update from ambs / elkhart

hello.

I’m going to try to get back to saying things here.

punctuation is now my day job so at night when the lights are out and I’m up late writing for fun because that’s all I know how to do anymore i make significantly less promises, the punctuation hopefully doesn’t matter as much here anyways - I just hope to be understood and to write things that might make sense and might - if not pointing at some greater grander truths - at least give some insight into the “oh, he’s off at grad school” description which seems impossibly lofty and purposely vague. really, what’s a blog anyway other than some small or great baseball-bat swing at meaning, the home runs end up as books anyway.

I don’t remember the last time I wrote on here but it was something about being in the middle of my work in sweden, which wrapped up for the most part at the end of june but carried on a bit into july so I could make peace and spend a few more coveted “normal days” with my lovely friends and take a few more last long walks across a cow pasture I’ll long associate with feelings of home. I don’t know what’s more to say about all that except that it was wonderful and beautiful not just for a lovely place to live but for that melding that comes with community and all the lessons we learn from living together and talking over coffee, how I now no matter where I go feel like I have a family across the sea who I hope to see again shortly. and of course I hope that all had some lasting impression on other people and I can count a list of life lessons i’ll hope to incorporate going forward, etc. all over the world you see people trying to turn life into lists, and I feel like that’s what I’m supposed to be doing here - “top 10 lessons I learned teaching the bible and drinking coffee and living in community on the western coast of Sweden” but the more I live life the more I’m convinced that that approach is bunk and instead of some systematic philosophical take-away I’m left with stories and anecdotes of lovely people and a heart filled with great love for them and the glimmers of Christ we all saw through each other - and a hope that in whatever way big or small my presence in our work together contributed and left them with a sense that in my view they are of great worth. And the stories are great, and none of the internet’s business, and in my heart we’re still in that rented car on some slick icelandic highway feeling like ships sailing, and I’m on a train with a ticket someone gave me, and we’re out on rocky shoes and life feels just filled to the brim with wonder.

I’ll remember playing truth or dare by the sea, and all of us choosing truth for every single question because all we really wanted was to learn the deep things about each other (and because the north sea is cold after sundown even in the summer)

and holding all that close, I’ll look forward.

I’m in Indiana now, settled into my own place and slowly over the course of a few weeks it begins to look less like an empty apartment with shipping boxes in it and more like a home. for all of my homesickness and culture shock in this exceptionally loud and unsubtle place that is america, it’s good here and my settling has been helped by some kind new friends and a few old ones. I’m encouraged by these mennonites who are so intentional in what they do and how they think, in a way which inspires excellence out of me. 

And why am I here? Well, the briefest of answers is that if all goes well, I get a title: “Master of Arts in Peace Studies”. this too feels impossibly lofty, so I’ll say it another way. I’m going to take a good long chunk of time and I’m going to think about life, in a lot of different ways ultimately hopefully leading to some consistent answers about deep questions, about what peace is and what it looks like, and also about how we who are so ridiculously presumptuous enough to call ourselves the children of god might actually begin to work in ways that contribute to that peace instead of running around doing bible stuff hoping you all think I look good. In other other words, I’m going to be spending the next two years reading a whole lot and writing a whole lot and listening to particularly wise people with the hopes that that helps in the continual process of transitioning us into a people of some understanding and some good things to say in response to a world that in so many respects is otherwise chaos. we’ll also be making meals together and taking walks and planting tomatoes and striving to love each other like family and to find those moments where in each other we see traces of God. 

and all of this is exciting and wonderful and terrifying and expensive and with hints of a resolution that hasn’t quite become clear yet. I hope and work for that understanding, and I also hope for stories. I come from a narrative people. It's not so much a checklist of tasks to be done as it is a road to walk down.

more soon, much love.

austin.