New Wine in Old Wine Skins

San Antonio, the beginning, middle, and current location of my journey.

I feel like coming back here after having such a life altering year is difficult for the very reason that I'm not the same as I use to be. Or sometimes I wonder if I am still the same, or worse yet, that I began a transformation and have now returned to the former things. Familiar surroundings have a funny way of playing tricks on a person. Sometimes I feel like I see my life more clearly than before, and sometimes my whole perspective is clouded.

So specifically Jesus is speaking about fasting when he mentions the wine skins in Matthew 9, but I feel like this is where I'm caught. Trying to fit back into something old. It doesn't fit the way it use to. It's a little tight, uncomfortable. Sometimes I even suck in and pull at the sleeves of this old garment, but it still doesn't look right. I guess that's reassurance that I am changing. I'm not the person I was when I got off the plane in Chicago 15 months ago. Sometimes I even laugh about how clueless I was when I started. Mission Year= reality check! Did I even understand injustice, service, loving my neighbor, racial reconciliation? Do I even understand it now?

We wrote a letter to ourselves during closing retreat that would be sent to us 3 months after the end of the program. I got mine not too long ago, and I was surprised. I don't know if I was more surprised by how passionately I wrote about things, or that I don't still carry that same fervor. That's what scares me.

I hate confessing this because I know I sound like a broken record and I don't regret the choice to come back to Texas, but I want to be in Chicago. I mentioned this to a friend of mine recently who kindly suggested that maybe it's the clearer vision, the lessons, the community that I miss, not specifically the location. In my neighborhood I experienced a new powerful reality, and I miss it. In my mind, my transforming self fits there. It doesn't fit here.

So tell me, how do old wine skins transform into new ones? How do I translate my Chicago self back into a San Antonio context? Surely things much change because otherwise Jesus' conclusion says fitting the new into the old only brings ruin to both the wine and the wine skins.

I feel my clothes starting to tear.