I just finished Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer. A classmate suggested this book to me and said that it reminded her of me. I am not sure what that means but I am glad I picked up the book. It was an easy read and there are many ideas and thoughts in the book that resonate with me. More on that later but here is something that really hits home with me as I enter the 4th month of internship.

In the last chapter of the book, Palmer draws on images of the seasons and those really resonate with my roots on a farm in rural Northwest Ohio. He reminds the reader that birth and rebirth is a natural part of life and ends with this explaination of summer:

Here is a summertime truth: abundance is a communal act, the joint creation of an incredibly complex ecology in which each part functions on behalf of the whole and, in return, is sustained by the whole. Community doesn't just create abundance - community is abundance. If we could learn that equation from the world of nature, the human world might be transformed.

After two challenging years of seminary classwork, I find myself facing many of the same challenges as a new pastoral intern. Many new faces, new group dynamics and struggling to find my place in the midst of this community. And yet this is very different. Why I ask? Because I have, much to my surprise, approached this time in a very different way than those two years of classes. Here, I have allowed myself to get to know the people and the place. I have opened myself to see God at work in the midst of daily life. I have encountered God present in community in many unexpected ways and at unexpected times. I simply have been present, without my agenda or purpose, I see new life after death. I see hope in the hopeless. I see the strength of faith in the darkest moments.

I have found freedom by surrendering my old identity and vocation to embrace the new vocation I am called to. Not easy nor will it ever be easy but definitely an incredible summer after a harsh winter and soggy spring of seminary life.

And I still am thinking about the beautiful fall that will be here soon. All of the good byes to those that have helped me become who I am called to be: pastor

Without Christ's death there would be no resurrection. With out the resurrection there would be no new life for all.