To Narnia and the North!

These are some of the books I'll be reading. Classes start tomorrow. A deep humility has been settling in me that began by looking through this semester's syllabi. No longer does my idealistic personality rehearse in my mind, "This is the semester that will change my life. This is the one that I will excel in." Instead, I am coming to a greater understanding of responsibility and endurance that comes only in adulthood. I would not call it a rite of passage, but it feels like I've entered through a door that says, "entrance only" and I can't turn back without thinking it's going to hurt if I did.

Lately, I tell people how I'm doing through this image I've been having lately: I'm going to wake up in my room in California. I'm five years old and have no menial responsibilities like going to work, paying the bills, attending 600 level classes... I'm going to wake up and I'll have dreamed all that's happened in my life up to this point living in Chicago. This is not to say that I wish I were five again, but the idea of "home" has quickly vanished and I have found myself lethargic and melancholy that "home" is something I don't get to look forward to right now.

Parker Palmer said this: "What a curious inversion--taking feelings of estrangement that we normally try to get rid of and calling them positive signs of vocation instead! By this logic, the need to feel at home turns out to be idolatry, because it involves finding our security in position and place rather than in dependence on God. If we live in God, we will find ourselves on pilgrimage; we will be taken to alien places where we are strangers and estranged. Only when we acknowledge that 'you can't go home again' will [we] be on the road to faith."

Hebrews 13:14 says, "For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come." I continue to pray for a heart and mind that seeks to grasp this truth and a boldness to live in such a reality that embraces the "already but not yet."