Going back to my post of August 18th, less than three weeks away from moving, and I am excited about it. One anticipation is moving into a supportive Christian community. Especially over the past few months, I have been so hesitant to say what I really think, what I really believe to be true, around anyone, even around others within my church, for fear that what I constantly see will happen to me: marginalization, mockery, being written off as a whack-job, and never being taken seriously again. And I'm looking forward to seminary in that respect, in that the church acknowledges an alternate plausibility structure, one where Jesus Christ, not the modern nation-state or the rational knowing self, is the standard by which the world is viewed, and where my real whack-job stuff is cut to shreds, that which suggests that Mike is the standard by which Mike is to judge all he encounters. Where God speaking is not insanity, but reality.

It's a complete re-education, and one I anticipate, made possible by grace. The grace of God in crushing my old everything and giving me new life, the life of Christ. Grace in the form of scholarship money that I did not earn/deserve, but that will ease financial burdens and facilitate transformation. As I see it, pursuit of a Master's Degree isn't just an academic venture, but is holistic, in which every aspect of me will be challenged, stretched to be stripped, and re-clothed. And I can trust the faculty, that they want me to love and follow Jesus, and that while they will be used to break me, re-making me is part of the process.

At the same time, I am afraid of the change that is to come, knowing that in areas such as pride, self-sufficiency, hatred, arrogance, autonomy, and individualism, I'm going to have to die. And yet I will rise, better. That in itself is faith, knowing that what has not been seen is going to come to pass, and that the second world is real, and better.