From one desert to another...packing for St. Vlad's

For the one of you who has followed this brief blog in the past, I have not died, nor have I been detained somewhere. I am healthy and alive, if not tired and moving toward emotionally drained (to use a dramatic phrase).

I have refrained from posting for some time in an effort to protect my (former) position at work. In March of this year I was accepted into the MDiv program at St. Vlad's, and I didn't want to spill the beans until I was in a position to deal with the possibility of losing my job over such an announcement.

As it turns out, I seemingly had nothing to fear. I worked out my time at Habersham Furniture, and finished on very good terms with my employers.

What started out as a job that I dreaded with all of my being (see some of my earlier posts below) eventually turned out to be a great blessing and a wonderful "desert experience". When people say that "God knows best", quoting Job and the Psalms and St. Paul among others, they are right. It is so easy to try to tell God what to do in our short-sightedness, fear and pride. If I had had my way, I would never have entered the wonderful "desert" that was my work space at the factory.

What do I mean by "desert"? If you are Orthodox, you probably understand the reference to the desert as a place of solitary life where one engages in strong personal reflection, repentance and heavy spiritual battle. I am thinking, at this moment, mostly of St. Anthony the Great as the perfect example of such a desert battler. My desert was the factory, which God saw fit to send me into, and where I was (much to my surprise) able to spend even more time in inward contemplation of my own dim-wittedness and pride and falleness, and where I seemed to be able to hear God's voice so much clearer and feel His presence so much more profoundly. Of course, this was all His grace, and had absolutely nothing to do with my halting and self-centered efforts at being more "spiritual". Don't have any misconceptions of my candidacy for sainthood.

And now that I am leaving this desert, I find that I miss it terribly, and that the tears come very easily. These very real tears are, to me, a confirmation of the move that we are making to New York. God is compelling us to go, and we go not to escape something we don't want, but to engage what God is asking from us.

May God bless the wonderful, crazy, loud and funny assemblers, millers, sanders, finishers and supervisors that I worked with. May God bless all of you at Habersham for the last ten years of my life. May God grant you all many years, and may His light illumine every corner of that dusty and noisy factory, where I experienced the wonder of God's love and providence.