A confession of my inadequacies...

I cannot write anymore. I had a good streak there for a couple of years. I blogged fairly regularly about this or that, pretending that my theological opinion was some great gift to the blogosphere. In my mind, so many people read what I was writing. I was making some kind of impact on the lives of someone, surely. Then I stopped writing. The “real world” took over, and my career moved me to a new city. I began working 60-hour weeks, and in the process forgot to post blogs. Forgot to write at all.

Every time during the months since moving that I have sat down to write something, the words have felt stale and empty. To be sure, I have seen injustices, felt wronged on a spiritual level, witnessed the worst (and the best) the Church has to offer…but for some reason, I have been unable to adequately express these things in writing. This is a new problem for me. It is writer’s block in the ultimate form. I cannot even write to express my own feelings and experiences to myself.

I was a good writer once. Not a brilliant writer, but a good one. From time to time I would strike upon a perfectly balanced blend of extended metaphor peppered with anecdote that would earn the tip-of-the-hat from a professor. I could occasionally blog with such fervor that friends would actually repost the things I wrote…even (gasp) quote me. I really thought I had things to say. I thought I could change the world through my “unique” view of theology.

But somewhere along the way over the last five months, I forgot that I was theologian. I forgot that I was passionate about speaking out for social justice, that my voice said something different in a cacophony of sameness. Or maybe, I just stopped believing those things. Maybe I’ve lost faith in my own voice.

It’s a scary thing to realize how small you are.

I miss being a part of the School of Religion at my university. There were always conversations to be had framed in the safety of the academia. In the “real world” such conversations are few and far between. No one really quotes Barth. No one cares who Marcella Althaus-Reid was. No one wants to discuss the finer points of the origins of liberation theology.

Instead of spending my days reading books and writing papers, I spend my days selling things and leading a staff, putting out fires and trying desperately to meet sales goals. These are not bad things. They are not entirely unenjoyable things. But it almost feels like I had to give up a piece of myself.

I know many people will say that this is part of growing up. It is an eternal give and take. In order to do one thing, you must give up another. Cost versus gain. Well, this balance sheet is barely breaking even. Don’t get me wrong; I actually love my job. But sometimes I wonder how much I’ve given up to be good at it, to be successful. Am I losing too much of myself along the way?

I had a voice once, an opinion. I wasn’t afraid to explore it and develop it. I working without a net here, and it scares me a little bit. But surely I can have a “real job” that supports me while also nurturing the part of me that is called to be a theologian. I just have to re-imagine what that looks like in the life I have now. I have to reclaim the part of me that I have left dormant for half a year.

And I hope you, whoever you are that might possibly be reading this, will join me on that journey. I don’t know where it will lead. And I hope it isn’t nearly as cheesy as this final paragraph. But I do hope that the path is illumined enough that I can begin to put one foot in front of the other instead of standing still. May it be so.