My Blooming, Varied Career

Someone has said that depression is like a suit of armor, that keeps the good things out and retains the painful thoughts. That certainly describes me! I'm better than I used to be. But lately, for some reason, my blues have been focused on my career. 

In college, I hoped to have a career using my various talents and interests dedicated to God. That was really my "call." So many pastors privilege the specific call to parish ministry, and my call included that plus other things that God might show me. Having a wonderful marriage wherein Beth and I are partners certainly has added amazing dimensions to the work of both of us. Plus, I've been able to have a career that gives me plenty of available time when our daughter Emily needs me.  

I decided to sketch out how my different interests were used in different settings and projects. I haven't done too badly, LOL. I wish I could quit feeling insecure about my work, once and for all. On this chart, he books that have asterisks are all related to the period (1997-2015) when I wrote and published ten or eleven church-related study books. I hope that period hasn't ended entirely! But since 2015, I've been focusing on poetry. 

In fact, Beth said that I hadn't represented my poetry sufficiently on the chart, so I added it in some categories. 

At Greenville College (now University), I majored in history, with an informal minor in religion, including a good philosophy component. I was socially lonely in college, but I appreciated my program. In hindsight, college prepared me well for all these categories. My masters at Yale Divinity School was an all around Mdiv degree: Bible, theology, history, and practical theology. My PhD at University of Virginia was philosophy and theology. One of the wonderful things about teaching at Webster U has been the ability to put a lot of my doctoral course work to good use, in undergraduate classes. 

I have a bachelors in history, which normally might not be enough to teach undergrads. But my Vandalia book (U of I Press, 1992) was kind of a substitute doctoral dissertation in history, although I hadn't planned it that way. This turned out to be wonderful, because at two crucial moments I was qualified to teach history--at Indiana University Southeast and University of Akron. 

I wrote and/or researched the current events curriculum FaithLink in 1996-2011. Although written for the benefit of church folks, the work became a great education in social issues and ethics generally. So I've been able to teach social topics at Webster U and also Eden Seminary for the past few years. "Current events and social issues" could've been a separate category. Funny to think that I tried to read the New York Times during seminary years, to try to educate myself on current events, but I couldn't get into it. 

Thank you, Lord, for leading me in different ways, forgiving me for so much self-doubt, and helping me "bloom where planted"