Desks and Dreams

 This morning is the last morning in North Carolina--well, until I come back for a Crafts for Christmas retreat, where I'll sleep in my house, but go to the retreat during my waking hours.

Today I'll head back to my sister's house, have lunch with her, and then I'll go to my seminary apartment.  I'll begin the delightful work of unpacking boxes and figuring out where everything should go.

It will be the first time I've lived in a place where I get to make these decisions without thinking about what housemates/family members want.  My spouse will be back and forth, but I expect that he will spend the majority of time back in our North Carolina house.  I'll set up the seminary space in the way that works for me, which probably means more twinkly lights and seasonal decorations than we would have if we shared the space.

I am thinking of these weeks at this desk in this house in North Carolina.  

I tried to get back to writing poetry, but it happened in fits and spurts.  My writing time was disrupted by travel, but that's OK.  It was necessary to get me to seminary housing, where I'll be more intentional about setting up a schedule that includes time for creative writing.

I think back to the summer as a whole, the summer that was not hospitable to writing practices beyond blogging, but necessary to get us to a place and space that will be more hospitable.  I'm thinking of this summer as a summer of the upheaval of moving to not just one place, but two.  As we packed, we marked the boxes that would be going on to seminary.  We had a system, but I have to believe that moving to 2 places was a stress that would have been reduced if we had just been moving to one place.

My desk at seminary will be just as battered as my current desk.  My seminary desk will have a history, but unlike my grandparents' desk, which is now mine, I don't know the history of the seminary desk.  I wrote my first short story that had publication potential at this desk, back when it was in my grandmother's house, back when I was in college taking a short story class wondering if I could do something similar with my writing.  I remember scrawling the story as I sat at that desk, never dreaming it might be mine some day.

Hopefully, I will have similar memories about my seminary desk.  Desks are not usually what we think of when we think of sacred spaces--but just think about the dreams we might not see realized if we didn't have a desk.