To Keeping On

“CVS (points across the street)! That’s where we can get those 3M hooks!”

“I’m SO glad I got a monthly train pass...”

“Yeah man, you can choose whatever meal plan you want.”

Yesterday was move-in day at Boston University. I had the opportunity to overhear many conversations such as these as I walked through the campus on my way home from doing some work in the library. Over the course of this next week, uhauls and moving trucks will crowd Boston’s streets as students begin and return to school in the city’s zillion colleges. I’m also beginning school—the  grad school variety (I think that’s 17^th grade?)—at BU in a week, and the campus synergy pumped me with excitement and anticipation about returning to the classroom, one of the most formative symbols of my life.This summer has offered me a lot of space for travel, reconnecting with old friends and family, and transitioning to a new home and way of being in Boston. That being said, I am eager for what is next. 

I can remember my own move-in day at Hendrix College 6 years ago. My parents and I shuffled up to my dorm room on the 3^rd floor of Raney Hall, my backpack and suitcases supported by 18-year-old shoulders. “Um… is it all going to FIT??” we wondered incredulously as the stuff began filling up my half of the small room.

The full effect of the change happening in my life did not quite hit me until my 3^rd night in the dorm room, about 24 hours after my parents had said goodbye and headed west on I-30 back to Dallas. Most of my things had been unpacked, photos lined the walls surrounding my bed, and a Ziploc bag of keepsakes—mostly notes and photos from my recent high school days—lay at my feet. As I looked through them, my eyes began to water.

As the weeks, months, and years progressed at Hendrix, I became increasingly aware of how much the place was changing me; through friendships, professors, studies, new activities, new ways of thinking and understanding who I was in the world.

The newspapers have seemed especially heavy lately, telling of events of racial and political turmoil encircling the globe with their hatred and bitterness. I often ask myself if anything else even matters when put next to such suffering. Shouldn't I do something more about it? Why must the world keep on turning in the same way that it does? And yet, I found hope yesterday in the voices of expectant college freshmen, making small talk about their places of origin, who their biology professors will be this semester, and how their residence halls are reputed among the student body. I think that even in the midst of utter despair, things must keep going: school years must begin again, colleges must take in new classes of students, and people must continue their work and the care of their families and communities. Everyday life continues. And my faith tells me that love; that strength; that--from my perspective, God—is present through it. All of it-- even that which is too difficult to comprehend and which seems to awful to exist. 

Here’s to another fall, ripe with the smell of fresh notebooks, moving boxes, and expectation for what has been and what will be.