Sorry for the Bad Grammar for the title but it is a great play on the sounds and I couldn’t resist word play like that!
Anyways so I am sitting at almost a week and some change before I hit the road and my studies draw to a close here in PMB. So I thought it would be good to give a brief update before the weekend.
So I finished off two more courses worth of work. One Take Home exam and one Essay done this week and I totaled about 7500 words in the course of 2 days! I feel like a bit of a champ (not being cocky but probably the truth is I feel like a marathon runner, Excited about the accomplishment but exhausted by the effort).
The Take home exam fell on Tuesday this past week the same day as cell group. Take home exams here are different than those I have received at Western in this past year, they are a 24 hour marathon. So the expectation laid out for us in class was that in the 24 hours we were expected to read broadly and write clearly. I hope that I did that. So that morning I woke up to try and get myself some breakfast and have a cup of coffee to start my day off well. I go to the fridge where I was keeping my milk and I opened it up and it didn’t feel any cooler than the room outside. So I checked the milk and it was definitely sour. So I tossed it out, and had my coffee without milk that morning. I then met up with a group of students from BIST 310 and plotted out how we were going to tackle studying for the final (We got given 12 Questions that might be on the exam for our NT section of the course, so we decided to each prep 5 questions and share our prep work, over 5 people we cover each question twice giving us a huge amount of detail to study off of!). I was busy complaining about my 24 hour exam that was starting in 30 min, and how my milk went bad so I wasn’t going to have the easy drinking coffee as a fuel for the night time push. Alice decided that she would buy me milk so that I could have my coffee. We separated up the questions and I went off to start my exam.
I started off well. I looked over the question sheet, and planned out the exam, grabbed the readings I thought I might have found useful, and went off to the Library. I spent the morning working on just reading Globalization Texts, and then I went and grabbed lunch. At this point I was feeling pretty comfortable about the direction and the pace I was going. After lunch I started into theology texts, (Liberationists, Economics and Faith, Feminist Theological Economics etc...) and that was when things started going slightly sour. At first I couldn’t find a table to work at in the Library so I went down a floor and found an open space. Then I found the texts more basic than and nowhere nearly as helpful as those of the Globalization scholars. Anyways, I finished up at the Library and went back to my dorm to start writing (At about 2:30/3pm). I grabbed a shower to refresh myself and then I settled into the couch and started writing. I got done the first question (of four) and started into the second. By 6pm I had eaten dinner, and the day before I had made the decision that I was going to go to cell group. Here is where things started to pick up and get better.
At cell group we combined two cell groups to form one big group for a larger session on Worship. Which was just enjoyable! As we worshiped I was able to relax and just gain some very positive energy from God and the people there. Afterward I was dropped off near my friend’s house in the pouring rain to hopefully grab some milk. Unfortunately she didn’t answer her cell phone, so I was left standing in the rain outside of her Diggs. Luckily a guy pulled up in his Car and was waiting to be let in through their gate so I went in after him and hollered in the window of their diggs hoping to get Alice’s attention. I got the diggs mates attention instead but they gave me the bottle of milk that Alice had purchased for me. Super thankful! Anyways so I got a lift back to my Residence sort of... Denison is a large complex of blocks, and well I live about equally distant from both entrances as is possible. So I had to run through the rain and puddles back to my dorm to get back to my take home. I got back and I had a shower, and energized by having worshiped and warmed up by the shower I settled in for the evening of writing. I pushed myself and got through the final three questions of the exam on only one cup of coffee. And I got to bed at 1:30am (and got a solid 5.5hours of sleep! Especially compared to that of other people in my class...). I had written 19pages at 1.5 spacing 12pt Times New Roman including my cover page and Bibliography and I felt really good about that.
The next morning having finished all of that all that was left was to do a quick read over and then print it off. So I did that and submitted it in. As I submitted the other students of the class rolled up around 9am with all of their horror stories of staying up till midnight sleeping till 2:30 and getting back to work at 2:30, or starting the exam @ 7:30pm. I guess I felt blessed by God and my decision to actively take time to value worshiping him. It is odd that even though having pushed late into the night, and had a very roller coaster experience of the day that in spending time with God and people in worship that I could just receive rest and energy in abundance. That rest and energy (even though i was jumping and worshiping with my full self) must have come from God. I guess it is part of that dethroning the Academy that I do with choosing to prioritize rest and events where I can gather with people around God. It is helpful for me, and I find that in those times, the best thing I can do is to value those activities and hold onto them for the same reason that I do them, to be and have time set aside for God in my week. I guess I am very like Luther in the fact that I agree with him when he suggests that on a normal day he spends an hour in prayer, and on a busy day he can’t afford to spend less than three hours in prayer before the day starts. (By the way if you are reading this and think that it is ridiculous and there is no way you can be as productive, or if you read about my pace of life and you think, ‘yeah right’ then you should probably consider choosing into it... Just saying that if you believe God to be good, then you might also believe that the 10 commandments are kind of important and well this happens to be a positive command within those rules, so consider it!)
Anyways also on Wednesday I had a wonderful Chat with my friend Thomas (Fr Thomas) over coffee after we submitted our exam. It is interesting to share my story of theology and to be able to share my passion of why and what I do with him. It is also cool to hear his perspective on theology as he is a priest in the Indian Orthodox Church (Think ancient church like the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, like 4th Century split off from the Church, not like the Russian Orthodox Church (11th Century Split)). Anyways other than that on Wednesday I was exhausted and pushed my way through one last paper (Quite literally pushed my way through, I am not happy with how it turned out), but I am glad that it is finished.
I guess I need to return to the title where I might have insinuated that I am going back to Lesotho. Well this weekend some friends and I are going to try to hit up the Highest pub in Africa in addition to hiking up to the Highest Peak South of Mt. Kilimanjaro. So it is back to Lesotho with me, and Back to the Sani Top! It will give my new Backpack a good test run, (I finally downsized to a nicely sized 50L backpack) before I hit the road.
I guess I am going to end this post here and keep it shorter than 2500 words, but I would love to hear stories from anyone back at home. If you are sitting there thinking: ‘Oh surely he can’t mean me,’ I mean you in particular. If you are sitting there thinking: ‘What stories?’ Send me an e-mail about life, the universe or anything. It is really special to me to receive e-mails, stories etc... I guess since I am coming back in Early January that I will be seeing you guys and I would love to have some Idea about what is going on in your lives as well.
Cheers!
No comments:
Post a Comment