Transient

"We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and in our heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered" - Kahlil Gibran

For two years I have been working seasonally, going from job to job and location to location. As a result, I have been living (more or less) paycheck to paycheck. I feel like a wanderer, beginning no day where another day has ended.

The things I have learned on my travels are numerous.

I've made friends from all sorts of different walks of life... 

I’ve worked with people from Taiwan, Serbia, Poland, Jamaica, Sudan, and Korea…

I’ve even learned a little bit of their languages…

I’ve chatted with lapsed Catholics, Universal Unitarians, Buddhists, Seventh Day Adventists, Agnostics, and Atheists…

I've lived and worked with a generation hungry for something deeper than what they know. A generation of spiritual people who don't know where to look. Like Paul to the Athenians, I tried to introduce them to the God they worship but know about.

I've had to relearn how to trust in God every 6 months or so...

I've seen natural wonders and driven thousands of miles without cruise control...

I've wandered airports and sometimes forgot what city I was in...

I've had a lot of fun and had a lot of opportunities to take great photos...

I've attempted to quench my thirst for adventure and explored many lands... 

Isn't it funny that, when you are a kid, you think that life will get better when you get older? When you are a kid, the world is your oyster. Everywhere you go is an adventure full of new and exciting things that captivate your imagination. As you grow older, you lose that ability to see everything as an enthralling adventure and life starts to seem like an empty journey from one day to the next. When life spits you out as an adult in the working world, there is not much left to grip you with adventure. In the end, you look longing on the past and wish to go back to the days of innocence.

Straight out of college I was charged up and ready for something new. Signing up with the ministry gave me purpose to move forward. I hit the ground running and made the most of every situation that short summer in Grand Teton National Park.

Not everything in these past two years has been great. 

I've missed family reunions...

I've missed weddings and celebrations...

I've missed funerals and last good-byes...

I've let friendships slip between my fingers...

I wanted community so badly when I moved to Copper Mountain Ski Resort. I wanted to have people come together but I didn't necessarily love those around me like I could have. Deitrach Bonhoeffer once said, "The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around him will create community."

Spring quickly moved into summer and I felt like I was sidestepping through life. I was moving, but not exactly sure in which direction. Cultural ideas of identity are so strongly tied to occupation that, even now, I sometimes feel like my life is going nowhere because I don't have a regular job. I am made to believe that I walk aimlessly. I am taught by culture to be frustrated with who I am and what I am not doing vocationally. 

 

One of my Serbian coworkers admitted to me that he did not think I ever slept in my room. He thought I slept wherever; he said, "I thought you slept on that bench every night like a gypsy." I had to laugh when I heard him say that. A gypsy, is that what I have become? Am I just a nomad wandering through life?

I do sometimes wonder if this is where God even wants me to be. I do sometimes wonder if I am living as He would have me live. Ultimately, this is where I am so it must be where God had intended me to be. Wherever I am, I am a servant of God. In the words of Mother Teresa, “I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world."