This is for those who have submitted their applications, waded into the ankle-deep waters around their home or on the street, looked up through the trees, and turned down the music on the drive home to find the way around the neighborhood of their heart (see previous blog post).
For those who didn’t read the last blog post, what I mean is you sat with yourself, heard your callings, wrote the essays about what you seek, filled out your latest reachable address, attached an updated resume and you’ve sent along what, all together, constitutes a collage of your best, most honest self to Vanderbilt Divinity School— congratulations!
While it’d be easy to tell you to exercise patience while awaiting your admission decision, I’m unsure that those mindful practices will be the most productive.
Perhaps the most prudent task after submitting your application, if you haven’t already done this, is to turn your eye to the horizon to imagine a future with us here at VDS in Nashville.
If you live in Nashville or the surrounding area of Tennessee, you’ll be familiar with the view: cowboy(girl) hats, live music, drinks pouring in and out of bars, and the southern charm that comes with being in Music City. The Vanderbilt University campus itself is an arboretum, which means buildings are nestled amongst trunks of every Tennessee variety. It also means the top of Vanderbilt Divinity School peaks out from behind a large magnolia tree when approached from the west.
So, as instructed before about looking through the trees at the sky to envision your calling, imagine looking through the waning summer branches in the mind’s eye, again, and the spire of Vanderbilt Divinity School’s Benton Chapel comes into focus through partial obstruction. I think looking to the future is always like this, trying to bring clarity to a vision that’s a little blurry and a little far, but looking through the trees at the sky always feels like I’m in full view of the heart’s inquiry, and there’s also something steadying about looking ahead by letting the eye hold on to something nearby.
The education awaiting you at VDS, regardless of your path or profession, will hopefully be filled with warmth and a healthy amount of discomfort. Whatever your religious beliefs are, or aren’t, you’ll be confronted with the tasks of deconstructing and reconstructing aspects of your faith. The good news is that you’ll be with others doing the same, and there’s no better time to have company than when your faith is being tested, expanded, evolved, and ultimately strengthened.
While the buildings are tall here in Nashville, the high points of your education will be your professors and peers (or wherever your faith points you), at least, that’s how my experience has been.
So don’t be patient, be present—present with the version of yourself that’s walking through the doors of Vanderbilt Divinity School in August, past the sound of the fountain splashing the cement gray, and into The Space for the first part of your orientation. Move beyond the imagined nerves of a first day of school—what are you feeling about that version of yourself? Do you feel in pursuit of what you are seeking?
As a seeker myself, the meaning and meaning-making I am witness to and a part of here at the divinity school is more than I could have hoped for, and vastly different from what I imagined. I feel I am in pursuit of something, heading over the horizon with the sun rising behind me, and at Vanderbilt, I’ve got my classmates on either side. And while we aren’t always in agreement, we’re always learning.
If you need any help with envisioning this version of yourself, constructing the vision board of your life, and schooling at VDS in Nashville, let us know. The admissions team would be happy to connect you with one of their admissions fellows, students, or professors, each with enough material for you to collage a picture of what lies ahead, and enough glue to help it stick.
Johnathan Riley is a Unitarian Universalist from the coast of Maine in the Master of Theological Studies (M.T.S.) program at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Some of the topics Riley’s exploring in his coursework include the maintenance required of meaning-making, the act of writing as spiritual-identity formation, and theopoetics in pluralism. He holds degrees from Florida State University, and the University of New Hampshire where he earned an MFA in Writing while teaching poetry and first-year composition. In addition to his work as a theologian, Johnathan is an award-winning journalist, columnist, photographer, and poet.