When I was little, I had a set of cousins who spent their weekends orienteering.

Orienteering is a high-paced, family-friendly adventure of sorts. You use navigation skills, maps, and compasses to navigate diverse and unfamiliar territory, often racing against other families. () I always found my cousins a bit funny for wanting to run around the woods, racing other kids to find flags tied to trees. Who used a compass anymore, anyway? Why couldn’t we stay at home and ride bikes in the cul-de-sac? I was all about familiarity and comfort.

Now, 20 years later, I find myself changed. My life has been a fast-paced adventure, and I would give anything for a map of the area—for an internal GPS system telling me where to turn, what roads to avoid, and where I might get stuck in traffic. I’m not talking about road maps either. I’m talking about a way to chart my course through this life.

Seven years ago, I plopped down my possessions at my brother’s home and drove my car into downtown Seattle, making my way to a red brick building in Belltown for my new student orientation at ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ. It was an overwhelming and exciting day full of new faces and a new curiosity about the people I would come to know during my time as a graduate student. I wondered if I would actually remember anything I had been told, or if there would be a test later.

Overall, what I felt most welcomed into was a journey. There wasn’t a comprehensive map given to me of every step I would be taking, but there was a sense that I would not be alone. Others had taken this road before me, and others would take it after me, and there would be signals along the way, warning me of danger or geocaches of richness waiting to be discovered. And through it all, I wouldn’t be alone.

This particular adventure has had unexpected twists, new languages to learn, and new adventuring pals. As a student, I worked in the Office of Students & Alumni, where I helped orient new students to this place, this culture, and their own adventure in the red brick building in Belltown. From that vantage point, my cousins’ fondness for orienteering didn’t seem so crazy after all.

Orienteering is about tools for adventure, risk, and calculations. And maybe most of all, it is about the friends and family you journey with. As this new season and new school year approach, let’s all find again our maps and our senses of adventure. Let’s get ready for the ride.

The post Throwback Thursday: Bethany Bylsma appeared first on ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ of Theology & Psychology.

I have Advent traditions. Playlists made up of melancholy songs by Joni Mitchell or Patty Griffin or Billie Holiday; their voices ask us to listen to the truth. Pie baking. Gift wrapping. But my favorite part of Advent is simply that there is finally a season to hold all of my waiting. All of my yearning. All of my questions. It is a season to hold the absence of God.

Frederick Buechner said in Telling the Truth that, “…the absence of God is not just an idea to conjure with, an emptiness for the preacher to try to furnish, like a house, with chair and sofa, heat and light, to make it livable…The prophets and the psalms all speak of the one who is not there when he is most needed…as the author of Hebrews strips all of us bare by putting it, “They all died without having received what was promised…(Hebrews 11:13).â€�

Maybe that isn’t your typical advent encouragement, but I don’t like rushing to Christmas. I don’t like the sprint to the 25th of December. I think many stories, and much beauty is missed when we fast forward to presents, cider, and scones. Children open the windows of their Advent calendars anticipating the coming of Christmas; the coming of Christ. One window opens—“Is it here yet?” Another door pops open—“Is it Christmas yet? May we celebrate? It is time?”

In the waiting I can’t help but think of the thousands who waited during that first, long Advent for their Messiah. There must have been a hope that burst out of them, electrifying them at times. But how many days (which were probably most of their days in fact) were more reminiscent of that little girl, staring out the window, and waiting for something so good, and so delicious, that she sat still, hour after hour, searching the sky for a snowflake?

C.S. Lewis has articulated that holy, painful longing better than anyone I have ever known. The first time I read ‘Til We Have Faces, which I think is one of the greatest Advent stories ever told, I shivered when I read this line: “It was when I was happiest that I longed most…The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing…to find the place where all the beauty came from.”

That is what I hold onto during advent. The promise of beauty. The happiness of friends and family and food, and how it draws longing out of me that is acute, shocking, and raw. The feeling that I am still staring out the window, waiting for my snowflake, my Messiah, to arrive.

The post The Holding Place: Musings on Advent appeared first on ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ of Theology & Psychology.