I’m sitting in the Starbucks at the Raleigh-Durham airport right now, with my first year of seminary behind me and a great adventure before me, an adventure I have waited many, many years to undertake.   I’ve been so busy with school and my own formation and a bit of singing here and there, that I just haven’t mentioned it much.  And I must confess that even as I boarded the plane at Reagan National this morning,  I wasn’t clear enough from the fog of study and preparation to be sure that it was real.  But as I sit here, waiting for the rest of my travel group to arrive, it has struck me that it really, really is real.

I am at last going to Israel.

If you keep up with my musings on my blogs, you might say, hey, wait, didn’t you go there in the fall?  I mean, you wrote about it…here’s the piece I wrote.  But that trip was cancelled because of geo-political stuff.  So when the chance to go this spring came around, I decided to take it.

At first I was not sure — it would mean leaving a week before the spring term was over.  And at the time, I didn’t really understand that it was going to mean writing and writing and writing to get a whole lot of papers and projects done over a week early.  Oh yes, and then there was taking the Hebrew final many days early.  But I decided to go for it, and now, on the other side of all that effort, I’m glad I did — for a lot of reasons.  First, the last two weeks of my life have proven to me the truth of the old adage that a task will expand to fit the time allotted to it.  So less time combined with some careful planning and everything still got done.  Second, the other lesson was — sometimes there really just is “good enough”.  Questions that drive me to write and think and pray are not going to be solved in a 6 week class and the resulting reflection paper.  Those questions will still be there, new answers will be found and on and on and on….

So here I am.  I’ll do my best to share a little of my adventure each day with those of you who have been so supportive and encouraging this last year as I studied and…well, whatever it was that happened this year.

Let the adventure begin, that’s what I say.  My camera and my notepad are ready.  And I am too…at last.