FEATURES
U P R O OT E D and growing BY ELLIOT RITZEMA
W
hen I tell people who are familiar with Nashotah House that I’m a residential student there, they will often ask, “What year?” (Those who are unfamiliar will ask something more basic, like “Nashwhatwhere?”) Since almost all the residential students are in the Master of Divinity program, the assumption is that I will answer: “Junior,” “Middler,” or “Senior.” Then I explain that, no, I’m a rarer bird: a residential Master of Sacred Theology student. You don’t have to join the residential community to do an STM; you could take all the classes you need as one-week intensives. So, it’s natural to ask a follow-up question: “Why?” The short answer is that I had the freedom to relocate, and I thought I could grow here, but the longer answer begins with how I came to be looking to move in the first place. In the fall of 2022, I was working as a book editor in Washington state. I had a job, a community, and a place to live. I was comfortable, but I was not content; I began to fear that I would blink and 20 years would go by with no meaningful change or growth. I could see myself relaxing into the comfortable consumer lifestyle that is the default way of being in America, and I rebelled. Pulling up roots and moving to Nashotah could be seen as the more rigorous, intensive option, and it wasn’t easy. But staying where I was would have been the more
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THE MISSIONER
