I've re-written this blog about 4 times now. I keep walking away and the battery dies - hence, lost blog. Then of course there's the question of how am I going to write another years' worth of engaging blogs. Quite frankly, I'm not sure. I don't know if I even did that quite effectively last year. But another year, and another set of questions and ponderings that I'll leave the viewing audience. Hopefully it'll say "something." I think I'm starting to get a list of things generated to discuss. I hope it proves - interesting? engaging? readable? Anything, I hope!

This summer was certainly a bit different of an experience than I was expecting. I traveled across the U.S. more times than I imagined, danced the day away at one of my best friends' weddings, took classes at Fuller, deepened and developed new and lasting friendships, and dug myself into a whole in the IDL world. That, and lived in California during the summer, and moved twice during that time. It was fun. Sometimes.

Fuller is a funny place - it's a place I constantly find myself questioning, getting angered by and falling in love with on a weekly basis. At one point, I called this conundrum bi-polar. But now I think I've come to accept it as life. None of us are really ever that consistent with our emotions that we don't have love-hate relationships with either the world we live in or the people around us. Human depravity is our reality. Or in the very least, it's certainly mine.

I wonder though - are we, at Fuller, really ready and prepared to engage in that reality? Are we really okay with admitting that not everything here is the heaven-on-Earth motif we imagined? I'm a pessimist to the core at times (and frankly, an optimist at others). Let's be honest, I'm weird. But, even though I came to Fuller hoping that my expectations weren't all going to be crushed, I knew that it too wasn't going to be perfect. Then there were days when it met every expectation. Then there are the days when it certainly falls short.

My question for you is simple: Are you okay with that reality? Are you okay with going to a school that is just like the rest of this world? Are you ready for a challenge.

I hope you are. I hope that Fuller is ready for us, too.

Posted by Libby at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So it turns out that I actually do enjoy reading books. Sometimes I forget that I enjoy this aspect of life - often it's forgotten during school. I know that every summer break in college I would just dig into the pleasure reading out there. You know what I'm talking about, the really crappy stuff out there.

Well, I don't get a break really ever. I mean, a week here and there gives me enough motivation to purchase books, but never to finish them. I have a compulsion to be with people, to a fault sometimes.

So in the past 18 hours, I've slept 12 of them (yay!) and read 3 of them. That's a beautiful thing.

Good books on the docket for now:
- I'm eating up Brennan Manning again. This time it's The Wisdom of Tenderness.
- Dorothy Sayer's Letters to a Diminished Church
- Merold Westphal's Overcoming Ontotheology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith

Ok, I'll admit it now. The third book is not a pleasure read, it's certainly a class read. The first two will be done before I tackle that one. But I have assigned chapters due in a month!

Off to beach and friends... I love "breaks."

Posted by Libby at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It would be a lie to claim I'm not tired, stressed, overwhelmed and burdened. It seems that many people at Fuller (well, in life) are dealing with a lot lately - an apparent season if you will. What's scarier? How many of us are hiding the stress by moving, participating in the daily grind ,solely because we think we're supposed to be okay at all times. I am simply overwhelmed in knowing just how much prayer, love, and support is needed at seminary, and yet how little we're all able to provide (or willing) toward one another.

Since when does seminary equate to the perfect person? The perfect image to be shared?

I've been questioning lately what the image of life as a disciple really looks like lived out. Is a Christian simply joyous at all times? That's the message I heard at my sister's graduation ceremony from a Christian college. I don't know how I feel theologically with that thought.

Some days aren't easy - this fact I am aware. And while I know that there's hope, I want to claim that hope at all times. But frankly, I'm not sure I'm there every single day. Some days, things just are not fair, fun or freeing. I want it, but I don't visibly see it.

I often forget that the daily grind helps us to walk past the actual things of our environment. I see it, feel it, and ache because of it. I want a change. I do.

I wish had some neat conclusion to fix this blog. I wish I had some simple ending.

But, alas, I don't. I'm lost, saddened, and hurt for my friends, colleagues, mentors, peers, and the Church. I wonder who else really feels the same way.

Posted by Libby at 4:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have a friend at an undergraduate Christian university in the Midwest who writes for her school's admissions blog (I guess I befriend people just like me?). She was telling me the other day that her dad reads her blogs (she had no idea), and when she recently wrote about her staying up until the wee hours of the night doing homework for a class, and not really caring about the end result (ahh, senioritis), her dad read the note. Whoops! Don't worry, Dad, that's not me. I care about the work, I'm just really busy!

I hate falling asleep doing work. Clearly my body does too! Really, it's the notion that I need to reevaluate my priorities and my focus. But it's one thing to know this, and another thing to do it. I've just noticed how tired I've been lately on weekends, and how I really need rest.

Which has me thinking a lot - more than I'd like, actually. How am I am supposed to find rest and quiet time when I'm supposed to be in full-time classes, working part-time (25 hrs.), and maybe allowing for some fun in my life? I guess that's where I differ from others - I refuse to not have fun (lovely double negative there). I know I need fun to remain sane. Which is why I went on a retreat Thursday through Saturday, through the All Seminary Council (lovingly known as the ASC).

Now I knew this was going to be a bunch of sessions, talking about leadership, and there would be friends to hang out with, friends to me, etc. But it sounded restful enough. It was funny, our lunch table one day started discussing the ironic nature of the word retreat. How many times have you been on a retreat and actually rested? I always return from a retreat, no matter how amazing, exhausted and needing another retreat just to catch up from it. Which is unfortunate when you have 5 papers due the following week.

This will be a crazy week, but I hope to start to evaluate a bit more what rest looks like for me, for a student, a graduate student, a friend, a daughter, a child of God, and a sinner.

Posted by Libby at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes it becomes rather easy to forget about the preciousness of life, or maybe better put, the true lack of control we all possess. As Christians, we often use this language of control in conversations about God's sovereignty, omniscience, and power, but I wonder how much of it we actually believe. Truth be told, even the best of us don't really give enough credence to the fact that we have no control over instances. Even in the free will that I possess, I don't necessarily have control over what illnesses I will have, how my friend will respond to a comment, how the person in the left lane will turn, etc.

I'm not preparing to get into a theological argument about predestination vs. free will - maybe another day, at another time (when I'm a bit more awake and cognitively prepared to argue). But I have been thinking a lot lately about circumstances surrounding me that I have the choice in what I'm doing versus those moments when I hear news that I have literally no say in outcome or effects.

A professor of mine this quarter has been surprised, shall I say, by the recent events of his health. Two surgeries in three weeks would be a nice little surprise to me too. Another professor around here is terminally ill with cancer. (I mean, I guess in a horrifically pessimistic view we're all terminally ill, but that's just a silly statement, really!) But I wonder how many of the students around here, or how many people in general, really think about this notion that things are happening to every one of us that we don't care, want or know how to share together. Or even that things happen daily that we wish we could relive.

I wish I had that mulligan button to hit occasionally in life, but I don't. So I am left to relive or live out the effects of some of my choices and the choices of others. I wonder if it ever will feel okay, though.

Posted by Libby at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

i wrote something yesterday that's currently piqued my mind - so I figured I'd share here. I said I don't like cliches and Christianese. There's this language in the Christian subculture (leave a comment if you're already confused) that helps Christians all figure out who we all are. You know what I'm referring to; the born again, repentance, washed in the blood, forgiveness, saved language that we all flippantly throw around as we learn the lingo of the church. I don't see God only speaking English, or speaking Christianese. I see her/him speaking the language of the lost.

Did I say God swears?

No, not necessarily.

But I do think he's in a gay bar, at a sports event, in the classroom, on the field, at the hospital, in a restaurant, etc. And in all of these places, God hurts, cries, aches, and speaks to the people, the hurt the lost, and the broken. Do Christians do this all the time? How are we known? How am I known as a Christian? For pete's sake, am I known as a Christian?

How do I want to be known as a Christian? By the perfect language that hints at my overzealous perfectionism? By my Icthus adorned Honda Civic, that as I drive past someone, I still can flip them off b/c they cut me off? By the t-shirt i wear with the language that only Christians are going to get, and could be frankly rude or offensive inadvertently by mocking the secular society?

My favorite Christian artists (and I don't have many, frankly), Justin McRoberts, has a whole album on this issue... really, its part of his ministry to Christians - to slap them upside the head. He has this shirt that I utterly love; the shirt says this:

they will know we are Christians by our t-shirts

preach it, Justin... preach it...

thoughts?

Posted by Libby at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)