post-lectureship reflection

So I've been back from Lectureship for about a week now, and a post about the experience is probably long overdue. So here's a brief one... I hope.

First, I have to say that my expectations going into the whole Lectureship thing were relatively low. This isn't because I have some low level of respect for it or anything, it's more because I attended a couple out of requirement while in college so I knew the basics of what went on and I didn't expect anything to be different. So with that as a primer, my expectations were blown out of the water - in multiple ways.

I heard most of the evening keynote speakers, and they were awesome. There was a huge narrative aspect to the speeches they gave, which rather than making the experience feel like a lecture or a political speech gave the presentations a more personalized and involved feel. Plus, it didn't hurt that most of what I heard was a cage-rattling, table overturning rhetoric that was calling for people to wake up and smell the change in the air before it's too late. It really made me feel like what I was there to present fit into the subtle yet over-arching theme I discerned.

Speaking of why I was there; Paul and I both agreed, our sessions were a smashing success if we do say so ourselves. Our student panelists (Jordan Swim and Jordan Wesley) added so much valuable insight from their unique experiences, and most of the topics we brought up were met with what I can only describe as a warm and welcoming attitude. Each day was success in my mind, because each day we touched someone in the audience on an emotional level with the stories and ideas that we shared. However, the first day we might have struck a few tender nerves by touching on the inter-generational communication gap and Catholicism; neither of which was part of the original plan, but it seemed the Spirit moved us that direction. This turned out to be a good thing in the end though, as it levelset a few things and provided a model of how we intended the sessions to be considered a safe environment for discussion and sharing.

I am a firm believer in God sending people places, in a seemingly innocuous manner, so they might touch certain people's lives. I experienced it in college, I've experienced it in travels, and I've experienced it at Lectureship. While some might think that I would say I was sent to Lectureship to share my story and help others, I would say I was brought to Lectureship to share my story so that others could help me. Sharing some of myself and my aspirations for ReGroup was a liberating experience because of the outpouring of positive comments that I received, which makes me even more excited and driven to make sure it gets off the ground successfully. I am still planning and working out the many ideas that are swirling around in my mind, but things are firming up little by little and I hope to have the group up and in full swing before Christmas.

For any new visitors from Lectureship, welcome and thank you for stopping by. If you attended our sessions, Paul and I thank you for your time, attention and valuable discussions. And for those that offered your blessings and comments on ReGroup - especially Kathy, Allen, and Ray - I thank you.

working and testing

It has been nice to finally have made it through the longest part of my summer of work, and now I get a reprieve from travel and special assignments for a little while. Next year is a whole other animal that has not been let out of the cage yet. In the meantime, I've been catching up on some normal everyday work, preparing for some up and coming new work, and trying to get myself back into a more spiritually focused frame of mind. The latter bit of that is the difficult part, since I've been so focused in other areas of life; mainly work and family.

Spiritually, I have a lot to accomplish in a fairly short amount of time. It is just a few short weeks until I throw myself before a vast gathering of Christians for a few days of classes, discussions, and probably networking. This will be the first time I've been speaking in front of any kind of audience in quite some time, and it will be the first time ever that I've spoken publicly in front of spiritual peers. I'll most likely handle myself well (with help from my co-presenter), but it seems a bit daunting at the moment. There are some other non-speaking spiritual goals I also have on my plate, those ones of a personal nature; God and me stuff. Those might take longer, He just doesn't seem to feel the need to explain this deep-seated and completely unrecognizable desire that is within me lately. If I could put words to it, I might be able to figure out what it is I need to do. So far, all I know is that I think I am heading the right direction, but as I've said before, I have no idea what direction that is or where it leads. It feels a bit like paddling a canoe at night, when the moon is not out, clouds block the stars from view, there are no lights along the shore that you can see, and you have no light of your own. You have nothing but your hearing and intuition to guide you...

Also, I kind of coerced this post out of myself. I did this partially just to write something and keep the blog alive, but I also did it because I am testing out Writely. I had heard about it before Google bought them up and closed down the registration while they migrated/upgraded things, and now that registration is open again I wanted to check out how it all worked. It is a great online, collaborative document creation tool, plus it also handles publishing documents to a few different formats - one of which is to a blog. So far, I like it, but the integration with my blog isn't optimal. The fonts are different sizes and the titling doesn't seem to take. I might use it for drafts or something.

Cheers!