Today is the three-year anniversary of my ordination.

It was a big, emotional day, especially in retrospect. We moved much of a our stuff up here, then turned right around and flew to Houston. It was my first trip back to Houston since Dad had died. It was also one of the last times I saw my aunt feeling well. I preached in the morning, then Professor/Mentor preached at the ordination and ChaplainMom and I served communion (me for the first time) to the congregation that had nurtured me all those years... from the first moment in 1996--ten years ago!--when I asked the associate pastor how he knew he was called to be a pastor. He saw right through my question with a sly "Why do you want to know???" He concluded our conversation with, "I think you'd be a wonderful pastor."

I have now been out of seminary for as long as I was in it, and I gotta say, life is good on this side of things. I loved seminary but it's fun to learn what I want to learn, when and how I want to learn it. Not to mention going about the business of *doing* ministry.

About three weeks before seminary graduation I was asked (along with another graduating senior) to talk to the Board about our seminary experience. I sang a snippet from Copland's opera The Tender Land, sung by a young woman on the eve of her graduation:

Once I thought I'd never grow tall as this fence.
Time dragged heavy and slow.
But April came and August went
Without a thought of what they meant,
And little by little I grew.
And as I grew I came to know
How fast the time could go.

Once I thought I'd never go
Outside this fence.
This space was plenty for me.
But I walked down the road one day,
And just what happened I can't say.
But little by little it came to be
The line between the earth and sky
Came beckoning to me.

The piece concludes with the line

The time has grown so short, the world so wide.

That pretty much encapsulated how I felt. If a seminary has done its job, it will seem like cramped quarters by the end. We arrive, we are pushed and pulled and folded and spindled for a while, and then we simply must leave.

Seminary Girlfriend arrives tonight with her family for a short visit. Aside from delighting in watching our kids play together (look out for the clash of the alpha females), it will be fun to reminisce about old times. Probably oughtta send the husbands to the sports bar up the road.