Particulars

In seven months or less, I will have quit a job I love in order to pursue an education toward something I trust I will love even more...being a pastor in the Lutheran church.

As my friends who have had bigger adventures than I thus far ask me what sort of graduate school program and locale I'm seeking, I've come to the realization that I don't need to go for the biggest, most radical and adventuresome path I could take in this world.

What will challenge me the most, in fact, is learning to live in small places with people who inspire me and with people whose goodness is sometimes hard to see...learning to let a global understanding inform my influence in the common stuff of everyday life.

Fyodor Dostoevsky vividly portrays the challenge in The Brothers Karamazov

The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.

I am convinced that the one defense against only loving in the abstract is an awareness that the power to love doesn't come from within us; a love that is greater than us makes it possible to love in spite of ourselves.