Tired
I must be losing it, somewhere, somehow. I used to teach from 7am to 3pm. Everyday. Sometimes without a lunch break or a plan period. And even when I had one, my kids were there, or my colleges, or there was a meeting, or something. I was around people all the time, on my feet, talking, teaching, doing, going, going, going. That’s hardly the case now.
Yes, I teach more classes on average professor on campus - outside of the Ed Dept, where we believe in never saying “no”, all being former workers in public education - and I travel around the region from school to school doing observations, but still, this all feels like far less teaching than I used to do. Yes, I have classes that stretch from 1 hour and 10 minutes, to 8 hours straight, including Saturday s, but on a weekly ave, I teach considerably less than I once did.
I teach less, grade less, and spend less time in front of people, but have never been this tired as often at the end of a day.
Maybe therein lies the harsh reality. I’m an introverted succubus: I feed of the interactions I once had. I was energized by standing, running, hoping, jumping in front of a class of 30 high school students unlocking the mystery of some novel, short story or poem, arguing over the best of all possible worlds theory or virtue ethics, but now, I spend way too much time sitting down, at a desk, in a car, in front of grad students.
Maybe this is why I have a hard time saying no. Why I add classes outside of my current content area, adding to my stress: it allows me more time to interact with students. More time to make connections, getting to know people. Why I keep saying yes to leading groups, judging contests, speaking for groups and to individuals when asked. Maybe I miss the daily in-your-faceness of my previous job, when I saw my kids every single day, not once or twice a week. When following up with someone was easily accomplished in a hallway or at the door, instead of through email or running into them on campus. When my office was my classroom, not a space separate from all other normal, daily interactions: somewhere not officially labeled. Maybe this tiredness is from feeling sedentary. Possibly stagnant.
Or maybe I’m just getting old.
Antenna
On Keys And Conscious
“First, do no harm.” – Hippocratic Oath
It’s so hard sometimes to gently destroys someone’s illusion, even for their own good. Sometimes you just want to let someone remain in ignorance about something because it will be easier than addressing the problem. You can rationalize it away as not being the same as not taking the keys from a drunk. What is the harm in him thinking he’s correct, and what’s the problem allowing her to continue saying the same things, even when you know that they are both wrong? Other than having to live with the occasional discomfort.
“Never open a wound you can’t close.” – medical proverb.
But while people might have a right to think what they want, they are entitled to their own opinion, are we not also bound to correct them, deontologically bound, when we see that their error leads them to a place of pain, a place of discomfort, a place of intellectual or physical dissonance time and time again?I have a duty to tell you to give me your keys, even metaphorically.
But this means I must stick around long enough to make sure you get home.
What Job’s Friends Got Right
Job lost everything. Everything.
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I was asked yesterday as a writing activity to provide a list of the worse things that could happen in the coming week. I thought of my list, but couldn’t stop thinking about Job’s. They were the same:
Complete financial ruin. Family destroyed. Questioning the affection of my wife. Sickness not onto death or healing on a time table. Apparent abandonment of God without an apparent cause to point to. I’m sure he liked some of his livestock: I don’t know what I’d do if all of my kittens suddenly died. His list was my list.
Job could be a real man or an everyman. I don’t really care at the moment. He could be me.
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I’ve just started leading a Bible study on campus about Job. They picked it. I’m waiting for the knock at the door.
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In the last day I’ve been told of terrible events in the lives of people around me. No one very close to me, but students under my sphere of love and care.
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People lose everything, every day.
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At the end of chapter 2, before Job begins his first laments, in the prose section which may or may not be an addition to the text, Job’s friends arrive. Before they begin to speak, at length, for the rest of the story, they rip their clothes, sprinkle ashes on their heads, and sit beside Job.
“For seven days and seven nights.”
They assume his position of suffering and they don’t say a word. For seven days. A week without divine cliches,false explanations, or best intended comfortable words. They just sit and suffer with him in silence.
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I’m still waiting for the knock on the door, but I fear it won’t come.
What Was The Last Thing God Asked You To Do? (sermon)
So I spoke in chapel. Here are the highlights in a nutshell.
update : here is the sermon <- clicky
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When I was an ENC student I heard a sermon in the midst of some struggles. I heard the question, “What was the last thing God asked you to do?” And throughout my life tha's been asked in two contexts:
1. When I’ve been off the path God has for me
2. When I’ve questioned the path God has for me
When I’ve been off the path
At best we get off the path when we’re not paying attention too closely. At Worst we are blatantly ignoring God.
Abram was not an active listener (Read Genesis 12:1 - 13:14). God gave him instructions which he ignored/followed only in part, and suffered as a result. God renews His promise to Abe years later Abe had finally done what God asked and separated from Lot.
Previously he was in the right place spatially/physically, but in the wrong place spiritually/mentally. He didn’t get it (land), because he didn’t get it (instructions).
What was the last thing that God asked you to do? What are we holding on to that is holding us back? What hasn’t been left behind? What are we only doing MOST of? What are we holding on to just in case God doesn’t come through?
Psalm 19:7-11 makes it clear that “Things from God = Good”. We KNOW these things as truth, rewrite them into songs we sing every wed/fri/ and Sunday - but what do we DO about them?
Joshua 3:3-4 shows God instructing the people to follow the Ark, because “you have not been this way before”. We get lost, terribly, when we don’t follow god. We are children in a department store not holding on to our mother’s purse. Crying, blubbering, running in circles with snot running down our faces. It’s not pretty. It never is when we go out from under God’s arm.
And still He comes and finds us, drags us back to where we belong. Until we wander off again.
When I’ve questioned the path
During my first couple years at ENC I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew I was where God wanted me, but I questioned my major - my supposed life plans? Did God want me in education or in church ministry? Were the two mutually exclusive? People wiser than me were making their wishes know, which just confused me all the more.
That’s when I heard this question in chapel: What was the last thing that God asked you to do? Followed by the instructions that God wants me to keep doing whatever that thing is until He tells me to do something different.
This life/walk is not a static one. We don’t have the luxury to sit on our butts and do nothing while we wait for a literal burning bush, ravens to deliver our food, or the clouds to part, and a ray of rosy colored sunshine speaks truth. We must continue to do what we’ve been told to, until we are told something different.
This includes fulfilling the song’s charge to “read your bible and pray every day”, whatever work we have been assigned by our profs, employers, pastors, our families, supporting the ministries around us, and loving our neighbors more than ourselves.
Doing all of it as onto the Lord, until He moves you.
Esther 4:44 says “ . . . and who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Kurt Vonnegut said, “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
Walk with eyes/heart open to serve. Learn to stop, look and listen. There was always someone around who needed to be loved.
What was the last thing that God asked you to do?
God said to do what He told me and He’ll make good on the other passions since they are from Him. [Matt 6:33 “seek ye first. . . and all these things . . .”
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What was the last thing God asked you to do? Answer the question and then act on it.