Reliving the furnace of 2008

Change and 2008 seem to go pretty much hand in hand. There's Barack Obama and his presidential election campaign, and then there was the day that Wall Street died, killing the world's market along with it. Some things, however, don't change, and that's how central America is, to the equlibrium of the world, no matter how much people theorize about its demise.

But still, there seems to be some kind of a epochal shift even as an unusual number of famous personalities also died. Even the financial crisis is seen as an opportunity to reform the erroneous belief in the power of the market, as if it is entirely capable of working itself out like a human being.

The same can be said of my life. But for me, I think the last few years in college built up to the seismic explosion that was 2008 for me. But more importantly, despite everything, I am able to say, for the first time in my life, that the past year has been great. 2008 was great for many reasons, but it was only great because it was so rough and I emerged from it wiser and hopefully, knowing a little better.

AL told me something very refreshing yesterday, when I was just lamenting the length of time I've been out of "ministry" since I stepped out 3-4 years ago. The great people in the Bible, she said, all had very short but very high impact "ministry" time -- more crucially, she pointed to the long processes of moulding and character building that was integral to their being and serving as their basis for their actions.

While it allayed any anxiety about returning to ministry for me, that also totally put my year in perspective. 2008 was a very definitive year for me because I felt I was thrown into the furnace to be moulded. It was a lot of pain, as I stuttered from one crisis to another as things came to a head in my graduation year and with everything about moving to New York.

Like when you mould metal into shape, it was not until I got out of the high "temperatures" of the furnace called journalism school that I realized, when I am all chilled out and solidified, that I realized the changes that has occurred with me.

So stay with me as I recount the furnace that was 2008 for me. It's bound to carry on into 2009 and beyond, but this time round, my top moments/events is weaved in a multiplicity of narratives, that incorporates the reasons why they were significant for me. I am also moving away from ranking their importance because I think they were all part of an autopoietic process for me.