Beginning Again, with Trembling

I've shared before on this blog how much I love the rhythms of the academic year, with beginnings, middles, and ends. We are at the middle of the 2018-19 academic year right now...which means a new beginning as well. Today is the first day of the Spring semester here at Dordt--the last semester of "Dordt College" as we will become "Dordt University" as of May 13 of this year.

I love new beginnings. They also scare me a bit, as I confessed to my students in Introduction to Education this morning. I'm always anxious about meeting up with new students, but in a positive way--I think--if that makes any sense at all? The newness is so full of possibility, of promise. And I'm anxious that I might screw it up somehow, I guess.

The new course I'm teaching this semester has me feeling an anxious anticipation; it's not just new to me, it's a brand new course never previously taught at this institution. What is the path forward? It's murky right now...and I hope it comes clearer as we venture out.

The one I'm teaching for the 20th time this semester...I still don't have it figured out quite yet, and so I have an anxious anticipation for another opportunity to get it closer to the course I want it to become. Always becoming, never arriving...I say it often enough to my students, and here I am living it out in my own teaching practice!

The online Master's level class with 26 students in it--the most I've ever taught in this course!--leaves me with some anxious anticipation. Building relationships in the online setting takes a different kind of intentionality. Will they join in with me in this intentionality?

And Intro to Ed, my opportunity to walk alongside students just discerning their calling to perhaps become teachers themselves has me feeling anxious anticipation. How do I help them see the joys and challenges of the profession in a way that is welcoming, honest, challenging, and encouraging, all at the same time?

My friend, Pat, shared this prayer with me recently. It comes from a collection of prayers by Ted Loder entitled Guerrillas of Grace. I decided to use it in Intro to Ed this morning as part of our beginning.

If you too are at a spot of anxious anticipation, perhaps it will help you too frame the new beginning as an opportunity that God has prepared for you, and is preparing you for.



I Tremble on the Edge of Maybe

O God of beginnings,
as your Spirit moved
     over the face of the deep
          on the first day of creation,
move with me now
     in my time of beginnings,
          when the air is rain-washed,
               the bloom is on the bush,
                    and the world seems fresh
                         and full of possibilities,
                              and I feel ready and full.

I tremble on the edge of maybe
     a first time,
          a new thing,
               a tentative start,
and the wonder of it lays its fingers on my lips.

In silence, Lord,
I share now my eagerness
     and my uneasiness
          about this something different
               I would be or do;
and I listen for your leading
     to help me separate the light from the darkness
          in the change I seek to shape
               and which is shaping me.