Day 3: July 3

This is my photo, taken on the Finger Lakes Trail last year, that I had enlarged into a poster. As soon as it's framed, it will hang over my desk as a motivational tool: the more I write, the quicker I can hit the trail again. Would YOU love to be on this gorgeous trail?

I learning quickly that there will be good, productive days that will feel terrific. Then there will be those not-so-good days when writing even two pages feels like giving birth to triplets. I'm looking forward to the times when the ideas will flow out of my brain and the words will just roll off my fingertips.

Because I'm so detailed oriented, it's difficult to set something aside, even when I'm wrestling very unproductively with it. I was up most of last night trying to answer a fundamental question that my research has raised, with no success. So today, I will move on to another chapter in the hopes that the elusive answer will be a happy epiphany at some point soon.

This morning, I read a story on the United Methodist News Service about a retired pastor in Texas who died by self-immolation. After years of working to correct injustice in our society and in our churches, he felt so burdened by the ongoing debates and lack of progress, that he felt he needed to follow Christ's call to truly die to self (at least that's my interpretation of the notes he left).

There are days when I feel so frustrated and sad about what Christianity in our society has become - a caricature of judgment, hypocrisy, mud-slinging, and distorted moral values - that I wonder if anything I do really matters. Including writing this dissertation.

I guess time will tell . . .