Leaping

In less than two months, I will not be employed full time. It’s a slightly terrifying idea, but a step I’ve seen the Lord clearing the way for over and over as I’ve walked forward.

I talked with a friend about it a few months ago. I said something like, “I’m going to take a leap and leave this job to pursue other things.” He asked what I would be doing. I said I wasn’t quite sure, some things had fallen into place but much hadn’t. He said, “Well, I guess it wouldn’t be leaping if you knew where you were going.”

Photo courtesy of: http://francescakotomski.com/

That’s the thing about leaping. Knowing exactly where and how you’ll land is not guaranteed.

When I took my current job, I gave a handshake commitment to stay in it three years. That was a big deal for me. Since college, I hadn’t been in one place or one job for more than two years. When year 2.5 rolled around, I was getting pretty itchy. I’d been there a long time. I began to do a little bit of looking around to find out what other jobs were out there that I might be qualified for. And then, right about the three-year mark, my boss died and the University decided to change its name. Personally or professionally, it was not a good time to make changes.

So I stayed through year four. And it’s been a good job. I love the team I work on and I believe in the place I work for. What more could you ask for?

The intersection of gladness and hunger.

Frederick Buechner wrote in Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC that, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

I haven’t found that place yet. And the conclusion I’ve come to in the past months is that I’m not going to when I’m working in a full-time job that keeps me insanely busy, creatively depleted, and emotionally over-invested. It’s a good job, but it is not the right one for me in the long run.

So I’m leaping. I’m stepping out and exploring my options. I’m picking up freelance editing and writing work, I’m teaching adjunct, and if need be, I’ll find something part-time to fill in the gaps (one does, after all, have those pesky things called bills).

But for the first time in a long time I’ve ceased striving. When the panic of the unknown rises, I place it into God’s hands and know He will carry it. He’ll make the connections that need to be made – I’ve been watching Him do so already.

As I leap, will you do something for me? Will you pray with me and for me that God would show me the place where my deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet? I’m closer to that place than I used to be, but I know I haven’t yet quite found it.

Oh, and if you know somebody looking for an editor or proofreader, would you point them my way? Thanks.☺

Bent Branches, Straight Baselines

It’s been just over a month now since spring began – slowly this year in Philly – coming at us in fits and starts. I think it has actually arrived now, though there are still one or two trees that are only just leafing out. But the azaleas and the dogwoods have bloomed, so I think it’s really spring.

This slow spring has drawn my attention more than once – trees that often bear the bright of yellow-green in March still showed their naked limbs well into April. It was as if they wanted to say, “See, here’s my structure. These are my bones. You may not have noticed them this winter when your eyes were cast to the ground watching for ice patches. Look up now; see my angled boughs.”

At the beginning of April, my friend David posted a short piece on his blog titled simply, “On Baseball.” In it he quickly and poetically examined the architecture of a golf and baseball, finishing with these words:

Baseball unites heaven and earth: it inscribes a pattern of clean lines, orbs, and diamonds upon the dust from which we were formed and in which we toil, and the lush green in which we find rest. Upon that heaven-and-earth field, prodigal sons set out on barren base paths; and we watch and wait to see if they will make it back home.

The words arrested me. I love clean lines. I love the straight, the symmetrical. There is beauty in a ballpark. But as the trees bared themselves, I had the realization that straight lines are a rare thing in nature. The Creator’s beauty meanders more than man’s.

And when we humans create without the assistance of our man-made tools, our creations are meandering things too, the image of God creating in the pattern of God. As I began to think it through, I realized that the straight lines and measured curves of architecture echo the straight lines and measured curves of the heavenly throne room – and our ideals of beauty find their fulfillment in the descriptions of that place.

Somehow, we find ourselves caught in the middle, loving both the bent branches and the straight baselines. Caught between heaven and earth. Redeemed yet human. Prodigal sons looking for home.

My first inspirations on this topic formed themselves into an essay for The Curator, the web publication of the International ArtsMovement for which I am now serving as an Assistant Editor.

David’s continued thoughts on the topic have been manifested in a second blog post where he says kind things about my Curator essay and much better things of his own.