Now I Become Myself

Hi Friends,

Lots of good things going on right now.

Update #1: I am working with AJS only half time right now and volunteering half-time with a community development Honduran organization called Stewardship of Christian Ministries (http://www.mchm.org) in the neighborhood I live called Nueva Suyapa.

AJS: I am still doing some communications work, but what I’m spending most of my time on is helping to plan and implement spiritual retreats with our chaplain( an awesome Swedish women who learned guitar from gypsies) for each of the 7 projects. All my experience and excitement about staff retreats is coming in handy now—life comes full circle.

SCM: Mujeres Valientes (Courageous Women) is a support group for women in Nueva Suyapa who have suffered through domestic violence. It has a neat poverty reduction part to it as well where a baking group is looking to start their own business. I am helping the administrator of the group evaluate the project’s work and do some long-term planning for the future success of the group.

Update #2: I am thinking seminary. That’s not worded very accurately. I have been thinking seminary for a while now and have come to the conclusion after much reflection and prayer that it should be a go. Surprised? That makes two of us. Obviously, there is a story behind all of this, but if you have followed this blog, you should know that being brief is not one of my better qualities. Result: another blog entry.

I think God has a funny sense of humor. I was a self-proclaimed disgruntle pastor’s kid—now look at me.

I am currently applying for a masters in divinity with applications going (read: still in process) to 4 different seminaries right in Michigan, Virginia, and Vancouver, BC. Canada. My central focus for pursuing an M.div started off with pastoral care and counseling, but on a given day it expands (and sometimes contracts). I am particularly drawn to trauma counseling, restorative justice practices, chaplaincy in justice and peace organizations, and biblical scholarship in the theology of suffering and reconciliation.

Going to seminary for me seems to be the most honest expression of my faith right now. It feels like a very natural decision for me. Maybe it has something to do with finding vocation. : 0

Now for a poem: I read this one in Parker Palmer’s book “Let Your Life Speak.” Without fail, with each reading I inhale deeply, breathing in the words that blissfully speak so much truth about my life and the trajectory that promises to come.

Foreign as it might still feel, coming home to myself is an exercise I continue to pursue, but with less trepidation now as the layers unfold to something new yet familiar. It is as though I am waking up to God saying, “Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up; Do you not perceive it?” ( Isaiah 43:19)

Now I Become Myself

By May Sarton

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

Love, Love, and more Love,

Grace