Now that summer is here, I’m beginning to forget how often I cursed Chicago during the winter months.  But at least a dozen times between December and March, I stepped out of my Logan Square apartment, felt the blast of the city’s wicked cold on my face, and promptly took the Lord’s name in vain. And that’s allotting only one hash mark to each instance in which I cursed several times in rapid succession — effectively machine-gunning the Third Commandment. 

But by now, all is forgiven in the city where I was born, grew up, and — after some time away for college and such — have lived for the last six years.  Partly that’s because I always forgive this place, cherishing the fusion of big-city excitement and Midwestern humility that once led me to declare I’d never again live elsewhere.  As Nelson Algren famously put it in Chicago: City on the Make: “Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies.  But never a lovely so real.” 

This summer, though, the grace I’m extending to Chicago packs additional poignancy because, despite my previous assurances, I’ve decided to move. To Boston. 

I insist this flip-flop is defensible.  I am going to graduate school — Harvard, no less — to study both theology and public policy.  Besides the bragging rights that this step will bestow upon my grandfather, there will be much for me to gain in my own right.  I will learn new things; I will meet impressive people; I will encounter opportunities to boost my career as a social justice activist.  There is nothing in this decision to be ashamed of, and much to make me proud. 

And yet… And yet. 

Chucking the old and embracing the new is rarely easy.  The grooves that form in our heads and hearts — those subconscious patterns of thought and behavior and feeling that repeat themselves on a loop — are the real places we live on a day-to-day basis, whether or not we recognize their existence.  I have dug a rather comfortable set of grooves for myself here in Chicago.  I have a routine that involves working from home and sometimes bothering to shower.  I have haunts like Whirlaway Lounge — a divey hipster bar tended by an old sweetie named Maria.  I have my dad and stepmom and brothers, whom I probably don’t see often enough but who are, at least, “around.”  My hippy-dippy church service on Sunday, my uber-liberal Bible study on Thursday, even my interminable conference call for work on Monday — all constitute markers on the internal clock to which I set my life.  How can I establish new patterns without feeling like I’m abandoning or even betraying the old ones?  Indeed, what am I once the old grooves are gone?  Am I still me? 

According to Biblical lore, Jesus insists we cannot put new wine into old wineskins (Mt. 9:17, Mr. 2:22, Lk. 5:37-39).  This anachronistic metaphor refers to the tanned goatskins that were once used to hold wine and tended to stretch during the fermentation process.  These skins would eventually harden and, if still more wine was added, split open.  The traditional interpretation of this passage is simple enough: the old religious order Jesus confronted could not accommodate the new message he was preaching.  The time had come for something entirely different.  Out with the old; in with the new. 

I have now committed myself to acquiring new wineskins of my own — or more specifically buying them, with obscene sums of money — in the form of a graduate education in Boston.  The benefits I hope to reap while there are not ones that I could expect to obtain if I remained in the familiar environs of Chicago.  One reason for this is obvious: Harvard is there and not here.  Another reason, though, is more fundamental: successfully charting a new path sometimes requires a jolt to our systems that we cannot feel unless we step outside of the familiar.  Change is begotten by change. 

To be sure, such armchair philosophizing is easy; actual change is hard.  Just ask Chicago’s own Barack Obama.  If the most powerful change agent on earth can have a hard time keeping campaign pledges to renegotiate NAFTA and stop the indefinite detention of prisoners, perhaps I can be forgiven for being willfully slow to offer up my furniture on Craig’s List.  Still, I do try to remind myself that God is transformational. As the 20th century theologian Paul Tillich put it, we have a “God of the new” that offers “the new heart, the new man, the new covenant, the New Jerusalem, the new heaven, and the new earth.”  This does not mean that everything new is by definition good.  But it does mean that God wants us to grow.  And that, in turn, means giving up the things that are holding us back. 

And indeed, I am excited to grow.  I am excited to learn from all the smarty pants at Harvard.  I am excited at the prospect of writing better, thinking better, achieving more.  I am excited to get several steps closer to becoming the educated, effective activist that I aspire to be.  But first, I have to leave home.  That much seems certain. 

Sufjan Stevens, one of my favorite musical artists, has a song that reminds me of this imperative.  On his album Illinois, a majestic tribute to my home state, the most anthemic track is (fittingly) “Chicago.”  A song of regret and rebirth, “Chicago” appeared in the 2006 film Little Miss Sunshine while a dysfunctional family barreled down the highway on a quest to fulfill sundry and quixotic dreams.  One short line from this song keeps coming back to me: “All things grow / all things grow.” 

I’ve been muttering this mantra to myself lately, always in duplicate, when I’m alone and in need of reassurance about the change I’m undertaking.  All things grow, all things grow.  And indeed they do grow — all living things, anyway.  The hard part is letting go of what must be left behind.  It is a task I’m certain I will never fully finish, nor would I really want to; Chicago is part of me and will stay that way.  But surely the prophet Isaiah was on to something when he spoke of newness (Is. 43:16-19): 

Behold, I am doing a new thing,

Even now it is springing to light.

Do you not perceive it?

A way will I make in the wilderness

And rivers in the desert! 

What I pray for is the discernment to perceive the new things God wants to do in my life — and the faith to recognize that in letting go, I am being grasped by something more.