Finding True North #37: What DID I Find?

I am currently in Ann Arbor visiting a good friend from undergrad, so although field ed is officially over, my midwest adventures continue a bit longer. Perhaps it's a means of denying the end of the summer, but I'm OK with that.

I came to this summer with a theme: "finding true north." I came without specific expectations but certainly with hopes. I hoped to wrestling with God and hopefully maneuver my way, however awkwardly, into some vocational clarity. Anticipating graduation in May of next year, I hoped to get a little direction and discernment on what might come after.

Around the next to last week of field ed, a friend asked if I had gotten the clarity for which I had hoped. I told him yes and no. My summer 2011 field ed experience could not have been more perfectly suited for me, in ways both expected and unexpected. Some of the things I most enjoyed came as no surprise, while some of what I grew most passionate about I could not have foreseen. Over the course of my 10 weeks in Indianapolis, God opened me up to possibilities that I hadn't dreamed of but which, as it turns out, are probably (hopefully) going to shape and even define my future ministry.

I've likened this opening up to an explosion. Through my work at North UMC and Lockerbie UMC, through the surprising gift of Earth House, through myriad friendships and relationships built over the course of the summer, I feel as if God has blown my world to bits. I know that's a violent image, but it has been a process that is both disconcerting and exciting. Maybe it's something like fireworks. Some of my expectations and self-imposed restrictions had to be destroyed in order to create something so much more exciting and beautiful.

The learning process is not over, of course; in fact, this summer was really just the beginning, at the most a continuation, of discernment processes that will probably go on throughout my life. I was affirmed in my passion for worship design; my horizons were expanded in my love of the arts; I was called out and challenged on administrative shortcomings that I had previously been able to gloss over quietly. The list of things to explore and work on has doubled from the beginning of the summer, not being checked off but rather being added to.

So, did I find true north? I'm not sure. I feel like God, rather than pointing me in a direction, showed me the potential for a whole new dimension of ministry. It's not about me deciding which road to take, but about finding where my path intersects with others, climbing a tree to expand my vision, wandering off the road to plant a garden or cutting my own path through the underbrush. God has given me the freedom and imagination to dream as big as God does, while constantly reminding me that dreams are not to be merely abstract visions but embodied, relational, and contextual. I will continue to pray for a vision of the forest and the trees.