I Remember

I've never before posted any kind of blog or remembrance for September 11.  Over the last 8 years, the date mostly just irritates me, because it's SO political.  I have my opinions, yes, but I usually would rather not get in the middle.  Next year makes ten years though...  I'm posting this now just as my statement that I hope there's a little less hate in the world by this time next year.

I took the pictures in this post in January of 2004.

September 11 was no longer so fresh, but it was my first time at "Ground Zero" after the attacks.  I was in New York with Emory students from the Wesley Fellowship; we were on a mission trip, working primarilly in soup kitchens.

On our day off, we decided to visit the site, where "construction" was already underway, before heading down to Battery Park and Ellis Island.  The last time I'd been in viewing distance of the World Trade Center was when I was in middle school; there's a photo of me, stashed away somewhere in my parents' house, standing on the Empire State Building's observation deck with the Twin Towers in the background.

Do you remember where you were on September 11, 2001?  I was sitting in Mr. McCarthy's class, at the very beginning of my senior year of high school.  There's no way to not know something like that will shape your future, when you're just getting ready to head out into the world.  A month later, I was visiting NYU for a prospective students' day...  During an assembly, they announced to us that we had just begun bombing Afghanistan.

I love the above picture of Battery Park.  It's a horrible photo, technically speaking, but the brightness of it, and the rebuilding of the globe, shows the hope that I *wish* were associated with 9/11.  Instead, we have possible Qu'ran burnings as the primary headline this anniversary.

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Growth

I have ALWAYS loved this picture.  I took it in Bosnia, and it just makes me smile.  Granted, this isn't the orginal; the original was picture-like, and the point-and-shoot camera focused on grass rather than flower, but I LIKE IT.  So I GIMP-ified it.
Anyway, I'm posting it BECAUSE it makes me smile.

And that's the kind of mood I'm in.  Smily.  They changed my meds, you see.  No, kidding, I'm not crazy.  Though they did change my meds.  What?

Seriously, this post is kind of a follow on to the sermon I preached a few weeks ago.  I talked about my past, and how hard it was for me to find a calling, and you know?  I still don't totally know where I'm going.  Maybe I never will.  Maybe each place I wind up will be the place I'm meant to be at that moment in time, and then I'll move on.  I'll "itinerate," if you will, for you Methodists out there.

But what I can say, 100% for sure, is that coming to the Boston University School of Theology is absolutely, positively the best decision I've ever made.  (If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you saw that update earlier tonight).  I haven't loved every class, or every professor, but I DO want to be there every day (usually...) and I DO want to really engage, mentally, with what I'm learning.  I'm developing whole new theologies and philosophies for myself, and there is NOTHING better.  The people, the conversations, the learning...  They're leading me somewhere, and it IS right.

For those of you in discernment, I don't profess to have all the answers.  I'll be doing my Field Ed in a United Methodist Church this year, and I don't even know that I definitely want to wind up in parish ministry, so clearly I'm still struggling myself, but I received an important message this week.  And you know, this is a message I've "heard" before, but I've never "received" it.  The journey is as important - if not more so - as the destination.  For once, I'm not looking to the end, I'm looking to the present, and I'm LIVING in the present, and loving these people and these lessons, and really growing from it all.

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A Glance...

1. I kinda like Farscape, and Star Trek:TOS, and StarGate Atlantis. Those are my current guilty pleasures, thanks to Netflix and CBS online TV.

2. Two weeks ago, I had a week long intensive class on Race and American Christianity. I'm writing a sermon for my final project. I'll post it here, even though I didn't get to preach it (would've been tonight if not for a schedule change).

3. Said schedule change was vaguely related to where I was LAST week. My grandfather, who had been deteriorating since November, passed away in Tallahassee. Prayers for my grandmother, if you would. They'd been married 69 years.

4. Labor Day wraps up my Grove obligations. Nice cookout at the ball field, then I'll finish moving back out of that apartment and doing some cleaning in the Rec Hall.

5. Tuesday starts the regular school year, with a discussion group at 8:00 (or 8:30?)... That's gonna suck. Sunday starts my Field Ed at Union United Methodist Church in downtown Boston.

6. Next Saturday there's a potluck and photo review at the Grove. So I've kinda gotta go back.

7 , 8, 9, and 10. I'd kinda like a day off. If someone could make that happen for me.

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