Self Split

Now, in my fifth year at USF, I'm finally getting to do something that I thought I'd be able to do when I first accepted my position--namely, take advantage of the opportunity to sit in on classes that feed my whims and questions-of-the-moment. My wife regularly comments--half-jokingly--that if we hadn't gotten married, I'd still be in school somewhere, pursuing a degree in something. She's probably right.

This semester, I'm sitting in on Dr. Kirby Wilcoxson's course titled Spirituality, Calling, & Service. In tonight's class, we engaged in something called "class splits," where Kirby presents the class with certain choices, and each individual in the room indicates his or her choice by moving to one side of the room or the other. The final question of the night was something like the following: "Those of you would like to hear audibly God's account of what will happen in the next ten years of your life, move to this side of the room. Those who wouldn't want to know, move to that side."

I moved to the "wouldn't-want-to-know" side. As we discussed our reasons for choosing to know or not to know, we quickly saw that part of the issue may have been the way the question was worded. Would it have made a difference if God were revealing merely the destination, rather than the entirety of the next ten years? Then, one of the individuals on the "want-to-know" side asked why we wouldn't want to know? Afterwards, I sat half listening to the rest of the discussion, trying to clarify my own thinking.

As best as I can recall, my first thoughts in reaction to the question centered on the joy of discovery, and the avoidance of limits. There is something in me that cherishes the ability to learn and discover, the freedom to drop one subject and follow another if my interests dictate. I think this is one reason why I was drawn to an emphasis in creative writing throughout graduate school. Rather than being an end in and of itself, the study of creative writing was, for me, the study of a means--the means to explore ideas, experiences, memories, emotions, and discover what might be learned, to discover what I think. To arrive, in short, at what Robert Frost calls "a momentary stay against confusion."

Somewhere within all of that reflection, I found myself moving (albeit metaphorically) to the other side of the room. I thought back to Matthew 7:9: "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone." God's design for my life would presumably reflect, develop, and utilize my personality traits, habits of mind, strengths, weaknesses, dispositions. Given that assumption, I suspect that if God spoke his 10-year plan to me--especially if it focused on the larger goal rather than the specific path--it would be necessarily vague, allowing me to follow my passions and retain those joys of discovery and whimsy. Emphases might shift. Specific behaviors might need to change. Motivations would certainly be called into question. But, for the most part, I suspect an audible expression of God's plan would address--and perhaps even highlight--those longings that moved me toward the "wouldn't-want-to-know" side of the room.