The Best Kind of One of Those Days

Have you ever had one of those days when things seem to be falling into place and you get a glimpse of purpose and meaning in your life?  I’m having one of those days right now.  Let me tell you how it all started…

Eight years and two days ago, I moved out of the home I’d shared with my husband of fourteen years and into a furnished rental for a trial separation.  I picked up a book from the bookshelf and began reading the introduction, which told a story of a woman who’d moved out of her marital home and into a furnished rental and picked up a book that got her through her separation and subsequent divorce.  I had to read it!  The book was At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst, and it was my first introduction to St. Julian of Norwich, who I quoted heavily in yesterday’s blog.

I felt a comfort and kinship in St. Julian I had never felt before, and reading the book was the beginning of a deep spiritual exploration and growth process that continues to this day.  In many ways, that book is responsible for the fact that I am in seminary now.  Because in St. Julian I found a woman with a theology I could relate to, I felt the courage to claim and proclaim my reading of scripture.

I’m still finishing up my Masters of Sustainable Communities program at Northern Arizona University, which will have a chapter on St. Julian from the perspective of process theology.  I’m also planning to complete a doctoral program that will allow me to more deeply and intensely examine the intersection between ecology and theology.  To that end, I made an appointment with my history professor because he assigned St. Julian’s Showings and has written on the theology/ecology intersection so I figured he’d have some useful advice.

As it turns out, he’s a St. Julian scholar, and is supervising a doctoral student at BU who is writing on St. Julian through the lens of queer theory (and my thesis will include some work on queer theory and process theology).  He gave me great advice on moving forward from here academically, and agreed to check out some of my writing and mentor me on how and where to get an article published.

It feels like things are coming full circle, like a long and arduous journey is coming to…well, the base of another mountain I’ll have to climb at some point.  But in the meantime, I’m in a lush abundant meadow, the traveling easy, and the company splendid.  Thank you for coming along on my journey, whether or not we have met.  Knowing you’re out there reading and cheering for me gives me the strength I need. 

Blessings, love and light

Shelley