Back

So once upon a time my playwright friend Monica, whom I met on a train coming back from the Stewart/Colbert Rally, suggested that zombies are a metaphor for task management: you can take one down and yet their is always another to take its place. The zombie metaphor is a particularly virulent one, because if you don't finish a zombie off just so, it will get back up independent of the one replacing it. So now you have two zombies in addition to any others there may be, which is to say, you've got an existential moment that is also increasingly stinky, ugly, and otherwise affecting your other senses.

This is kind of how second semester Div School is here at Duke. I feel so blessed, but at the same time feel I am just barely keeping my head above water or, if the zombie metaphor may be reapplied, barely keeping my brains away from hungry zombies. Right now it's Spring Break and, typically, I'm wondering how I will get my Church History, Old Testament, and South in Black & White papers done, in addition to Hebrew translations, but hey, God doesn't test us any more than we can handle, right? And when we're about at that breaking point, something comes to take us away from the zombies, right?

In other news, Colleen might chuckle at the first mention of zombies, but by this point she'd be giving that, "Where are you going, Adam?" look. It's a good look. Colleen is a fellow first-year M.Div, a feminist (which I consider myself as well), a marathon runner on break for second-semester Div School (paused like my triathlon hopes), and whom has been graciously dating me for nearly five months. Right now she's in Haiti with fifteen other Div School peeps serving with and learning about the nuns from Mother Teresa's order who work there. She's cool.

Bonhoeffer spoke of the seminary community as an exceptionally blessed one for those called, in that they get to live with other Christians similarly called, and for years! At no other time my life will I get to do this, get to serve this way, simply be with these people. Sometimes I feel strange: many of us will be senior or associate pastors, whereas I am currently feeling unspecified in my calling; but praise be to God that I am "unspecified" rather than "uncertain". It will contain some sort of ministry and also creativity, and doors are opening for me to write creatively, and even to make films. As those doors open, and I ponder the future, I can only be grateful for this gift of getting to be here. Also, the less news we read about Afghanistan and Iraq, the more I feel the need to be a military chaplain, as the--and this is pointed--opinionated populous continues to be unaware of those affected by its decisions. If we had to send our own children, wouldn't we want more news coverage so the country could know what was going on? To know what specifically they could be praying for as regards God's children on both sides of the firing line? Maybe this sharp discontent suggests I should be a servant to those who so selflessly serve us and those with whom we hope to reconcile.

I look forward to this all being wrote, to telling stories in hindsight whereby these sojourns seem like walks in the park as opposed to arduous trails to life decision, but this is where I am, and it's a blessed place to be in, arduous or not, and it's always in motion. It's not too different from looking at the country as it passes under your bike tires. Nevada seems like it's not even moving, but then you climb to Lake Tahoe and look back, shocked at how far you've come, and how much you've grown for all of those beautiful, tiresome miles.