so glad I stuck it out

Driving home from class tonight, I had the sense of nirvana. Or you could call it perfectimundo, the stars aligning, or otherwise the kind of moment you'd like to remember forever.

The perfect spring night, a breeze blowing through the car's open windows. I was thinking about how difficult this class had been for me. It was my second theology class. It was about reading the New Testament with respect to genre, style, and purpose. We ask things like: Why is this epistle included in the Bible? What themes hold it together? Is it fair to compare it to this other book? The prequel to this class was taught by this super-pastoral professor-- we had weekly assignments that left no mystery about what we were grasping and not grasping. And also, his lectures were much more polished. When it was discussion time, he invited us to engage in friendly debate. This time around, the professor is my age. He has a southern accent and we have turned nothing in to him yet. He has a dry sense of humor and his lecture-style is self-effacing and when he asks questions, they are mostly rhetorical. So I never knew if I was coming or going with him. My class participation grade will most likely derive from my reading aloud certain passages when asked.

Anyway, tonight was our second to last lecture. And things clicked. We looked at the book of James. I can't really explain how I got there but the point is that when you are looking at Scripture, you really are looking at puzzles sometimes. Parables, metaphors, aphoristic, terse puzzles. It's totally normal to be confounded. Alleluia. The beautiful thing about this is that sometimes reading the Bible is about changing your stance and less about giving an explicit answer. A slight shift in my heart's disposition is worth more than an intellectual grasp on the beatitudes, for example. I don't know if I'm explaining it well, but it's really freeing to know that my lack of comprehension does not prohibit me from drawing near to God. I just love this.

And on top of all this, a song came on the radio. It was Eddie Vedder accompanied by mandolin. I'm not sure it gets better than that.