Personal 08 Apr 2007 10:17 am
Changes and resurrections
All of my progressive Christian blogger colleagues, and all of my old seminary friends are in church this morning, celebrating, in one way or another, the literal, or metaphorical, or the somewhere-in-between resurrection of Jesus. I’m sitting in my hotel room, after 4 long days of being at a conference, doing a lot of thinking.
This conference, called the “Nonprofit Technology Conference” is one I’ve been attending (except the last two years, when I was preparing for, or in, seminary) for 7 years. It’s changed a lot over that time, and it certainly is food for thought in a larger scale about how the field of nonprofit technology has changed, and how my own position within it has changed over time. But that’s a blog entry for my other blog. This entry is about my own inner, personal changes.
I have come to realize, after this very difficult and challenging 7 months (and the last couple of months have been excruciating) while deciding to leave seminary and losing sight of the shore for a while, that I’ve been searching my whole life for the context and community that would fit me perfectly. A context that would make total sense to me, that I could live within, that I could work within, and that I could be totally satisfied with. Whether it be a karmic issue I’m trying to work out, a result of childhood hurts, my personality and odd set of characteristics, or all of the above, I’ve tried, and failed, to find that context, that community, over, and over, and over again. This has manifested itself both in the changes in my work life, as well as my search for spiritual community, and, more recently, in the way I had tried to find both at the same time. And, of course, what is true is that community, that context doesn’t exist and never will. Every community and context I can be a part of will be unsatisfying in one way or another. I highlighted “satisfied” and “unsatisfying” because it connects with the Buddhist concepts of dukka, or suffering. It is that the present moment can be unsatisfying, and our uncomfortableness with that, and yearning for something that will satisfy us, that will cause us suffering.
At lunch at the conference one day, an old friend of mine and I had been having a conversation about whether or not the condition of humanity had gotten better, worse, or was about the same that it had been a few hundred years ago. We happened to be sitting next to a man who was a Catholic priest or monk (I’m not sure which - he was a part of a large order of brothers) who said, basically “only God knows.” Which I thought was pretty wise. After the conversation wandered around a bit, where we were talking about how we knew we were making things better, he said “I just do the best that I can with what I have, and hope that I’ve done some good.” It was very down to earth, pragmatic, and seemed to be just the words I needed to hear this week.
This morning, I can feel a bit of the spirit of Easter, even though I’m not in church. I feel like I might perhaps be seeing sign of the shore finally. And the shore is simply the deep (more than the intellectual) understanding that I will rather often find parts of life unsatisfactory, and a fuller acceptance of that. And somehow, perhaps simply by grace, that deep understanding opens up my eyes to see the possibilities in life, the space for change and growth, the places of resurrection that are available to each of us at every moment.
on 13 Apr 2007 at 2:46 pm 1.Mata H said …
When I cut loose from the idea of ordination, I felt both that it was right to do and that it left me in a peculiar and unresolved limbo. I hear you. You are in my prayers.
on 14 Apr 2007 at 4:31 pm 2.Jennifer said …
As someone who has shifted from role to role, community to community in search of perfect satisfaction, I can relate to your past quest–and your present leaning toward sitting with the discomfort of what will be lifelong dissatisfaction of sorts. Thank you for sharing….