Planning: Day 12

Today’s Song: To Travels and Trunks by Hey Marseilles

“Hey,” you might be thinking, “What happened to Jesus week?”

What happened indeed.

I like to tell stories and make things sound grander than they actually are, so I could recount the hours of driving up and down the interstate in the rain and the hundreds of extra people at the event I worked or the desperate need to take a break from it all. I could, but I’d embellish, and I don’t really want to embellish anymore. There are some pretty sweet pictures from the science night at Patterson Science Center on Tuesday, though, if you want to take a look. (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.277533599116873.1073741858.125392500997651&type=1)

That’s the thing about life, though. It demands to be lived. And honestly, though I’ve frequently been exhausted this summer, and though I’m ready to be stationary starting a week from tomorrow, being able to educate kids about science and astronomy in my home county has been a privilege beyond measure and I’m 100% okay with the way it has derailed my intentions. Because maybe my intentions could have deserved some derailing in the first place.

I don’t know what to think of prayer. It’s a topic I could use some guidance on and I think a lot about the efficacy of prayer and what it would mean if the actions of an infinite and all-powerful God were affected by words from that God’s created beings. But I could also be thinking through the logistics of improving the medical infrastructure in the countries most affected by the Ebola outbreak, if I was in a position to make or advocate for those kinds of changes.

I struggle (still) with the problem of evil and how to make sense of the bad and good things that happen in the world. The hours I have spent yelling at a corner of the sky, saying nothing God hasn’t already heard before, I’m sure, are probably simultaneously higher and lower than I’d like to admit. Which is probably similar to the amount of time I’ve spent helping people who don’t have enough to eat.

I find the ideas of souls and angels and eternal life fascinating. I pick up on references to souls in pop culture and then pick them apart, which may lead to another blog post this week, but thinking about the way we think about a part of ourselves that is sometimes portrayed as the definition of ourselves is one of my favorite things to do. It stands in stark contrast to the actual soul-searching I could be doing when something like what happened in Ferguson happens and I don’t even try to do something about it.

That’s [why I told myself] I didn’t go to seminary right away after college. There was a world out there to explore. I was ready to do some good before locking myself away in an academic tower. I was frustrated with talking the talk when all I feel like Christ ever did was walk the walk. The angels could dance on the head of the pin for all I could care- I was going to go help the poor. And that’s my [reasonable] reason for being hesitant about seminary now- is it going to help anyone if I go get this degree? Would I, me, not some hypothetical person, be better serving the world if I kept my current job and just volunteered more? What’s the best use of my time and my brain?

Struggling with ideas about God and spirituality and call are all good an important things to be doing if you want to live as a person of faith. Faith can be such a key instrument in keeping our lives together, in building community, in reminding us to be better than who we might otherwise be. But if all I can do is pray for Syria and Gaza and Israel and Iraq and Liberia and Sierra Leone and Michigan and North Carolina and all the people around the world who are hurting and being hurt and hurting others, I’m not doing the right thing. 

I need to be doing the right thing.