, I am well enough trained in theology to know whose fault that is. That's right it is my parents' fault (or at the very least the government's!).

Luckily though I have been thus far protected from dealing seriously with a religious vocation by a school loan debt approximately the size of the annual gross domestic product of a small nation. Therefore my current crisis of faith is merely an inconveniently uncomfortable bit of trivia. No doubt the good Lord put irresponsible loan officers in my naive path so that I would be saved from doing anything too rash. (Exactly what sort of income was she thinking an art major was going to pull in right out of college? It seemed so much easier back then. Just one of my stupider moves!) Obviously I was not a business major. However, I am certain that with an MDiv, the money will soon start rolling in.

Right now I am feeling rather like the field of weeds from two Sundays ago. The seed was planted, and grew up, and was choked by the cares and circumstances of actual day to day living and breathing. Eventually you must leave your mountain top and find some loaves and fishes to eat, and at least so far, Jesus has not been by to bring me my dinner. The thing is, weediness is a feature of everyone's field. How is it that the seed manages to grow in some of these weedy fields?

"It's not a cry you can hear at night, it's not somebody who's seen the light, it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah."

Its a strange and wondrous thing, is it not? This beautiful vision before us, more real and more beautiful to us than even our own selves. This other, this Lover, the Hound of Heaven. And yet the moment I reach out to touch this person, this very real person, suddenly there is nothing! God will not be mastered, and will never be possessed - certainly not by the likes of us. But sometimes I need to hold something of the mystery, even as this mystery holds us.

Ah well, must go and do something useful now.