Commissioned and Back from the Last Onground Intensive

I am sitting here at my grandfather's desk, trying to pull all my bits and pieces together before heading into my work office, and my later in the morning trip to the lawyer's office to sign closing documents.  I would likely feel a bit discombobulated anyway, but having a closing today does add to the sense of whiplash.  Let me try to ground myself by writing.

It is strange to think that a week ago, I had just taken my parents to the airport, which was more hectic than I had ever seen it from the drop off vantage.  My parents managed to get home to the Richmond airport and then over the snowy roads to Williamsburg.  It is strange to think that two weeks ago, our Marco Island time together was just beginning.

As I sat in the chapel of the seminary on Saturday, I thought about how 2 years ago, my church blessed me and anointed me with water from the Holy Land before I started my certificate program.  I thought about sitting in the chapel at the commissioning service feeling happy at the thought that I would be returning to seminary three more times before my own commissioning service in June of 2021.  And then the pandemic descended and one onground intensive was canceled, and I only just returned to the seminary campus in January of 2022.

My own commissioning service on Saturday was different from the one in 2020, and vastly different from the one in January of 2021, which was done by way of Zoom.  For my commissioning service, those of us being commissioned came to the baptismal font:

Here's a longer view of that space:

We stood between the font and the iron ropes.  The leaders of the program gathered behind us, and they said words of blessing over us.  I hope to get a copy of the words, so that I can savor them more fully, since I can scarcely remember them today.  We did not get anointed with oil, so that the Zoom experience and the in-person experience would be similar.  That was fine with me; I am happy to be anointed with words.

All too soon it was over, and we all went out into the Saturday sunlight and drove away.  I drove to my grad school friend's house.  We had a lovely lunch and talked about the future of higher education and housing issues.  Then I left her and went to another grad school friend's house.  We went for dinner to Motor Supply Company, a restaurant that was one of the first to open in the Vista district, back before it was the revitalized strip that it is today.  We have been eating there for decades, dating back to when it first opened and seemed so upscale, so glamorous, such a great use of a space that had once been a mill or a warehouse.  It still is.

I spent much of yesterday driving home.  The trip back almost always seems zippy at first, as the states fall away, but then there's the long slog down the peninsula of Florida.  You would think that a long drive would give me time to process all these changes and to think about the future, but that is not my experience.  

And now it's back into the intensity of "normal life," along with campus renovations.  At least my seminary classes haven't started yet.  There's still time for a bit of regrouping before "regular life" becomes even more intense.