No longer at ease here, in the old dispensation...

I always think of T.S. Eliot's "The Journey of the Magi" when I return home to Virginia for the holidays. There is a strangeness that confronts me in the very people who are closest to me. This occurs both in my family and in my church. It is the most painful type of "otherness," the kind that highlights the gap between my past and my present as well as my inability to reconcile the two.

I'm pretty much the only one in my immediate family to get a full college education. Add to that the fact that I'm in a PhD program, committed to progressive politics and social ethics, and actually know the difference between WiFi and DSL, and I turn out to be quite the alien species to them. The hardest part for me, I think, is that their strange planet is actually my home, and they are the ones who have always supported and nurtured me. Yet, I don't know how to even carry on a conversation with them sometimes. I love my dad, but, sorry, I don't really care about Ruger's new scope for the .308 bolt-action rifle with wood-grain stock (if such a thing actually exists). My brother tries, but I just can't muster enough false interest to hear about the newest Motley Crue album. And how do I talk to them about my interests?

"Yeah, Mom, I've been reading some Gadamer, trying to figure out how German hermeneutics can help me understand the intersection of the historical horizon in my own experience. Oh and I 'm looking forward to unpacking the gnomic will of Maximus the Confessor this semester. It should really go well with my analysis of divine contingency in Nemesius of Emessa. And yeah, I just got a copy of Optatus' treatise against the Donatists. Why yes, that does in fact excite me. How was your day?"

Going to church on Sunday is equally painful. I mean, I love my home church. Absolutely love it. This community was amazing to me as a child and teenager. They provided a loving and affirming environment that I desperately needed. Much of my academic interest in theology comes from my experiences at that church. But I just feel I don't relate to them anymore. Not only do I fear the inevitable encounter with someone whom, Lord knows, I SHOULD remember but I just don't, but I also find it hard to explain what I do and why I think it matters. All I can think is, "Man, that sermon was awful. Where was the text?" Or, "These people have no real understanding of the implications of Trinitarian doctrine for their experience of the divine!"

I think that last sentiment really gets at the heart of the problem. For most of the year I live in a fantastic bubble of academic theology. The people I talk to are either other scholars or seminary students. Sure, I might find some of the students quite naive, but the academic context allows for a type of discourse that the home church simply doesn't! In a classroom, or even over coffee, I have time to discuss with a seminarian the reasons I feel history and theology matter for the practice of Christianity. I can say, hey, go read this book by Lindbeck and see what you think about inter-religious dialogue as cultural-linguistic interchange. But that ability falls away when I move into the local pew with people who don't give a flying falafel about critically examining the nature of their faith.

Maybe I underestimate them. That is certainly a fear I have. Yet often I find myself making the opposite mistake--not appreciating the differences between them and me enough. At times when I've tried to teach within the church I go over everyone's head. I forget that I cannot assume a basic level of theological knowledge, like the difference between the OT and NT (seriously). At times I rail against the failure of Christian education in local congregations. But then I realize: that's quickly becoming MY JOB.

So, I stand there, staring at the co-members of my home church as they ask how my studies are going. "Good, good," I say, "better than a real job!" A chuckle, a hug, and I'm gone, back to editing an article to submit for publication in the academic journals that now define my sense of self-worth. And yet, as I learn to speak the professional academic language, what would it mean for me to relearn the language of my home? Not as regression. You cannot return to the old country, after all. Not really. But you can integrate. You can incorporate your native tongue with your adopted language. You can learn to move between worlds and by doing so reconcile them to one another in your own self--not annihilating their otherness, but embracing it as constitutive of what it means to be a created person in a diverse world.

So that's what this blog is hopefully going to be about. I want to write about my studies, interesting things I'm learning, fun problems I'm trying to solve. I also want to write about scripture and liturgy and church. Some of this will be annoyingly academic and esoteric. But I hope that will be balanced by and integrated into my broader devotional and theological reflections. I hope to journey between Athens and Jerusalem and find myself a home somewhere in between...

maybe in Pontus...