 |
| The start of the Nickel Bridge...the trains that I hear when at my current home must originate here. |
 |
| Returning to Richmond...I think cycling has proven to be effective in more fully appreciating the city as my home. |
As we dive deeper into the fall semester and anticipate the changing of seasons, I'd like to jot down a few songs that have been infused into my life recently and how they might hint at the seasons through which I've gone. Feel free to click on the titles to view a recording of the song.
59th Street Bridge Song (Simon and Garfunkel)
As I emerged from 2.5 years at Eastern Mennonite University, I found this song resonating with my desire to "slow down" and "make the moment last." I wanted to move towards "lookin' for fun" and "feelin' groovy." I have continued to enjoy listening to the song and thinking about its message but haven't mastered this mysterious grooviness in practice.
You Can't Hurry Love (The Supremes)
Finding it difficult to enjoy several weeks of faulty experiments as I volunteered in a microbiology lab and when I struggled with afternoons in a dental simulation course later that summer, I found this song matching the pedaling cadents on various evenings as I cycled home, wondering "how long must I wait," playing this "game of give and take" before I could call these endeavors "my own."
Do You Know Where You're Going To? (Diana Ross)
One semester into dental school, I was still adjusting to a large school; more importantly though, I'd started to tap into the diverse resources that a large city and health professional campus offers. I wondered how many opportunities I could afford to accept engagement in before it appeared that I was taking my dental education for granted. I chose to acknowledge that I didn't exactly "know where [I was] going to" and that I wanted to "like the things that life [would show me]." In order to "get what [I'm] hoping for" I decided to embrace opportunities that presented themselves so that I didn't have to "look behind [me to see that] there's no open doors." I hope that decisions that I've made thus far haven't left my dental studies completely in the dust, but I suppose we sometimes "must wait so long before we see how sad the answers to those questions can be."
 |
| A pleasant message at a friends' home. |
Leading music at church, I encountered this song in mid-spring. The words of hope for something that is "unrevealed until its season; something God alone can see" were very encouraging to one who was doing some professional soul-searching.
The Summons (John Bell)
Again encountering a challenging song by leading music at church, I returned to this song all throughout the end of the semester and summer, letting this snippet of questions from the song infiltrate various decisions: "Will you go where you don't know and never be the same...Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name...Will your risk the hostile stare, should your life attract or scare...Will you kiss the leper clean and do such as this unseen...Will you use the faith you've found to reshape the world around?" The address became accentuated when I visited a public health mentor (a leader in oral health literacy), whose goal during my visit seemed to be to persuade me to pursue a career in public health. Continuing to develop my interests for working with the geriatric population and engaging in a interprofessional group on campus through outreach and scholarly publications, I yearned to say, confused as ever, "In Your company I'll go, where Your love and footsteps show...thus I'll move and live and grow in You and You in me."
 |
| Cattle begin their munching on Labor Day weekend. Cycling by morning in the Valley is spectacular! (For the most part, I can stay on the bike and resist trying to capture all of the beauty on camera) |
House-sitting for some friends, I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's for the first time and thought about the synergy vs. separation of naive persistence and earnest commitment and where passion and calling might fit.
If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out (Cat Stevens)
A day before my final general pathology exam in the summer term, feeling a bit fatigued with studying as well as being dizzy with working in the lab and organizing/teaching an organic chemistry workshop, I found this song a relief, telling me, "If you want to be free, be free; 'cuz there's a million things to be, you know that there are....If you want to live high, live high; if you want to live low, live low; 'cuz there's a million ways to go, you know that there are....You can do what you want, the opportunities are; and if you find a new way, you can do it today." I marched happily in and out of the final exam, realizing that in the grand scheme of things, I did fairly well and could move on to better things. This song feels almost dangerously empowering and, although I still enjoy it, I strive to resist brushing things away nonchalantly when they ought to be payed some diligent attention.
 |
| Our first community service project, a school supplies drive, was delivered to the Church Hill Activities and Tutoring center of East Richmond today. I look forward to leading the committee and our class this year in engaging with the city! |
Encountering this song later in the summer, I considered my consumerist habits...not only with money but my student status, time, and relationships. These lines are especially insightful: "Cuz the store's full of things that I don't need, and the world's full of mouths that I can't feed....but I don't want to buy what I don't need, and I don't want to own what I can't keep...and if I'm gonna have to leave it all behind, was it ever really mine?" It is easy for me to slip into living a life that defaults to a perception of scarcity: there's not enough encouragement, not enough time, not enough healthy communication, but I'm reminded by another song encountered during church music-leading that we seek to realize the plea to "make us Your bread, broken for others, shared until all are fed!" In a humbly dependent scarcity, countering the instinct of hoarding and the challenge of hollow altruism, I continue to seek the abundant life-giving manna, finding it, questioning it, but accepting it gratefully.
The below quote has pleasantly bothered me in recent months:
I used to ask God to help me.
Then I asked if I might help Him.
I ended up by asking Him to do His work through me.
--James Hudson Taylor (1832-1905)
I had the opportunity to listen to Pastor Leonard Dow's experience with engaging the Oxford Circle community in Philadelphia, PA several weeks ago and realize that perhaps we take full ownership of a task only when we understand that it is "not our own." Perhaps this is the joy that Taylor hints at in the above quote.
