What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God. - Eleanor Powell
I was asked a couple of days after coming back to Toronto from Urbana what I missed about it. I had been crooning on about how much I missed Urbana when a friend asked me “what do you miss about it?” At the time, I scrambled to cohese a comprehensive thought that entailed all of the things I loved and experienced at Urbana as well as my opinions and emotional outlook of it. It was difficult. I came up with an answer that I was uncertain about. I was uncertain that it made any sense first of all, but I was also uncertain that my response had everything I truly wanted to say about my time at Urbana.
As I was getting ready for school today, I was thinking about Urbana and reminiscing on how much of a wonderful time I had. I began to think critically about what exactly I liked about it. I used my first day back at school as a sort of template for a comparison. I realized then almost at once what I had missed out on my answer. I’d just like to clarify that I’m not trying to focus on the fact that my “answer” was “good” or “bad”, I’m merely suggesting that one needs time to process what they’ve learned in order to coalesce a meaningful response from an experience. At any rate, I realized aside from the epicness of the speakers, worship, and sense of community I found at Urbana, it’s the receptiveness to God everyone had at Urbana that I miss now that I’m back home in Toronto. Urbana was a place where only people who truly wanted to be there were. I’m sure there were people who were there who may not have intended to go and others with other circumstances entailing their attendance at Urbana. However, the general and overwhelming sense was that the majority of the Urbanites were crazy-in-love and thirsty for God’s Truth.
I felt so sad yesterday in class as we sat in a “community circle” as we educators like to call it and hashed out a problem that was arising on our online discussions. As I listened to people pouring themselves out and bitter tears being unable to be stifled finally bursting forward out of these broken people, my heart begged God: WHAT DO I DO? WHAT CAN I DO? I wanted to cry because of the emptiness I felt in the hearts of these people. They’re wonderful people, don’t get me wrong. They are passionate about teaching and about advocating for equity and social justice issues. However, I am a firm believer that no one person can lead a perfect and righteous life on their own. It is by the grace of God and through the strength of our Lord Father that we can do good deeds and have a clean heart. He alone can renew and restore broken hearts. We cannot pull through the proverbial desserts on our own.
Sitting in the circle and listening to all my colleagues express themselves with such poise made me feel insignificant and helpless. These people are well-read, well-spoken, HIGHLY intelligent folk and I feel like a silly little girl next to them in my cohort within the Faculty of Education. Still, I want to allow God to challenge me in that place and use me as a witness. How? I have no idea. But I’m willing and ready. I know that’s enough, but I can’t help but feel an accompaniment of unease at how ill-prepared I feel at being a witness in that place, a place which feels like a spiritual dessert.
