Fathomless Mystery

Two posts in one day??

I wanted to share this. This has meant a lot to me today. A Buechner a day keeps the blues away!

Mystery

There are mysteries you can solve by taking thought. For instance, a murder mystery whose mysteriousness must be dispelled in order for the truth to be known.
There are other mysteries that do not conceal a truth to think your way to, but whose truth is itself the mystery. The mystery of your self, for example. The more you try to fathom it, the more fathomless it is revealed to be. No matter how much of your self you are able to objectify and examine, the quintessential, living part of your self will always elude you, that is, the part that is conducting the examination. Thus you do not solve the mystery, you live the mystery. And you do that not by fully knowing yourself, but by fully being yourself.
To say that God is a mystery is to say that you can never nail him down. Even on Christ the nails proved ultimately ineffective.

--Frederick Buechner

Once again, it's been a long time. I'm settling in to Columbia life, as hot as it is. Good thing Waco prepared me for such hellacious temperatures.

Nothing has prepared me for the all-encompassing work called 'ministry.' I have been swallowed up before by my job. Working with foster kids was no walk in the park. But it seems like ministry gets into all parts of you, where nothing remains sacred, nothing is 'yours.' I try to construct boundaries, not walls, and it seems like there is no in between time to even have that distinction. Such is the life of a new minister.

My friend used this analogy yesterday when talking about doing the work of grief. She said that there was a time in her life when she felt as though she were walking around a dark house that she had never been in, feeling her way around for the corners and doors, with no sense of what was coming next. What a great description.

Here I am. Loving the simple fact that I am alive, but groping in the dark for some sort of familiarity. I do love my life, but it isn't what I thought it would be. But whose is? Someone has taught me recently how to take one day at a time, treasuring what it brings to you and how can listen to what it has to teach.

I'm trying my best. But honestly, I feel at this point I could learn best by sitting at the beach. Maybe I'll do that. In three days.....and counting.

Last week I traveled 700 miles in a mini-van with three young women and one young man. They are the youth group here at the church minus a few. I really did not have any expectations. It's a strategy of mine; to consciously decide that anything could or could not happen.

The result: a week of fatigue, hard work and lots of junk food. The group could have royally gotten on each others nerves, especially with the age and gender configuration. But.....they showed such grace and patience with one another it amazed me.

This group connected. They not only tolerated each other, but as we dug into clams and crab legs on the patio of a touristy Charleston restaurant, each of them told one another what made them special. I heard things like, "You are so patient." "You are soooo funny!" "You go with the flow." These words poured from their mouths unforced and with little thought. I blushed as I sat with these youth, one about to be launched out into the world of college, another not even a teenager.

After reflecting a few days, I have wondered if what I experienced last week was a dose of hope about what the church could and should be like. A group of people, singing, laughing and moving outward into the world to serve together.

Thanks, KBC youth. You taught me. You gave me hope. You reminded me of church. And, oh, did you make me laugh.