The Next Season

I just got home from my first semester of college, less than an hour ago. I am already donning pjs and listening to motown, and I can say it is good to be home.

My best friend Joe has this tendency to compare our lives to sitcoms. We have a group of four friends, and we hang around coffee shops and restaurants and talk about nothing. Its basically Seinfeld. From what my friends tell me, I am George, but I have to disagree. I'm not enough of a cheapster to be George.

 Every semester of college is a new season of our sitcom, and Joe likes to plan ahead what is going to happen. Someone was supposed to die in season 1, but fortunately his prediction was incorrect. Season 1 ended with little to no international fanfare, but for me, there were many fireworks.

It has been a long semester of confusion for me. I entered into it completely unsure about my vocation, not knowing where my life was heading. There was no path in the woods, and I had no direction. I was a child. The way it felt was comparable to just sitting looking at a map of the entire world and not having any clue where you fit in. In the middle of the semester, however, a pattern seemed to come out of the woodwork. I started to see a path, maybe a delicate and faint path, but nevertheless there was a direction. I began to see, and I felt as though a page was turning in my life. I took those steps to get up off my ass and find out where I fit in. My odyssey had begun.

It was terrifying.

I am more timid than not, especially when it comes to making decisions that could potentially sway the direction of my life and also sway the direction of other people's lives. Majors, friends, girls, vocations. All that terrifies me, almost to death. These are not easy decisions to make, especially when you realize how important and extraordinary those decisions are. To become brothers with immortals, to enter a relationship with an immortal, these are incredibly powerful and extraordinary decisions that we make, and anyone in their right mind would be frightened. I realized through prayer, though, that it doesn't matter if you're scared. Mary was scared. Jesus was scared. To be frightened is not to be sinful, to be frightened is human. There is a part of us that will always be scared to death, paralyzingly unsure of what lies ahead of us, that part of our souls will never be slain. Rather, fear needs to be conquered, by the only thing that conquers anything. Love.

Christ conquered his fear not by rationalizing his position, and neither did Mary. They did it because they loved others, they loved God. With love in our hearts, a true, radical love, taking that first step into the unknown becomes possible. Not easy, not without intense and great fear, but possible. It is only love that gives us the spirit to move, and this fear is what in turn empowers love and makes love noble. Love is what we live for, it is the most important thing that exists within our lives. It is literally what God created us for, but what love is strong if it exists within safe complacency? Indeed, it is no love at all. The love that overcomes fear, conquers shaking terror, how strong that love truly is. Love that does not slay nor defeat terror, but love that commands terror, and in this command, masters it. In this way, fear is the heart of love. Fear is what elevates love to more than just a human emotion, fear is what makes love noble, desirable, and to the one who has never loved, insane. Without fear, I fear, love would become quite boring. It is the quality of feeling as a lost little child in a brand new world which makes new love so thrilling, and the fear of a dark future, the fear of death and lonliness which makes established love so noble, for in both instances, love will invariably overcome. Truly, it is better to love whether you win or lose or die.

So, I look out and I see a second season of the sitcom of my life. I am listening to Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and I am scared and unsure. I suspect that I will never stop feeling scared. My goal is not to stop the fears, but to love so strongly and radically, to love my God and my neighbor so passionately that my fear ends up becoming only motivation and power, pushing me on to greater heights and to the completion of my dreams. I have a very, very long way to go. But I'll get by with a little help from my friends.

Peace,
The Boy Pilgrim