From The Mountain...

Today is registration day!

I am about to toss all my stuff in a van loaned to me by a seminarian family from the diocese and head up to get myself registered for school.  Then I am going to move myself into my dorm room - yes, I am staying in a dorm room for the first time ever in my life - and get ready for three weeks of community worship, classes, lectures, study groups, papers, writing sermons for grades and who knows what else.  I will once again walk the wonderfully holy ground in Sewanee and explore that important spiritual topic of vocation and call.

This time around will go much faster than the last time I was here pondering vocation and call.  It will also not be as nerve-wracking.  To be a seminarian in seminary with the question of whether or not all this effort and sacrifice will end with ordination is a stress-inducing activity.  I have felt the weight of the bishop's hands and the nauseatingly powerful stirring of the Holy Spirit that made me a deacon and priest. So that pressure is not there for me this time.  I can enjoy learning for learning's sake.  I can use this time in those specific ways of which one can on become aware after some time "in the saddle."

Yet, I cannot but help to sense that this is God's time to teach me as much as it is my time to learn.  I cannot say why, but this feels "right."  This feels like "God's time" to open my eyes to see what it is that he desires me to see.  This feels like "God's time" to redeem and heal the tough times of ministry past and offer a glimpse of a "ministry future" which redeems, heals and builds.

Today has begun and I am about to officially become a student again - even if the school term is only three weeks.  I am ready.  I have my books.  I have my paper and pens.  I have my laptop.  I have all the stuff I need (and then some) to go back to school.  But even more importantly, I am ready to let God teach me what I need to learn to be whom God desires me to be so that I can do what God desires me to do as his servant and priest in his Church.

Time to go....

Comments

[Tere Ferrell]

Ram, what a wonderful feeling - "learning for learning's sake" and with God as your teacher, Oh, what glorious things you'll learn!!
Enjoy, friend!
T

[Kaysher]

I will commit to remembering to pray for you, Kendra & the boys each time I read your post or our Father brings you to mind. Thank you for sharing this journey.

[Ram Lopez]

Thanks y'all!!