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New Year + New Beginnings

January 6, 2017

Hopeful. Ambitious. Ready.

2017, I pray that you are a year of breakthroughs, laughter, and boundless joy.

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Mattea Gernentz

Mattea Gernentz

A young poet and blogger whose heart belongs to Paris.

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@thewhimsicalowl

It is difficult to find time to breathe. The pages of my planner in front of me are brimming with appointments, assignments, and plans, all neatly written in cursive. I admit that, halfway through this week, I am ragged. And it is so easy to become so. We humans forsake joy so effortlessly when it should really be our daily bread -- the God-endowed sustenance that we cling to. When we attempt to be everywhere at once, we are unable to be present anywhere at all. In the demanding flurry of activity before spring break, I have begun to realize once again that I must daily choose to fix my eyes on Him. My own strength cannot carry me, and it is in Christ alone my hope is found. Amidst this process, the unique things that kindle my joy have been affirmed, such as spending time on the ice. As I skate, I am able to sincerely and artistically rejoice in what my body can do, spinning and turning and jumping with giddy enthusiasm. Lately, I have noticed that lines of poetry will come to me suddenly while I skate, new and of my own creation or from poems already beloved. When I emerge from the rink, I am always tired yet more refreshed than when I entered, and it becomes evident that this is God's gift to me; this is my time to breathe. Wherever you are mentally and emotionally at this moment, I urge you to be gentle with yourself and to seek out and prioritize those holy pockets of joy in your own life. Surround yourself with others who will faithfully pour into you. I am beyond grateful for the blessing that is @elianagrace19. She has opened her heart and her bookshelf to me (the love language of English majors) and snapped this stunning photograph during a seemingly mundane moment because she saw the vision and significance of what being on the ice brings to me before I even fully grasped it myself.

These amazing gals make me smile even more than free Metra rides! Wow! What a gloriously full day in the city we had together -- ice skating at Millennium Park, marveling at Anna Karenina, taking obligatory selfies at the Bean -- and we (miraculously) spent less than $10! I'm ever-grateful for new opportunities to grow together, for conversations about travel and neuroscience and everything in-between, for unforeseen adventures and bouts of laughter and gentle flurries of snow. I wish that every day could leave me as this one did: contentedly spent. Like a child after a day brimming with play, settling down at last with a mug of well-deserved hot cocoa. Precisely like that.

I'm currently hiding from the subzero temperatures and snow outside with the U.S. Figure Skating Championships on and a warm mug of tea. Today marks the completion of the first two weeks of the semester (with exactly six weeks left to go until spring break), and I readily admit that I feel overwhelmed -- achingly slow to settle into new rhythms. While I was in Israel, I asked God to give me a word to define the trajectory of this semester, and He gradually impressed upon my heart: EMBODIMENT. Today, my literature professor quipped, with a twinkle in her eye, "If you're afraid of being made out of dust, don't be an artist." and I felt that simple sentence stir my very soul. We spoke of communion as sacrament over mere symbol, of the angelic versus the incarnational imagination, and of the artist's ultimate task to penetrate the world as it is, deriving truth amidst brokenness, "because no one would bother to write if the world was not good." This theme continued in my Old Testament class as we analyzed Genesis 1-3 and the tender creation of humanity -- from humble dust. I have already learned and absorbed so much in these last two weeks and am brimming with words and ideas, reading copious amounts of Plath, Rilke, Kant, and Flannery O'Connor. Someone told me today, "If it's worth writing, it's worth writing beautifully." and, as I linger on the precipice of nineteen and prepare to leap into a new decade, I decidedly believe that this fragment of reflection and introspection after a long week was worth writing, for I will never see a moment such as this again or experience this exact alchemy of emotions and revelations with an identical clarity, and I can only hope that it can somehow serve as a beautiful enough companion to this photograph of the synagogue in Capernaum, where Christ is known to have stood and taught. Embodied love and mercy -- for us, among us.

Travel is a funny thing. It liberates us from mundane routine and highlights extraordinary aspects (and people) within our daily lives that often go unnoticed. It amuses me that I often seem to grow closer to others who have been nearby all along only when we journey across the globe, thousands of miles from home, together. In Israel, these God-orchestrated connections included deep conversations and memories made with a fellow club cabinet member, a New Testament classmate who sat one row over from me all of last semester, and even my literal next door neighbor. Aly, my travel buddy/roommate on the trip, and I met by chance when we split an Uber last year and didn't reconnect until we were in the Holy Lands, where we bonded over both enjoying lengthy showers, turtlenecks, and tea. She is truly one of the most genuine, optimistic, and bright individuals I have ever met, and I will never forget being able to cheer her on as she was joyfully baptized in the Jordan River. I am unspeakably grateful for the residents of Israel who welcomed our group, showed us the beauty, significance, and complexity of their country, and opened their homes to us for Shabbat. And I am no less grateful that I will be returning to Wheaton with faces a little more than familiar, a little more like friends, or perhaps even like "mishpahhah" -- family.

Back to ChicagoMarch 17th, 2019

The time is now.

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"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." -2 Corinthians 12:9-10

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