Falling On My Pen

[qos]

The bloody paper was due at 7pm not 8pm.
The WebCT site no longer allows the assignment to be uploaded.
I have emailed it to my prof.

I've been saying for the past couple of months that this is a period of discernment, that I needed to complete this quarter of seminary and then spend the summer working on my shamanic studies and doing various kinds of internal checking and external research about what I really need to be doing, before I make a final decision about whether to commit to finishing this degree or not.

But the longer this quarter drags on, the more I feel like I should have taken the advice of the prof I spoke with during the break and simply have withdrawn then.

No, I shouldn't have, because then I might always have wondered if I had done the right thing.

But I am not enjoying this quarter the way I had hoped -- or the way I have enjoyed most of the rest of them. And the longer it drags on the more growly I get. I feel like a tiger in a cage, and it doesn't matter if I'm getting thick slabs of meat pushed through the bars every day. . . I'm blunting my teeth on the bars in my effort to get out and stalk my own food.

Which, come to think of it, is not so inaccurate a metaphor.

Comments

[blessed-harlot.livejournal.com]

What a grody place to be. I'm glad you tried. Apparently it's a necessary thing. Probably it will be a great time for discernment. Still can't feel good. At all.

[qos.livejournal.com]

At the very least, it's nice to be keeping company with people besides my classmates who understand, first hand, the significance of the discernment process.

[queenofhalves]

hanging in there with you.

[qos.livejournal.com]

!!

Speaking of FP. . . You and I are both going to be in need of some serious vacation recreation after the academic year we've been through!!

(And if you're not reading this on LJ itself, you need to click to check out the new icon!)

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the path is the problem, or if it is more the circumstances under which you are forced to do this part of the path (required classes, professors).

Good luck figuring it all out.

[kateri-thinks.livejournal.com]

Ugh.

Thinking strong thoughts for you while you slog and sit and open and envision and pace in discernment.

[queenofhalves]

eheheh.

[qos.livejournal.com]

Your question actually gets to the heart of what I'm strugglinng with now.

I have no question that my basic path -- that place where I'm focusing my primary/vocational energies, where I find my purpose -- is a Spirit Path, and that my job is to help other people deepen their own connection with the Divine.

Previously, I believed I needed an additional degree to do this, that I needed the credentials to have legitimate authority, and that I needed the knowledge this school could provide for me.

I'm not convinced of that any more. I don't want to sound arrogant, or to say that this school has nothing to teach me. Obviously I have learned a great deal here and could learn a lot more. But this seminary is designed to prepare men and women to serve within major Christian denominations, within the context of church communities or as chaplains.

And that's not where I'm going. That's not who I am going to serve.

And you know what? I realized recently that the people I see myself serving -- the ones who hunger for God/dess/Spirit/Mystery but for whatever reason don't/can't find it in a church -- aren't interested in whether or not a seminary has put its stamp of approval on me.

I'm also realizing that I have spent most of my life processing my experiences -- even my spiritual ones -- mostly with my intellect. And there's nothing wrong with that. But at this stage of my life it's time for me to step off the deep end into the mystical, the non-rational, the experiential, and develop the other aspects of myself.

So the answer is: no, I don't think that sitting in a seminary classroom right now, completing required assignments, is going to help me become the spiritual director/shaman/teacher that I am called to be.

[qos.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :-)

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Your assertions don't sound arrogant at all. In fact, they sound a lot like my reasons for discontinuing my masters in electrical engineering. I want to learn, yes, but learning according to the prescription of standard academia had me wallowing in too much information which is utterly useless to me. I can learn what I am interested in learning without going the formal academic path to do so, and I will be much better off for it, in the long run. It's about following my instinct, not following someone else's definition of what theories I "should" know in order to be worthy of digging further into what I want to know.

[qos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the affirmation -- and I didn't know that about your own academic choice.

This is a big transition for me, since I have so strongly identified with and been successful in academic life.

But there is something very positive about claiming my own authority!