Sausage and Seminary

I've been carrying the thought of what's next with me for a while now. I wonder if it's seminary or university or becoming a barista. It's an ever present question for myself and others, what am I moving toward? I keep wrestling with the tension of wanting to be somewhere other than where I am, even though I know I'm exactly where I need to be.

Today I was cooking with my beloved friend, H.
H: "You know that sausage is never going to cook if you don't stop stirring it."
Me: "What do you mean? I'm giving it all of my attention to make sure it does cook."
H: "Yeah but if you don't let it sit still for a while the heat will never actually sit in one spot long enough to cook it. Your stirring is slowing it down."

There you have it, my stirring is slowing it down.

I over water plants...
I over love relationships...
I over think decisions...
And I over stir the sausage.

I've never wondered if I was not enough, instead I wonder if I'm just too much.

The problem is I get anxious in these liminal spaces. I look for constant movement and progress in the hopes of finding something new. What I don't realize is that it is my over seeking leading to more and more unanswered questions. If I could learn to sit in the stillness, maybe the answers would find their way to me. Maybe I just need to let the heat soak in for a while.

The Callback

The Divine passed through, 

and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains

 and broke the rocks in pieces before the Divine,

 but the Divine was not in the wind; 

and after the wind an earthquake, 

but the Divine was not in the earthquake; 

and after the earthquake a fire, 

but the Divine was not in the fire; 

and after the fire a still small voice.

Suddenly a voice came, and said, 

“What are you doing here, my child?”

1 Kings 19:11-13 Paraphrased

I've been wondering lately about what's next for me. What am I doing here? I'm finding that I don't fit into my dreams anymore. The person I want to be, the person I am, and the life I wanted to live are at odds with each other. Picking a new path feels constricting. Every direction feels too small, because it means walking away from everything that was up until now. I've been looking for some great sign in the breaking and wind and fire. Something to tell me what to do, so I can release the anxiety of deciding for myself.

Instead I keep finding a still, small voice. A callback. It's that feeling you've known before, the echo that keeps repeating over and over throughout your life. A moving mantra. It is that which has not yet happened, yet points to all that has happened up to this point. It wraps its arms around your story. The entire story.

It is the one Truth I can hold onto when nothing else makes sense.
You could call it the callback...
Elijah calls it the still small voice...
Paul Tillich calls it the Ground of Being...
Gerald Manley Hopkins calls it the Golden Echo...
I boldly choose to say it's God...

So I'll stop trying to make a decision. Instead I'll decide to be fully awake, listening and loving and living. Eyes wide at all times- looking for the golden echo, listening for the callback, living for the Ground of Being. Knowing with that deep inner knowing that it is so much more than I could ever plan or hope for.

Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath,

And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver

Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death

Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, 
beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.

See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair

Is, hair of the head, numbered.

Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould

Will have waked and have waxed 
and have walked with the wind what while we slept,

This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold

What while we, while we slumbered.

O then, weary then why

When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,

Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept

Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder

A care kept.—Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where.—

Yonder.—What high as that! We follow, now we follow.—Yonder, 
yes yonder, yonder,

Yonder.

-Gerald Manley Hopkins

Section of The Golden Echo

I gave up.

I grew up believing that if I wasn't actively fighting for something, I was giving up. And I hate giving up. In some ways it was good, it gave me the strength to fight depression and hold on when it hurts. But it was also toxic in other ways. I held on to beliefs that belittled me. I refused to give up on destructive people and situations, and in the process I became smaller.

Then slowly but surely, I began giving up.

I gave up on being the caretaker for my family. I realized the best thing I could do for them was let them see me chase my dreams. I found that by leaving I gave them room to breathe and gave myself room to become.

I gave up on my religion. I let go of all the rules, spoken and unspoken, that told me what to do and who to be. I found that outside of that box was an entire world of meaning and depth and holiness. I found God.

I gave up on helping people. I let myself be the helpless one, and in doing so I found that loving will always bring more healing than helping ever could.

I gave up on my dream. In a country I loved with the job I always dreamt of, I decided to leave. Because I realized that the whole world means nothing if you aren't experiencing it with your full self. I'm finding myself.

I gave up on fighting against the current and decided to give in. I'm learning that giving up is sometimes the strongest thing we can do. I found that the flow of this current will take me where I need to go.