But I shall be gone

I spent last week on a campus visit to the first university I heard from last month, and, with four rejections, two wait-lists, and three unheard-from inferior schools in my wake, I went saw no reason left to keep my favorite school waiting. I officially accepted the astoundingly generous offer that I had never expected to receive, and will be moving (back) to the Midwest this summer.

I will miss my green cottage, my immediate proximity to my family, and all the endearing qualities of the South where I have lived for the past twenty two years. But of course, the liminal life of a student is one of the qualities I knew I was buying into when I reluctantly made the decision to move out of my intercity commune to start graduate school. Here's to hoping some fixity lies before me five or six years down the road when I am done with my PhD!

But the visit confirmed that the way is already being prepared for me: the personality of the school that makes even the faculty of unrelated fields interested in my research, the supportive nerdy students who get as giddy about research as I do among whom competition seems virtually nonexistent, the various anecdotes about the campus and town well-suited for my own quirky personality. It is no green cottage, but it is a comfort to know that as our faith prepares places for God, God continues to prepare places for us. And on these tiny legs of middle-voice faith that have been given to me, I (perhaps reluctantly) rejoice to follow.

I WONDER about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.
-----Robert Frost, "The Sound of the Trees"