Hello hello,
I wrote and then deleted a not-so-short draft to send you today that was mostly complaining. I even got myself on a tangent about how insane it is to me that, in song of the summer “Choosin’ Texas,” we see “Texas” played by Reese Witherspoon’s daughter, a woman born and raised in California plus Tennessee. Getting heated over nothing!
The root of the bad vibes of that first draft is that I have not felt like summer ever really started, even as we approach shorter days with cooler breezes and deader plants. It’s been hot (summer-coded), but also dark (not so summer-coded). Hopefully this is not everyone’s experience, even everyone physically near me — I have to assume some amount of this is my own tendency toward negativity, especially when I’m even a little physically uncomfortable.
So we’ll refocus things, maybe not to be completely positive and cheery, but to be reflective and curious. When I’m feeling pissy (only accurate word), this is the best medicine.
I’m about to begin my second year of my MA program. This time has simultaneously felt so rapid and as though I’ve always, always been doing this. I feel good about it, though I do sense myself growing restless. I’m tired of a set schedule and coming up with ideas that I can’t do while I’m in school. Long time readers/friends of the pod (lol) will remember that I was in a regional herbalism program a year ago, but that I had to drop it to make room for everything else. I’ve been feeling a strong pull to sit in some dirt and look at some leaves and I have to assume that’s in part because I’m tired of sitting at my desk for twelve hours a day.
I can’t pretend that my studies have been foisted upon me, though. One of the reasons I chose to study theology was that it was a subject I found purely out of my own interests, my own curiosity. I’d tried doing a practical degree, a public policy program, but resented the structure and requisite classes so strongly and so immediately that I barely made it a full year. When I got the itch for grad school again, I felt like the only way I could feasibly go back was if it was an economically poor decision. The fact that my hunch was right is for me and my therapist to get into, don’t read too much into that...
Still, I am nothing if not a galaxy-brain-we-are-living-in-a-fractal kind of boy and it’s only taken about 365 days to connect the dots between the kinds of jobs I have always been drawn to, the hyperfixations that stick, and this theology program.
How this can really be framed, the “research question,” if you will, remains to be worked out, but the vibes make sense. I see how a resume that has tended toward leadership development, training, education, and mentorship can blend with the things I think about when I read Augstine or Tillich or MacIntyre or Day. I am excited by unpacking the soullessness of modern Western careers, the ways we talk about adult development, spirituality and belief, ethics, and the point of a human life. What I mean is that I am interested in what these religious voices say about labor, what they might say about corporate training, and about how college-aged kids can keep their souls.
Very many of my interests in the world render to: How should a person be? Not an easy question to answer of course, because the answer changes moment to moment. But I have an attachment to that question, especially when it’s being asked between the ages of 17-24 . It’s a time frame when you are an adult in so many ways, but you also are not. The intensity of that time seems to come from a combination of novelty and a soft awareness of one’s proximity to these heightened stakes.
So, wherever I’ve got the opportunity in this program going forward, I’ll be finding ways to explore and consider questions of “formation” and “values.” I’ll be looking at what tools the tradition has on offer to help develop strong spirits, spirits that can withstand the challenges of life and the oppressive structures which seem to daily undermine connection and collective growth and love, and I’ll be doing my best to welcome in the voices from all the weird corners of my interests. This’ll include more of my studies of the Enneagram and other “adult development” worlds, but also those other areas of interest, especially Hellenistic astrology. There’s a long tradition of “career” and understanding the shape of a person’s life holistically in those old, old astrological texts. I’m specifically curious about how they represent the culture of the world that was shaping and being shaped by early Christianity.
You can look for some of these ideas to be worked out in some form here. I’m glad as I start this next semester to have a routinized place to drop some thoughts that aren’t fully formed and just need to be thrown out there before I can even really consider them. I’m thinking it’ll still be Thursdays that I send them, but that might need to change as I get a feel for the rhythm of the school week.
Hopefully you have had a more restful summer than I have! I skipped a few weeks here recently, hoping to give myself a mini-break from as much of anything commitment-shaped as possible. For what it’s worth, it did kind of help! Anyway, I appreciate you, whether you’re a frequent reader or you’re wondering how you even ended up getting this email in your inbox.
Stay well,
Fred
