Feelings of Discovery

 I wasn't planning on writing again in August, but I wanted to actually share just a few things, as the "feelings of discovery," as I call them, have been making themselves present recently.  I am not totally sure of what it all means yet, but for the most part I am actually feeling good about things.

In our grade-level faculty meeting today, our team lead - a sweet lady named Miss Myers who teaches 11th-grade English - posed a question to us as a group activity.  The question was something like, "if you were to describe the beginning of the year as weather, what would yours be?"  For some, it was a sunny day, although the history teacher had a more grim forecast of hurricanes and destruction which caused us all to have a good chuckle.  My answer however was interesting - I said mine was like this dry, dusty condition which is now starting to get the first sprinkles of a good spring rain.  The question our faculty team lead posed was an interesting one, and it made me pause to think a little about how things have been over the years. 

I have talked I think before of dreams I have had on several occasions about tornadoes and floods.  The most hair-raising dream I had about a tornado was several years back, when in the dream my great-grandmother and my mother were alive, and we were in a car traveling.  As with many dreamscapes, the scene was a sort of amalgamation of the country roads of my youth and a little bit of the I-4 corridor between Lakeland and Tampa in Florida, and on the horizon I recall this huge tornado - it was black, and it was perhaps bigger than any actual twister in history has ever been - it looked like it had a diameter of several miles, and it was looming right in front of us.  Mom, Granny, and I were in a car traveling in this dream, and we managed to avoid the storm somehow but at the same time we knew we needed to get home fast.  In the dream, what was representative of Granny's house sat at the intersection of two roads, and there was not a tree in sight and in many respects it didn't look anything like Granny's actual old house in Hendricks, WV, but rather had a similar setup to my grandmother Elsie's house that used to be in Augusta, but it looked a lot nicer.  We got into the house just in time, and I remember that big twister of monumental and colossal diameter going right by the living room window, where a rocking chair sat parallel to the window looking out, and it did not even touch the house yet I saw how scary it was up-close - it was pitch-black, ominous, and just not something I would ever want to face in real life.  As scary and formidable as it looked though, it never touched or harmed us.  A second and similar dream I had at another time I cannot recall offhand entailed my living in this beautiful house - it had a nice porch with French doors, and at the end of the yard was open water - a bay I believe.  In the dream, there was a huge tidal wave coming, and to the right of the house was a spillway with a concrete pavement.  The floods came, and the wave towered over the house about 500 feet - it was huge and scary.  And, from up the spillway came another rushing torrent of water too, and both of them hit the yard. The steps to my front porch became waterfront property, but again the flood never touched the house itself except now the front door had to be accessed by boat.  Considering all I have been through and what has happened over the past several years, this is where I have a "feeling of discovery," and our faculty relational exercise sort of sparked how this fit together.  Let me explain.

When you dream of storms or floods - particularly whirlwinds like monster tornadoes - it is a sign that something is about to rock your world.  I have had more than one dream about scary tornadoes, as well as a couple about mega-tsunami floods, and at the time I had many of these dreams I was in a good place.  However, a sense of foreboding always gripped me with a dream like that, and later I would understand why.  As I mentioned, in the past few years my world has been rocked in so many ways - a year ago this week, as a matter of fact, I was in danger of being thrown out of our house because my money had dried up and I had no way to pay rent.  On October 5 in a little over a month from now, Barbara and I will commemorate that happening.  After enduring a divorce, the death of both my parents and then my last grandparents, and then after being forced out of our house I went through about 2 weeks of relying upon God's mercies to provide for me (and he did).  In addition, I got my doctorate but it was not the way I imagined that either - no ceremony, no significant memory, or nothing.  Then, I started a new job, moved to Baltimore with two new roommates who to that point were strangers, and it felt like my whole world was turned inside out.  I lost a lot, and even now I am still trying to piece some things together, but I am still here.  The storms of life came, they really gave me a whisker-whipping, and I thought I was going under so many times, but here I am.  And, now a new chapter is opening itself, and it's a good chapter - I am settled into my new role as a teacher, and I feel my "groove" so to speak now, and it may be possible for me to purchase a house soon.  The "feeling of discovery" here is a new land, and I am like the first settler in this new land, and as the new chapter starts to really open up I will discover much.  I did get some wounds yes, and I feel the exhaustion of the past year catching up to me as I am now having some health challenges I never anticipated, but I believe I am a better person coming through it.  So, let's talk about that feeling of discovery.

I am a pilgrim of faith, as my Christian walk relies on God's grace like a car relies on gasoline to operate. Part of a pilgrim's journey is coming into a new land, settling it, and taming it to turn it into something great.  I feel like a pioneer who is starting to upgrade the lean-to I was living in to an actual log cabin now, and building a house - even in an allegorical sense like this - takes a lot.  Knowing the "lay of the land" is vital, and I am still scouting some areas of the new territory out in all honesty.  After all, even looking at this big city of Baltimore here, it took a couple of centuries to grow from what was essentially an Indian boat dock to one of the largest cities in America.  The Baltimore of 1600 would look totally different than the Baltimore of 2025, namely because the Baltimore of 1600 did not exist.  My new frontier in life didn't exist a few years ago either, but here I am taming and claiming it.  There is still much more to discover,  but I am on a path of discovery, so we will see where that goes. 

Thank you for allowing me to share, so as you prepare to celebrate the long weekend with your families, may it be blessed, and will see you next time.