{"id":823,"date":"2011-06-24T13:07:02","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T17:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stlydias.org\/blog\/?p=823"},"modified":"2015-02-17T18:04:41","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T23:04:41","slug":"an-excerpt-from-jeremys-thesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/an-excerpt-from-jeremys-thesis\/","title":{"rendered":"An Excerpt from Jeremy&#8217;s Thesis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\"><em>Jeremy Sierra is a MFA student and lives in New York. \u00a0A congregant at  St. Lydia\u2019s, he blogs here under the category Jeremiah Speaking. On May 15, he shared this excerpt from his MFA thesis at dinner church.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I  went to an Episcopal Camp in the Diocese of Texas, about an hour\u2019s  drive outside of San Antonio. \u00a0The cabins where we slept were spacious,  with rough white stone walls, concrete floors and four sets of bunk beds  attached to the wall in the corners of the large square room.  \u00a0Overhead, a noisy fan whirred and failed to keep the cabins cool.<\/p>\n<p>The concrete slab at the center of the campus was where we would all  lie and look up at the stars and listen to whatever story the priest  would decide tell us. \u00a0This was usually something with a traditional  Christian message (God loves you, Jesus died for your sins, we are all  forgiven) and forgettable. The stars were what I remembered. The sky was  vast, seemed to pull me up into it, and as I lay back on the concrete I  could almost feel the earth rotating silently in empty space. It could  have been frightening, being so small, but then I remembered that God  had created all of it, and God loved me.<\/p>\n<p>On  the last evening, before we were all to pile in our parents\u2019 minivans  and SUVs for the trip back through the hill country to our homes, they  would hold a dance, a night that both excited and filled me with dread.  \u00a0In the cabin bathroom the other boys would be putting on cologne, which  they would sometimes lend me, and combing their hair, looking at  themselves in their khakis and collared shirts. \u00a0I stood near the edge  of the dance floor the entire time, picking out girls that I wanted to  ask to dance but never asking anyone; I was too shy and self-conscious.  Also, I didn\u2019t know how to dance. \u00a0I did not even know how to two-step,  which was what many of the couples did, that or a kind of rocking  shuffle across the concrete. \u00a0I stood at the edge and made multiple  trips to the water fountain just to feel as if I had something to do.<em><br \/>\nContinue reading <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/leaf?id=1pzKTFtbUK1B0agqvmeuMoOJPu5hwH_AlFFcxi8b7DqVl8xbvz9laBH1kEZPu&amp;hl=en_US&amp;authkey=CPbVq9QP\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeremy Sierra is a MFA student and lives in New York. \u00a0A congregant at St. Lydia\u2019s, he blogs here under the category Jeremiah Speaking. On May 15, he shared this excerpt from his MFA thesis at dinner church. I went to an Episcopal Camp in the Diocese of Texas, about an hour\u2019s drive outside of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":825,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions\/825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}