Distractions & Community
by Tim K. Snyder
It has been a long day. It's 11:34p and I've not started the paper due tomorrow morning at 8:30a. What is more is that I've been in class/orientations for eight hours and after dinner our presentation group spent an inordinate amount of time creating a five minute presentation. So logically it's caffeine time and so I head to the kitchen in Stub Hall (the dorm distributed learners stay in during campus residencies) for ice for my warm coke...
...well that trip for ice took an hour. I just popped my head in to say, "hi" to Scott (another DL MDiv junior) and that's when I got distracted. It was a great conversation, a time of holy listening, authentic sharing and the best part is that I didn't have time for any of it. But you'd be surprised how close relationships can form so quickly when thrown into the crucible of the "pilot" program, leaving behind families/second lives, and trading it all for intensive study for two weeks. We don't have much time for distractions in the daily schedule of the next two week - but I have a feeling that won't prevent the holy moments from happening anyway.
Today we spent time together sharing where we were coming from through the metaphor of pilgrimage and were asked: what is it that sustains you?
Overwhelmingly the answer was our cohorts...our community. Many of us DL students leave behind families, wives, faith communities, friends, jobs and our "other lives". It is a complicated process though because you never can fully detach. It is a demanding kind of experience. These distractions are an indication to me that our community of Distributed Learners is becoming a sustaining place.
Thank-you God for distractions and a community of sojourners on this pilgrimage of distributed learning.
dang. It's now 11:50p, that paper still isn't done...
...well that trip for ice took an hour. I just popped my head in to say, "hi" to Scott (another DL MDiv junior) and that's when I got distracted. It was a great conversation, a time of holy listening, authentic sharing and the best part is that I didn't have time for any of it. But you'd be surprised how close relationships can form so quickly when thrown into the crucible of the "pilot" program, leaving behind families/second lives, and trading it all for intensive study for two weeks. We don't have much time for distractions in the daily schedule of the next two week - but I have a feeling that won't prevent the holy moments from happening anyway.
Today we spent time together sharing where we were coming from through the metaphor of pilgrimage and were asked: what is it that sustains you?
Overwhelmingly the answer was our cohorts...our community. Many of us DL students leave behind families, wives, faith communities, friends, jobs and our "other lives". It is a complicated process though because you never can fully detach. It is a demanding kind of experience. These distractions are an indication to me that our community of Distributed Learners is becoming a sustaining place.
Thank-you God for distractions and a community of sojourners on this pilgrimage of distributed learning.
dang. It's now 11:50p, that paper still isn't done...
posted by Tim K. Snyder at 11:32 PM
1 Comments:
You really captured the experience here, Tim. Talking when there isn't enough time to talk and making time for "holy listening" (a beautiful description, btw) is as important to our pastoral preparation as any class we could take or paper we could write. (Not that our professors would accept that as an excuse if we didn't shirked our responsibilities, though!)
Post a Comment
<< Home