The journey begins

When my father called today to wish me a good trip, he told me that he hoped the two week trip Starr King School for the Ministry Rumi Immersion in Turkey, which I will embark on tomorrow morning, will be all that I thought it would be. I thanked him, and wondered what exactly I thought it would be.

I knew that it was an opportunity to study in a concentrated way, something that I yearn for as I go through my seminary education experience so far from the schoolhouse in Berkeley. But I had come to the realization, while I was at the school last August and lamenting that I couldn't be there all of the time, that I that I had to take advantage of concentrated learning -- that I had the opportunity to be absorbed for short periods in learning and that I could, actually, live at home.

And when the trip to Turkey was announced and I immediately dismissed it as not possible for me, I had to think again. So here I am going off to Turkey with 15 or so seminarians, including some of my dear friends, with the idea that I am about to embark on a time of concentrated study, in a totally different environment. I have no expectations other than I will have the opportunity to experience myself in a place that is unfamiliar.

And it's just that chance, that I will experience myself as new, that seems transformative in the moment and fills me with a sense of gratitude and adventure.

Traveling with my mother's little Sony Vaio and a mini-mouse, I will blog my way through the time -- connecting that which is new with that which is sustaining.

It begins.