save or savor

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

- E.B. White, in an interview with The New York Times in 1969

I feel like this appropriately defines a lot of the tension I'm feeling with what path to pursue after graduation. Even just within the different Americorps opportunities I'm looking at, some are especially focused on saving the world and being pro-active and creating after-school programs and assessing development. While the ones that savor the world still all have a component of saving it, they are more focused on building community together and internal reflection and growth and learning from life.

And it gets down to what exactly I believe the nature of the world to be. Is it something only evil that needs saving, or something only good that needs savoring? But I don't think this dichotomy really is helpful. Theologically, yes, the world is fallen and only evil and needs saving - although even then, not by our power, though by our obedience. However, to only see the evil in the world is to be blind to a lot of good. The fact is, everything's fallen, self included. But everything, every single person and place, was made by God through his Word, and there is still, somewhere that original goodness in it that can be redeemed by God. And certainly, we have to savor where that good is left, and where God is growing it.

So now I'm stymied. Heh...funny word. Because tensions are just...so tense. And there's so many of them we have to sit in and live in. And it's so hard to balance, find a way to both save and savor the world. It'd be so much easier if it was just one extreme or the other. But it's not. Forget about having difficulty planning my day between the two...I've been trying to plan my life! Luckily for me, that's just plain silly. What, like my life's my own? Nah. Lose your life to find it. What am I doing trying to plan out my life in the first place? Silly girl. Silly girl.