Diaspora

As a caveat, this post will not capture what I am feeling/thinking to a sufficient extent.

We're moving from Gainesville on Saturday. I moved here about this time, 9 years ago for school. Looking back, there is no way I could have written or hoped for a richer life than the one I'm moving from Gainesville with. This place, and our deep, broad, rich, and diverse community here has been like the roots upon roots in a forest might be upon soil, or vice versa. If anything I've learned over the last 9 years sticks out the clearest, it is community. Filial community can be, and has been for me, one of the most wonderful and sacred things in my life. If God is restoring everything to himself through Christ, and I know he is, and if that restoration means humanity will resemble anything close to the community I have had in Gainesville, we have no idea how deep and rich and good that restoration will be.
Wendell Berry, my favorite author, writes a lot about place. All of the valuable things in our life are intimately dependent on and crucially supportive of place. It is so hard for me to leave Gainesville. Not because of the Gators, or the weather, or living on campus, but because it has been the setting and home I have had while going from an 18 year old, lacking wisdom, assurance, community, etc. to who I am now, which I think is as different as can be.
I hope we are moving back here in two years. I hope Dan and Natalie are still here...or willing to also move back. I hope John Brantley's replacement is incredible, and that Jeremy Foley is still our AD. I hope Ron Kuykendal is still our priest. I hope Moe's still has the Big Moo.
Well, I just took a break to do something else, and am no longer feeling as emo about leaving. Anyway, thanks for reading. See you soon. Thanks for being a part of the rich, deep, and good that is my life.