In the past week, I’ve had my “calling” questioned (as in, “So, if you don’t want to be a minister, are you sure you ought to be here?” along with other similarly helpful comments); yet I have also met students who seem to understand me and my reasons for being here quite truly, students who can relate to my having made the decision to come more because things just seemed to fit than because of any clear “writing on the wall.” I’ve explored with my fellow first years the ways that activities such as African dance and molding play-dough can serve as spiritual practices (cool, right?), and I’ve sat through chapel services ranging from swinging and vociferous to the more subdued, yet striking styles of high church. I’ve broken a vase, smashed a light bulb (both accidentally, I promise), and received several baffling bug bites, but I’ve also explored a lot, discovered the woods and park near my new home, and become familiar with some of the surrounding neighborhoods. In the fast few days, I have felt extremely uncomfortable, unknown, and out of place at times; yet I have also been the recipient of sincere hospitality, have shared food at a close-knit, laughter-filled potluck home gathering, and have been blessed with the opportunity to reconnect with a best friend from my childhood who now lives just down the street.
In short, I’m exhausted from all the walking, the small-talking, the striving to talk back to the voice inside my head that incessantly asks, “But really, what are you doing here?” In this moment, I’m also a little sad, as my Senegalese family is missing to me in a raw, fresh way, and as the beginning of the school year draws my mind often to the mentors, friends, refugee preschoolers, and church family I hold dear back in Memphis. But I’m also hopeful, more or less content to be here where I am right now. I knew this would be hard, and it is. But I know too that God is faithful, that community can be found wherever one looks for it, that growing always tastes a little bittersweet and that that’s alright.
Today I had the opportunity to sit in on a class over at the Public School of Health, a class that I very much hope to get to partake in this semester but for which I’m still waiting to get the official go-ahead. However it turns out, I’m thankful I was there today to have been introduced to the poem “The Invitation,” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. The author asks a series of poignant questions, my favorites of which are as follows:
“I want to know if you can sit
with pain
mine or your own
without
moving to hide it
or fade it or fix
it.
I want
to know if you can be with joy
mine
or your own
if you
can dance with wildness
and
let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without
cautioning us to
be
careful, be
realistic
to
remember the limitations of being human.”
Truth be told, I don’t know if I can do
those things, Oriah Mountain Dreamer! In
fact, I’m pretty positive I can’t— the whole not fading pain and the unfettered
joy bits, well, those are tall orders indeed.
But I do know that these are elements I want to strive for, attitudes I want
to seek to embody, and, who knows, perhaps even things I will continue to learn
about during my coming days and years at Candler School of Theology. And hey, in the meantime, I just might keep on
scribbling, writing here as a means of reaching for a little clarity in the
midst of this chaos and of keeping you family up to date on my most current
muddling and musings.
So, until next time (probably!), Janelle/ Amy Diallo
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