Crashing the Castle

Discernment in the Middle

It’s different at the Castle this time.

I’m sitting at Wartburg, halfway through, and somehow it feels like I’ve been here for weeks.

Like I never left.

Like I came home.

And at the same time, I yearn for home.

For my comforts. My people. My rhythms. The things that know me without explanation.

I’m in year two now.

Not new anymore, but not yet old.

Somewhere in the middle.

The energy is different here this time.

It’s faithful, not fresh.

Not fresh in the excited, holy shit, I’m actually here kind of way.

Faithful in the dependable, growing kind of way.

I don’t need the Castle to prove itself to me anymore.

I know this place.

The statue looks the same to the cars driving by.

But I know it holds more stories now.

More prayers.

At least mine.

I know the hallways.

I know the dorm rooms.

I understand how to navigate the maze of tables in the refectory.

The lecture halls haven’t changed at first glance.

My peanut butter cookies haven’t gone up in price in the kitchen, which might be a miracle worthy of its own theological reflection.

Everything looks almost exactly as I left it.

And yet the whole place has aged.

Or maybe we have aged together.

My feet hit the same carpet with more miles on them now.

My body moves through the sanctuary with deeper understanding and larger questions.

The songs are the same.

But perhaps the place they occupy in me has shifted.

I’ve sung some of them enough times now that they carry people.

Moments.

Questions I didn’t have the first time I sang them.

Answers I thought I had and don’t anymore.

Prayers I didn’t know I would need.

The words haven’t changed.

The person singing them has.

And there is a fine line here that I am beginning to notice.

I want to re-experience the things I have loved about Prologs past.

There are moments I remember and want again. Rhythms I recognize. Things that have become part of what Wartburg means to me.

There is comfort in returning to what I know.

But I also know I can’t spend this Prolog trying to recreate the last one.

I have to find a rhythm for experiencing this one new.

Because it is the same.

And it is not at all the same.

The place is familiar.

I am different.

The people around me are different.

The questions are different.

Even the things that haven’t changed meet me differently because I am not standing in the same place inside myself anymore.

And my body isn’t standing in the same place either.

I don’t dread the Castle.

I respect what it requires of me.

There is a difference.

I know the distance between the dorm and the lecture hall now. I know the hallways and the stairs and the tables and the sanctuary. I know how much ground gets covered in a day here.

And my body knows too.

There is almost a checkmate happening between me and the distance this place requires.

I am coming.

And the distance isn’t getting any shorter.

Neither of us appears particularly interested in surrendering.

So we meet here.

Again.

Me, with a body that requires more consideration than it once did.

The Castle, with all its hallways still exactly where somebody decided to put them.

Checkmate.

Maybe that’s part of the middle too.

When I first came here, so much energy went into the fact that I had made it here.

Now I understand more clearly what being here asks of me.

And I still come.

Not to prove that I can.

Not because the physical cost isn’t real.

But because I know why I’m here.

That isn’t dread.

It’s respect for the cost of answering something I know I am called to.

And maybe that’s also why the people who understand the cost without needing me to explain every detail matter so much.

Which brings me to Megan.

We have officially—or perhaps unofficially, which is probably more appropriate—become the Castle Crashers.

Respectfully.

But seriously.

Twice a year, for a week at a time, we crash the Castle.

She is my Wartburg ride or die.

Or perhaps for those who prefer a more theologically appropriate title, my partner in living into Luther’s call to sin boldly and trust the grace.

And I don’t entirely understand why it works as well as it does.

Neither of us does.

We are very different.

And somehow we are also so completely ourselves around each other that neither of us seems particularly interested in figuring out the details of why it works.

It just does.

She gets it.

Not every detail of my life.

Not every thought.

Not every experience.

Just something underneath all of that.

And I get something underneath hers too.

There isn’t a lot of explaining required.

There isn’t much translating.

We show up as ourselves and somehow there is room for both of us.

Maybe that’s another thing I’ve learned in the middle.

Not everything meaningful needs to be dissected until I understand why it exists.

Some relationships don’t need a thesis statement.

Some people just meet you somewhere along the way and, without either of you quite understanding how, start walking beside you.

Spirit-trudged.

That’s what it feels like.

Not perfectly matched.

Not carefully engineered.

Not something either of us could have planned.

Just two very different people who somehow keep finding themselves trudging through the same Castle together.

The Castle Crashers.

And maybe trudging is exactly the right word.

Because neither the Castle nor life is particularly interested in making every path smooth.

Sometimes faithfulness looks a whole lot less like soaring and a whole lot more like:

Well, I guess we’re walking this way.

And having somebody beside you who gets that without requiring an explanation is no small thing.

Maybe that’s why I have to be careful about longing too much for the Prologs I’ve already lived.

Because the temptation isn’t only to revisit a place.

It’s to revisit a version of myself.

A conversation.

A feeling.

A moment when something opened up and I knew it mattered.

There is comfort in knowing what comes next, especially in a place that asks so much of me.

But I cannot long too much for routine here.

The Spirit is dependable, but the Spirit is not routine.

Dependable doesn’t mean predictable.

Faithful doesn’t mean repetitive.

And maybe I am finally far enough into this to understand the difference.

I can trust the Spirit without demanding the same experience.

I can love what happened here before without asking it to happen again.

I don’t need the same conversations.

The same revelations.

The same feelings.

The same questions.

The same version of myself.

I don’t even need the same answers.

Maybe part of returning faithfully is trusting that I don’t have to recreate what happened here before in order for something holy to happen here again.

I can treasure what happened.

Carry it.

Let it become part of the stories and prayers this place holds now.

And still leave room for something I don’t recognize yet.

Maybe that’s what this middle ground actually is.

The Castle doesn’t have to impress me anymore.

And I don’t have to prove that I belong in it.

We’ve met before.

We know each other now.

Not completely.

Maybe never completely.

But enough.

There is space for me here.

Purpose too.

Wartburg offers me identity while remaining almost completely clueless about the million tiny details of my life.

It knows something about my call without knowing everything it costs me to answer it.

It gives me language for who I am becoming while I am still figuring out how to carry everything I already am.

Time here still goes too fast and takes too long.

I can love this place and ache for my own bed.

I can belong here and miss home.

I can miss home while I am home.

Two years in, I am no longer the person who first walked into the Castle wondering what the hell she had gotten herself into.

And I’m not yet the person who will walk out knowing what all of this became.

I’m somewhere in between.

Maybe that’s what faithful energy feels like.

It doesn’t burst through the doors anymore shouting:

Look where I made it.

It simply returns.

Again.

And again.

Not because every return is exciting.

Not because every part of this is easy.

Not because the Castle asks nothing of me.

Quite the opposite.

I know what it asks now.

And I return anyway.

Somewhere along the way, this place stopped being somewhere I was trying to get to.

It became somewhere I return to.

And maybe I don’t need to know exactly what this Prolog is supposed to give me.

Maybe that’s another thing I can stop trying to control.

The Castle will be the Castle.

My body will require what it requires.

Megan and I will crash the place.

Respectfully.

Mostly.

The peanut butter cookies will, God willing, remain economically stable.

And the Spirit will do whatever the Spirit is going to do.

Not routine.

Not predictable.

But dependable.

So here I am.

Two years in.

Somewhere in the middle.

Not fresh.

Not finished.

Faithful.

Until next time, Wartburg.