a bit of distance...

There's one thing I don't necessarily enjoy about what I'm experiencing at seminary: I feel I have become almost over intellectualized; I see things in a very intellectual way, in very theological ways.  It's good, but its nothing like what I experienced when I was in Greensboro.

In Greensboro there was a certain limit to it, mainly because I simply didn't have the time for it, nor was I given the direction.  I had other things to accomplish and better pursuits to go after.  I feel as if I was more connected to my humanness, where as now I feel connected to a sort of transcendence.
But I don't want to say its a good connection, its all very heady and logical and not so much experiential, so even then its disconnected from my existential nature.  More than anything, though, I feel disconnected with my fallenness.  That's not to say I don't know it or see it, its just that there are other "bigger" things on my mind, but not necessarily better things.

For one, its just not mentioned that much around here.  Sin is big social injustice, systematic and societal, not little things like pride and gluttony, or sexual immoral things like lust, or socially accepted things like partying; they may be frowned upon, but its not mentioned much and never addressed is why such things are done.  This is not to say that such things doesn't exist here; I just haven't seen it, and because I haven't seen it, it has become a lesser thing in thought and practice for me.  My own personal discipline and holiness I simply pay less attention to now than I formerly did.  Which I just don't like, primarily out of fear of its consequences of letting something underneath the surface fester, gain a foothold and then jump up and bite me later.

I rarely look back and say about my past, "Ah, how I long for that time back!"  My time in Greensboro after graduation and living in Clemson are the times that I do say that I have come to realize.  I don't know why, maybe it was a feeling of acceptance in Clemson, and, then, in Greensboro not only was it a feeling of acceptance, but it was a community striving for much more than understanding of God, but obeying him also.  It seems as if here I have a community that strives to understand God (also on grounds that I agree with theologically for the most part), but not so much one that is, at least as a community, seeking to obey him in all aspects of life.  That's not to say that they aren't striving to do so, its just not a community project, or so it seems as I see it now.

I'm putting a bunch of qualifiers on almost every critique I'm making about my time here, but I feel like I have to.  I really am not a part of the wider Candler community.  I have my friends, but I'm very much uninvolved.  I go to class and hang out with people on campus, but when I'm not on campus I'm not, nor am I attempting to be, in the community, of course going and hanging out at a bar has rarely been my desire except with a few people, and its also very expensive, and I am not privy to much wealth at the moment....