Friday, November 12, 2010

I'm in love with academia.

So I was thinking about going to seminary.

But let's face it. I can't do the complicated infra-structure keep-everyone-happy bullshit. I have quickly realized that keeping everyone happy with my decisions annoys the heck out of me. I'm partial to the "haters gonna hate" policy, and then I just keep swimming. So being a church leader has minimal appeal to me at this point in my life, and it's definitely not where I'm called.

But that's fine, because I am head over heels for academia. Oh, sweet coptic texts. Oh, applying cognitive science of metaphor to ancient Roman poetry. Oh, learning about myself through scholarship. Oh, having three different Bible editions, two Qurans, five different editions of "Gnostic" texts (although the use of the word "Gnostic" is debatable, but that's another story), among a giant pile of other books, articles, and scholarly journals. Oh, language classes that give me a different access to religious texts. Oh, long debates about gendered pronoun translation. Oh, long papers, short papers, presentations, and long conversations.

I am so in love with books and learning and writing at the moment. I have never been so challenged or so enthused by my work. I probably sound like I'm gushing over some significant other or a baby or a puppy or something, and I guess in a way I am. There's just something to be said for knowing when you're on the right path, for intellectually and spiritually realizing you are "home."

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