All Grown Up...Now What?

So now that I'm all graduated from college and working, I get home from my job and think, "this is it? I went to school for four years to go to work, go back to my apartment, and recover from work watching long-winded news updates about long-winded political candidates?" Hmm. In college I had a routine, which was pretty much class homework, and more homework, and hanging out with people when we all felt like it. But I had a goal, and that was to do well in my classes and graduate.  Now that there isn't the perpetual cloud of homework hanging over my head to fill my time and the laundry list of tests on my calander, life feels a little bit...well...directionless. And for some reason, I always feel like I have to be heading somewhere.

So I sat down to think of all the potential things I could do with myself.

a.) Get a dog and find a husband

Well, not very original. 2/3 of my graduating class has done that already. And really, I don't think getting married should be a goal in and of itself; it should be something I do because I happen to find someone who I want to share my life with.

b.) Write a book

Don't have the life experience yet. Maybe I could write about being a new nurse, but frankly I don't want to think about nursing when I'm not at work. And it would either sound idealistic and sappy or cynical and unfeeling. There's always the God memoirs, but there have been a flood of those lately. And there's the little problem of never having published anything. Moving on...

c.) Apply to seminary

Then the question becomes, "which seminary?" I'm all over the ecclesiastical map. And there's the little problem of having exactly one theology class on my transcript. I love studying theology, but I don't think I have to skill to teach it, and I don't think full-time ministry would be my cup of tea either. I would get another degree, graduate with a pile of debt and have to get...a nursing job. :)

d.) Go to graduate school for nursing

Besides the fact that I think I'm going to puke if I have to write one more care plan, this might be an option down the road. I think I would like being a family nurse practitioner...more autonomy, less hospital craziness. I could work in a clinic for the underprivilaged and feel like I was helping the community.

e.) Transfer to the OR, learn surgical nursing, and then travel around with one of those charity agencies that does surgeries in foreign countries to fix cleft palletes, etc.

Could work...except that OR jobs are hard to come by because they actually have semi-normal hours and all the senior nurses want them. And I think you actually have to PAY to go on one of those mercy-ship type things. And there's the fact that I want to see the world about as much as I want to help people...is that bad?

f.) Buy a ticket to Europe, travel around staying in youth hostals, learn another language, and we'll see if I ever come back.

Too chicken. ;)

For now it's my current option:

g.) hang around in my hometown, work a job I don't mind but don't want forever, audit a class I would rather be taking for real, hang out with friends who are mostly still in college and pretend I'm still in college, facebook fellow '08 graduates at least once a week to tell them I miss them, take a random belly-dancing class with my coworkers, watch election coverage even though it makes me want to run for the hills, and dream about doing big things...someday.

Life, man...whew!

Well, it seems as though I haven't been a very good blogger this summer. It's not that there's not a lot to say, it's just that I've been too exhausted to come up with creative ways of saying it.

Let's see...I'm finally a real nurse...passed the boards, registered with the state of Michigan, blah, blah, blah. It's starting to sink in about how much responsibility I have, and it's making me wonder if I was in my right mind with I signed on for this. But I'm muddling through. Hopefully I can get a year or so of experience in and find a job that's more suited to my interests. Right now I work on an LTACH (long-term acute care) unit. I'm seeing a good variety of patients and learning a lot, but it's a pretty draining population to be dealing with. My people are often frustrated because they're in the hospital because of something that went wrong at another hospital, or they've been hospitalized for months. Most of them die or go to long-term care. I'd rather work in an outpatient cosmetic surgery center...give people boob jobs and make them happy! But I can't complain, really. I'm learning a lot and my coworkers have been really gracious and helpful. And then there's the patient or two that takes my hand and says, "Thank you for all you did for me." And right then it seems worth it. 

And of course there's all my theological pondering. Lately I've been going to an Eastern Orthodox church. Long story, but I was introduced through a class that I took in January. The beauty of the divine liturgy is striking, I appreciate Eastern perspective on a lot of theological issues such as the Atonement, but I am just not convinced at this point that being Orthodox would be so much better than being Christian Reformed. I miss my CRC church a lot sometimes. So I'm "auditing" Orthodox catechism since a few of my friends are going through it as well. Weird? Yep, I know. I just keep thinking...maybe I can appreciate the beauty of Orthodoxy without actually making the leap. Maybe there's something to sticking with the communion that I was baptized into, and educated in, for that matter.

In other news, my roommate and I are moving to another apartment this weekend. I feel like this makes my college to real life transition official, for some reason. 

Well, I'm going to try and get back into blogging now that I'm not studying for boards and going to EKG class. Hopefully I can post some more specific reflections on all of the above.

Sarah Coakley on Liturgy

This past week, my friend Joyce and I decided to be nerds and attend the Philosophy and Liturgy conference at my (now) alma mater Calvin College. It was definitely more philosophical jargon than I'm used to, and the irony of a bunch of talking heads sitting around talking about how great embodiment was definitely wasn't lost on me. Anyway, one lecture I thought was absolutely brilliant (as well as understandable!) was Sarah Coakley's talk, "Beyond ‘Belief’: Liturgy and the Cognitive Apprehension of God." Here are my notes, even though they hardly begin to do justice to her paper.

Intro: 

-part of the reason secular Europe lacks faith is because of "untaught bodies," not just "untaught minds."

-liturgy in of itself conveys a particular type of knowledge/truth

1. Religious Experience: problems with using this as a framework for knowing God

-insists on direct/unmediated perception of God

-relies on sporadic, self-authenticating experiences

-interprets mystical experiences apart from wider asetic narratives

-God= "other" to be percieved, not means of all perception.

2. Insights from feminist epistemology

-questions "perception at a distance," such as the classic philosophical examples of percieving a chair in the middle of the room.

-insists that we can't ignore the significance of personal/communal interactions

-need to take identity of embodied knower into account

-primary relationships (such as a mother and infant) are a basis for knowing later on, and provide a basis for reflection on knowing God.-->"fundamental and ongoing knowledge by aquaintance." 

3. Liturgical knowledge of God

-litergy irreducibly conveys theoloical truth/intimacy with God.

-litergical practices are socially mediated, bodily enacted, and give cognitive access to pers

onal knowledge of God.

-Gregory of Nyssa: through liturgy, we train the physical senses and begin to sense as Christ senses. (the "spiritual senses" tradition, beginning with Origen)

-liturgical knowing=sensual acuity, affective longing

-engaging in liturgical practice causes us to assent to the basic beliefs of the Christian faith in different ways over time, the goal being "full integration of embodied selfhood into the life of Christ."

-liturgy engages us in trasformation toward an eschatological goal.

-eschatological moments where time stands still are moments where we remind ourselves corporately of where we are going.

I thought what she said made a lot of sense, especially the part about the problem with trying to percieve God as an "other" from a distance, and not as "the means of all perception," especially knowing what I know about psychology and human development.  When babies are born, they "know" their mother by her voice, even though they are not yet self-aware and cannot consciously understand who their mother is.  They become securely or insecurely attached based on whether or not their parents respond to them consistently. This forms a personality disposition that will stay with them throughout their entire lives, all before they can consciously apprehend who their parents are. I wonder if the writer of 1 Peter was subconsciously thinking about liturgy when he wrote, "Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation."

I did it!

College graduate...has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

I don't get art.

Can someone please explain why in heaven's name this painting sold for $33.6 million?