I've been having a little bit of an identity crisis. Going from trekking through the jungles of Africa to directing a social work program and "professoring" every day at a proper university are two very different things. Very. Different. Things.
I actually really love my new gig. I love teaching, I love my students, I love social work, I love leading, and I love casting vision for an entire program. Fall on a university campus is absolutely lovely, and my university is especially lovely. Old, stone buildings, falling, crispy leaves, tall bell towers reaching for the sky, young minds alert to new knowledge, my students becoming alert to their calling to go and change the world. I get to participate in making it gorgeous out there every day.
But I got to stressing about it all and asking unanswerable and annoying questions like, "who am I when I don't have this crazy Africa job"? And "Who am I without living in Missouri and having my old routines"? So, like anybody going through major life changes, I've tried to wriggle my brain around all of the transition. All of the loss. All of the old things falling away. All of the death. All of the endings.
But death brings beauty and insight and lovely undiscovered (or rediscovered) sides of ourselves. It's terribly sad to let the dead things go. But it's flipping beautiful as well. And the branches are trembling with new, anticipated freedom. The winds of change are blowing, and the dead things are being lifted off, one beautiful leaf at a time.
"You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands". I had always pictured this scene taking place in the spring time. Bright, crisp, young leaves swinging together in rhythm, lifting their songs to the sunny heavens. But perhaps the clapping is better heard when the trees are unfettered, slapping their naked, open hands together after a long, hot, arduous summer. Maybe they clap in glorious welcome of the fall and eager anticipation of winter. Maybe they feel the beauty of change, and lift their knobby fingers, one by one, to the sky as they gradually become unhinged. Maybe they forgot about their essential browny-ness under all of the green and transition and color, and are thrilled to rediscover this bare and beautiful side of themselves. Maybe all of the leaves were heavy, and finally, after unloading their beautiful burden for the year, the trees finally feel free enough to let the clapping begin.
