The Ballast of Books

I have turned in the Timeline project for my Church History II class.  It asks us to choose 30of the most important events that happened during the time of our class (1500 to present) and put them on a timeline.  Each of the 30 events gets a 1-3 sentence annotation.  Then we choose the five most important and write a longer piece that explains the importance. 

When I did this assignment for Church History I, I was writing about time periods that I didn’t know much about until I took Church History I. I thought that the timeline would be easier for Church History II because I know a lot more about the time periods covered by this class. It’s been hard in a different way—so much to choose from.

But it's done and turned in.  It feels like the term should be over.  But I still have a final for the class (open book objective along with a separate essay section).  And I have to finish my final project for Queer Theology and a paper for my Luke class.  Once those are done, I've got the final grading for the classes that I'm teaching online.  

And of course, there's the vacating of the seminary apartment.  Like all the rest, it's underway--I'm living in the now and the not yet.  

Yesterday I made the trip from seminary to my North Carolina house. I knew there would be rain, so I left very early.  But there was no way to escape the rain.  For the first several hours of daylight, I drove more slowly than usual, with rain flying up off the road in addition to falling from the sky.  It was grueling.

I had decided that this would be the move that included most of the books, and I was happy to have them in the back of the car as ballast.  I could feel the car wanting to slide off the wet roads; I could feel the books saying, "No, not today.  We're holding steady."

Books as ballast, books as counterweight to the distractions and destructions the world offers, books as stabilizing force--the metaphors abound!