The Day The Day The

An Omega Day

Firsts and lasts are significant. Today is a last. Today is my last day of class as a graduate student at Mars Hill Graduate School. Granted, I have five remaining assignments to complete and turn in over the next four weeks. But today, not unlike graduation day, I am done in part once again. To be done in part – also significant, for isn’t life really just one long string of continually developing partial done-ness?

I think so.

There is a tradition at MHGS. In a student’s final day of class, at the end of the time, classmates gather around those who are finishing and pray for the graduates, marking all that has occurred in the years of preceding study, sending those concluding out into the mystery of next. I’ve been a part of many such circles over the last three years as one of the praying. Today I will be prayed for. Is it any wonder that as I type this, the last half hour of my graduate studies are being committed to the apocalyptic genre of literature in the Old Testament? I think not. My professor just stated, “The apocalyptic genre emphasizes that in spite of present difficulties, God is in control and will have the final victory.” Well, after all the decades of present difficulty that have been packed into these last few years, a prayerful apocalypse makes for a strangely appropriate send off...

This is it!!!

Tapped Out

It’s been a month since my last post. I’m tapped out. Maybe some day I will again know what it is to experience the flowing of creative juices. But today is not that day. Perhaps in writing tonight I am in some way hoping to jumpstart a battery that is just plain missing a few of its galvanic cells. Perhaps. But I know deep down that I’m being premature.

Right now I crave one thing – boredom, absolute boredom. Oh, how I long for it so. Actually, that is not entirely true. I think what I am really looking forward to is the opportunity to feel boredom – lots and lots and lots and lots of utterly unscheduled activity, time allotted for massive amounts of nothing, a day where my most staggering achievement would be the making of French press coffee - period. And the quality of the nothing that I speak of would only count as greatness if I am in no way procrastinating from tackling the last of my academic responsibilities - work that at this point feels more gladly entertained than the notion of shaving my face off with silicon carbide sandpaper.

But I am SO almost done. Two months… just two more months. Graduation itself was most incredibly beautiful, and I’ll not soil its loveliness here by attempting to write anything more of it while in this parched state. That will have to be for another entry. So, in the mean time, you’ll just have to take my word for it - there is much beautiful life taking place. But to write of it here… that may not be happening for a bit of a while. For academic evisceration has occurred, and I’m not nearly the sea cucumber as would be convenient.