What a long term...!

What a long term indeed. Though not really, in the grand scheme of life - I was only away from home a grand total of nine weeks, but it's amazing just how much can go on in such a short amount of time. For example, how an addiction to Glee can build up in so few a number of weeks (who knew it would be so brilliant?! http://www.e4.com/glee/), and how many things can come and go that I think 'oh, I could blog about that', and then don't. It's been a hard term in some ways too, with real life struggles of some of my friends managing to pop the Oxford bubble that characterises our term time so much. Somehow the bubble doesn't really have room for real life in it, and that makes it hard when you're so wrapped up in bubble-ish activities.

But, we are in the holidays (which as we progress through I find myself more and more often calling them 'vacations' rather than 'holidays', as I'm realising I'm vacating Oxford but never truly taking a holiday from work! But I've never liked the phrase 'vac', as it sounds suspiciously like an American doing house-work). So I'm home again, without the time pressures of term time, or the responsibilities, but with the knowledge that I have 2nd year finals some...2 1/2 to 3 months away...*gulp*! But it's exciting. Third year options are chosen and I'm raring to go with exciting things, and knowing that next year gives me only modules I've chosen. I defy you to make me learn about quantitative trait loci anymore!

Anyway, as I said, lots of things came up this term that got me thinking, but one specifically was to do with value. As a church student body we went away to Notting Hill earlier in the term for a weekend away, which was a really awesome time for spending time with God, and each other. In one conversation with a good friend of mine, I noted how there were so regularly parallels between what I was doing in lectures and tutorials with what we were covering in church. That week I'd written an essay on how you could calculate the wildlife value of a site. It was an interesting mix of using quantitative indices and debating what value even meant, and what we were even trying to conserve. Was value found in having as many species as possible in a site? The more species the better? High biodiversity, and all? Or was it about having the greatest taxonomic richness - the highest diversity of groups of organisms, rather than having lots of species that have all diverged from a tiny branch of the tree of life? Another view was to keep areas that are most natural and undisturbed - but let's not even get started on what 'natural' actually means!

All in all, it was, as you would expect of an essay topic, a very controversial question, and there were a lot of angles you could come at it from. Ultimately, there was a lot to be said for it being a highly subjective subject. Who, in the end, has the authority to deem one place valuable for conservation and another less so? It might be useful for a group of people's agriculture, or might be a huge carbon-sink of a forest, or be the only home of someone's favourite butterfly species. Who can make that decision that one type of habitat, or site, is more valuable than another, and even more so to be able to make set-in-stone indices so that you can compare them, cold as stone?

At the weekend away a lady called Jo spoke to the girls about value. She used Joseph, the man who went through stages of life as a favoured son, slave, prisoner and ruler, as an example of value and identity. Throughout all of the stages of his life he remained the same person because he knew his identity in God. His value was not diminished by his position. I think for me, it's very easy for me to say that I find my isentity in God because I'm so happy in the identity that I have in the world. I am happy being a student, being female, and studying Biology. That sits really comfortably with me, so thanks to God for letting me find that in him, right? I'm sure Joseph's value was found very easily when he was a favoured son and a ruler too, but it was the fact that he was unchanged when he wasn't necessarily where he wanted to be that was important. His knowledge of his value in God, and his identity in that was unchanged.

I've been in a a lifted mood these last few days because I got a really improved end-of-term report last week: finally, my tutor reported progress and higher achievement, and optimism for my exams in the summer. That has made me so pleased, and so enthused to crack on, but is it where I'm finding my value? I certainly feel more valued by the college, to have my tutor and principle tell me they're pleased I'm doing so much better than the boderline work I was producing last year. But is that enough? I don't mean that in an egotistical way, in that I need more affirmation of myself than that, but is that what I'm WORTH? Once my degree is over, and I no longer have two clever men in gowns smiling their favour on me to affirm me will I have lost my sense of worth and value?

The notes that I made from Jo's talk say this: 'When we find our value in Jesus we don't have to justify ourselves in other ways - then we can be free to be who we are called to be.' In college, tutors have a nice quantitative way of assessing our value as students, that could be beautifully summed into an equation along the lines of value = (change in exam scores per term)/(effort in hours per week). Not too hard for them, they don't have that same deliberation that we have over wildlife sites of what makes it valuable or not in the same way. But still, they are the ones casting judgement over our worth to them as a college. Will we deliver for them to add to their scores to move the college up in the rankings?

It's really easy for me to find my value in this system, kind of like a site being given a high biodiversity index becase it has 20 species of finch in a small area. But if they were all lost, there would still be hundreds of other finches. thousands of other close relatives. But it's not true value, not deeply rooted in anything, and highly superficial. Our true value is not found in our exam results, or how much we can make a Lord smile from his collegey throne on us. Our value was set, unchanging, when Jesus died for us on the cross.

I love that that's it. That's what it means to find our identity in Jesus.

Beyond that, all the earthly value I can be given by doing well, is simply an extension from God's grace for giving me something that I care enough about to work hard at to get right.

Big BioLove,  x