Who are you and what have you done with my seminarian?

Ok, so I failed miserably in my Lenten effort to spend less time on Facebook and more time here. For the few readers that still check here to see if I've popped my head out of the ground, you'll be happy to hear that I have T-minus 7 days until the end of the semester. I have one final class on Monday, 3 papers left to write for Friday, and then I'm loading up the Subaru and heading back to CT for the summer. Woo Hoo!

This semester has been a blast, and I know after a few weeks of decompressing at home I'm going to miss my new family up here. I'm going to miss eating with them 3 times a day, attending classes together, worshiping together, and walking down the hill to get ice cream. I'm going to miss how a 2 minute walk across the quad to drop off a paper in the office takes 20 minutes because inevitably I run into 2 or 3 people I know and we end up exchanging the usual "how are you, what are you doing today, how many papers do you have due, what are you doing over the summer" pleasantries.

I'm going to miss the students whom I've come to know and love and who'll be graduating in 2 weeks and I may never see again. And believe it or not, I'm even going to miss Systematic Theology. As mind bending as it was, it was my favorite class, and because it lasted two terms it gave me a sense of continuity in the midst of all the new challenges that I took on this semester.

I managed to get pretty decent grades on my papers in my two hardest classes, Systematics and Christian History; and I made it through my dreaded “Preaching without notes” class unscathed. In fact, I did much better than I expected. We each had to preach three 10-minute sermons without a manuscript, an outline, or notes of any kind. This was a format that was entirely foreign to me and I really struggled with how to even write a sermon that wasn't going to be read but rather spoken, partly from memory and partly extemporaneously. But somehow I was able to do it.

Part of the scariness of taking a preaching class is having to endure the critique that follows each sermon, as not only the professor but one’s fellow classmates have the green light to offer brutally honest criticism, constructive or otherwise. But while my classmates came out of each class feeling pummeled, by the professor and each other, I experienced a sort of detached euphoria. I did not receive a single negative comment, from anyone. In fact, the professor said I had a natural instinct for phrasing, use of illustrations, and sermon construction; and he held up my delivery to the rest of the class as “a wonderful example of effective preaching.” I was floored.
The only comment that came close to being negative came from a student who mentioned that the end of my third sermon, while strong, wasn’t as strong as my previous efforts (I had run past the allotted 10 minutes, so I shortened my intended ending).

The ‘detached’ part of the euphoria I experienced after hearing all this praise, comes from not knowing exactly who this person is who gets up in front up people and belts out these sermons. As someone who has spent most of her life hovering in the background being ‘the quiet one’ I don’t know how I suddenly came to have the ability to stand up in front of people, make full eye contact, and PREACH.
I don’t know where the words come from, I don’t know where the confidence comes from, so when people start pouring on the praise I can’t help but swivel my head around to see who it is they’re talking about.

I of course, think they’re all either delusional or are just trying to be nice (although they seem to have no qualms about offering criticism to everyone else in the class) and I still find myself obsessing over the smallest mistakes. Halfway through my second sermon, I lost my train of thought and forgot what I was going to say next. Panic set in. After pausing for what seemed to me be an obvious “oh my god I forgot what I was going to say” length of time, I wandered over to the table where I had left my Bible and took a peek at the text to jog my memory. I thought I had screwed up in a major way but amazingly none of my classmates noticed! Afterward, they praised me for including a “dramatic pause” that allowed them to “mull over” what I had said previously (ha!). My professor was the only one to notice the peek I took in the Bible and he praised me for “handling the glitch in a professional manner” and for “not panicking” (double ha!).


The biggest lesson I’ve taken from this class is the realization that nothing about good preaching is ‘easy.’ Two of the best preachers in my class (both African American), make it look so easy when they get up there and string words together that can’t help but move the Spirit within you, but they consistently talk about how “nervous” they are in the pulpit and how inadequate they feel when delivering God’s message. Neither of them is new to preaching - one is an ordained DMin student and the other has been preaching in her home church for years. I’m starting to realize that nervousness and feelings of inadequacy in the pulpit are not signs of an insecurity that must be overcome, or symptoms of being a ‘newbie’ that one outgrows as time goes by.
We’re all scared to death up there, and as one of my professors put it, "If you’re not scared to death you probably have no business being up there!"
It’s not just about making oneself vulnerable by presenting a creative work that will inevitably invite critique from the listeners – its’ about delivering the message of the “Good News” – a message that is in its very nature subversive, counter-cultural and not always easy to hear - God loves everyone. God saves everyone through Grace. No one is excluded. No one is to be hated. No one it to be left behind. This is the message that God sent through Jesus.
It is a message that is comforting to some and threatening to many.
It’s no wonder that preachers who ‘get’ what it is they’ve been called to do are shaking in their boots when they preach God’s Word.

….but this preaching without notes thing? That’s a little too nerve wracking.
I’m going back to the manuscript…or at least an outline..for now.

Clean and Clear you're my hero....

Well, so much for my Lenten promise to update this blog everyday!
I want to know, what happened to the last two weeks? Time is just whippin' by!

I only have a month and a half left in the semester and I very stupidly sat down and calculated all that I have left to do in my classes in the that teeny, tiny, minuscule amount of time:

Two 10 page papers for Systematic Theology.
Three 4 page papers, one 10 page paper, and one 60 minute Worship service for my Worship class.
Two 10 minutes sermons, one 5 page paper, and three 1 page preacher reflections for my Preaching class.
Three 2 page papers, one 15 page paper, and a creative Timeline for my Christian History class.
And hundreds of pages of reading for all of the above.

After looking at this list I just have one thing to say:

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Well, the one good thing about facing all of this work is the ego boost I received at my birthday dinner the other night. I was dining with three fellow classmates - two 30-year-olds, and one 25-year-old - so I was the old lady in the bunch.
The conversation went something like this:

Beth: Remember when we were in high school?
Kate: Yeah, I was so into the grunge look, I wore flannel shirts everywhere!
Ruth: And the music was so cool...not like the crap they have today.
Me: You guys were lucky, all we had when I was in high school was designer jeans, big hair, and Flash Dance.
Beth: What are talking about? You're OUR age!
Ruth: Yeah, aren't you like 32?
Me: No dears, I'm 43 today!
....long awkward pause....
Beth: Wow....so like, what kind of moisturizer do you use?

Bless their hearts.



My secret to eternal youth

We are purr-fect, just as God created us...

More proof that God has a sense of humor:

I spent 25 minutes picking out a shirt/blouse to wear to my Field Ed interview today...but when I got to church there was no heat in the building because the boiler broke down last night and we all had to keep our coats on for the whole meeting.

A fellow student graciously loaned me her car to drive to the interview...but it wasn't until I pulled into the church parking lot that I noticed the "I'm A Militant Agnostic and Proud Of It!" bumper sticker on the back.

The "other student" that the Field Ed committee said they were meeting with today (and who I thought was competing with me for the position)...turned out to be the CURRENT field ed student who meets with the committee every month.

Somewhere God is chuckling to him/herself and having way to much fun at our expense.


My favorite bumper sticker:

My way or the highway...

I'm staring down the barrel of another Systematic Theology paper that's due next week, so today I'm contemplating the different lenses through which we view our religious beliefs and the beliefs of others.
We learned in class that theologians divide these lenses into three categories:

Exclusivism: My path is the only true and valid path.
Inclusivism: Other paths are valid because they contain similar truths to mine, but my path is still the only way to 'ultimate truth'.
Pluralism: All paths are equally valid because they all lead to the same truth.

Pluralism seems to be the belief du jour among religious liberals these day. Even the Dali Lama has said it doesn't matter which path we travel as they all lead to the top of the mountain - but for him the top of that mountain contains only Buddhism. See, the problem is we're all looking for different things at the top of the mountain - communion with the one God, salvation through Jesus Christ, nirvana (the complete loss of self), oneness with the Brahman, etc.
These are not just different ways of merging with the 'one' - the Big Cheese that we envision running this dog and pony show - because for nontheistic faiths there is no big cheese to merge with. The goal of Christianity is relational - our self in relation to God. The goal of Buddhism is the release of the self, and as long as we're hung up on having a 'personal relationship with God' we've missed the point.

So what's on top of that mountain? A bunch of selves and non-selves arguing over who has the right to plant their flag on the top and claim THEIR summit as the ultimate truth? (in this analogy the selves would win, because the non-selves no longer exist ;-)

My Systematics professor, a well-known theologian who has written several books on this subject, is not satisfied with the definition of religious 'Pluralism.'
In his mind it still reeks of Exclusivism, because it assumes we're all headed towards the same ultimate truth, which we're not. He fully concurs that Christianity is the only true path to 'salvation', simply because it's the only faith that has 'salvation' as its goal. Do you want to walk the path of Jesus and be redeemed in the presence of the triune God? Then you better follow the path of Christianity because its the only road that leads there. In the same manner, if my goal is to completely detach from my sense of self and thus not be 'in relation' with any 'one,' then I need to follow the path of Buddhism, because I'm not going to get there by climbing the mountain that leads to a relational God.

What my professor proposes, and I concur, is that it doesn't make sense to be Exclusivist, Inclusivist, or Pluralistic, because all three assume that it's possible to know enough about other faiths to judge them as true or false.
There may be one 'ultimate truth' but it's impossible for us to know what it is because we lack 'ultimate knowledge.' It's impossible for us to fully experience any perspective other than our own (the story of the blind men feeling the elephant comes to mind).
Even my professor admits that his belief - that God relates to us in different ways according to culture, time etc. which accounts for range of differing religious beliefs - is tainted. Because it assumes that there is a single theistic 'being' running the show.

So, can the 'ultimate truth' be BOTH a single relational being, and 'nothingness' at the same time? Who knows...we certainly don't.
Which means it makes more sense to view religion as a whole series of mountains, each with their own path to the top. We have no way of knowing which peak is the highest, or closest to the 'truth,' - I suspect that they all fall way short of the mark.

I believe in a religion of 'revelation' - that we pick up on small snippets of the truth, filter that truth through our limited minds, and end up with a vague understanding of why we're here and where we're supposed to be going.
Christianity works for me because I believe that this 'revelation' comes from a single, relational 'Creator' God who came into this world in human form to show us 'the way' to the top.
We all agree that religion is about 'knowing' the truth, we just disagree on what that truth is and how we come to 'know' that truth.

What gets me is that after sitting through a 3-hour lecture on all of the above in class this week, some of my classmates still wear the badge of "Exclusivist' with pride. In their minds, Christianity is THE only way to the top of THE only mountain.
And not just any Christianity, but their form of 21st century, Protestant, North American, euro-centric, middle-class, literalist, Christianity.
The 'narrow way' indeed.
For me, this is like claiming to have the knowledge of God.
It's like arguing over who comes first and who gets to sit at the right hand of the Lord.
I believe I remember our 'personal savior' saying something about humility.

Then again, I could be wrong.
But isn't 'knowing' that we could be wrong the whole point of humility?

Go ahead, wrap your head around that one. ;-)

Snow Snow Go Away

Ok peeps, we're praying for the storm that's supposed to hit Boston on Sunday morning to track off-shore so I don't have to walk home from church in a sleety/snowy mess.
I have an interview on Sunday at the church where I want to do my field ed next year, which means I'll have to "dress to impress" rather than "dress for trudging several miles in the snow." So get praying!

It's a great church. I went there for the first time back in January and I liked it instantly. It's about 2.5 miles from school so I walked there on my first visit, although I had to walk in the street most of the way as the sidewalks were covered in about a foot of ice and snow at the time. When I got there one of the members who saw me walking introduced herself, escorted me inside and announced to everyone in the foyer "this woman walked all the way from A*ndover N*ewton!"
Bam! I was swarmed with people introducing themselves, telling me all about the church, inviting me to stay for coffee hour. One woman was impressed at my attempt to reduce my "carbon footprint" by walking instead of driving. Only a tree-hugging lefty liberal would say something like that so I knew that this was a church where I would fit right in. ;-)

The service was great, the building is beautiful with stained glass windows and gothic architecture (it looks more like the Catholic church that I grew up in then a New England UCC church), the pastor was very friendly, and it turns out that I know the woman who is their field-ed student this year (she's in my preaching class) so she was able to put in a good word for me.

I got to know quite a few people at coffee hour and I went back the following week and sat through their 2-hour congregational meeting (which I think impressed them even more then the walking). Then I lucked out - the pastor is taking his Field Ed supervisors course at my school so we met for lunch last week. (In a freaky coincidence, he's also a cyclist and he was wearing the same bicycle chain bracelet that I was). This past Sunday I met with the chair of the committee that oversees the FE program, and this Sunday I'll meet with the whole committee.

Unfortunately, the chair of the committee told me last week that they just had another student from my school apply for the position, so to be fair they'll meet with her right after they meet with me.

Of course I just smiled and said very cheerily "Of course, I understand."
But inside I was saying, "Oh no you di'int!
Did Miss Jane-y come lately trudge through 2 miles of snow, sit through a 2-hour congregational meeting, and does she have the same cool bracelet as the pastor?? I think not!"

I know, I know, competition is a part of life, so I should just get over myself.
But don't you hate when something feels like it's meant to be and then someone/something comes along and throws a monkey wrench into your "sure thing"?
God loves doing that.
We go onto google maps and plan out how to get from point A to point B and then God comes along and moves all the streets around.

Me, I'm just going to keep trudging along, and praying for clear roads and good weather!


These Boots Are Made For Walking...

Ashes, Ashes, We all fall down!

Well, it's Ash Wednesday, I've received my ashes, I'm still polishing off the Valentine's Day candy, and I have 50 kagillion things due in my classes the next few weeks, so I thought it was as good a time as any to pop over here and post an update.

My problems is that after much arm twisting by my classmates I finally joined Facebook (yes, I've gone over to the dark side). I've found that updating my posse in short semi-coherent phrases is much easier to do while I'm juggling classes. Finding 5 seconds to write "Maureen is pondering" or "Maureen is referring to herself in the third-person" is more doable than carving out an hour to blog.

BUT (and I got this idea from fellow blogger, Marie), I've decided that in honor of Lent I'm going to make an effort to spend less time on Facebook and more time over here. I've been spoiled here at school - since I'm living with a bunch of theology geeks whenever I'm pondering some deeper issue or have a rant rattling around in my head I have instant sounding boards to bounce them off of. This blog used to serve that purpose for me, now I have real live human beings (I know, horrors!).

I started blogging as a Lenten practice three years ago - offline, and moved it online 2 years ago - so it makes sense to return to it during this time of year.
My goal is to make time for it every day, and to move deeper into my thoughts then Facebook allows ("Maureen hopes she knows what she's getting herself into").

So, keep checking back if you're interested.
Things are about to get busy around here. ;-)

Spring is here! (and so are the butterflies)

Well, at least the spring SEMESTER is here...it's still bleeping cold outside with huge piles of snow blocking the sidewalks.
I'm back at school. Classes start tomorrow.
I have new notebooks, new text books, a whole slew of new papers that I can procrastinate about writing (once I finish procrastinating about the paper that's due tomorrow for my Winter session class).

This semester I'm taking:
History of Christianity I
Systematic Theology II
Seasons of Celebration: Worshiping Through the Liturgical Year
Introduction to Preaching

I'm trying to stick with a balance of half theory/half practice each semester so I'm not too loaded down with reading, writng papers, and generally bending my brain into a pretzel...
The Worship class should be fun as we'll be broken into groups with each group picking a liturgical season to design and present a worship service for.
The Preaching class was a last minute choice. I was going to wait and take a preaching class in tandem with my Field Ed assignment next year, and even then I had no intention of taking the Intro to Preaching class. Given that I've had 10 years of preaching experience I thought I'd take something more esoteric, like "The Jazz of Preaching" or "Holistic Preaching" (I have no idea what that is but it sounds cool).

I changed my mind when a 2nd year student told me that she took Intro to Preaching last year and the Professor announced on the first day of class that they would not be allowed to use a manuscript or notes for any of the preaching assignments.
My response was: "WHAT WHAT WHAT???!!
Basically, this is preaching without a net.
The thought of doing this terrified me so much that I knew I had to take this class.

The class is not meant to teach us how to preach without a manuscript as a rule, but rather it's meant to make us BETTER manuscript preachers. Preaching without notes will force me to know my stuff and get my point across in a more direct way; it will allow me to tell stories in a more natural, conversational manner, and get me in the habit of maintaining eye contact with the congregation for longer periods of time.
Although I'm looking forward to the challenge, I also know that this class is going to stress me out to no end. I anticipate a lot of Tuesday nights spent memorizing and practicing in my dorm room, and a lot of Wednesday mornings spent fretting in class with my stomach doing the cha-cha just waiting for my turn to be over. ;-)

But this is why we do stuff like this, right?
Turn our lives upside down, try something new, risk being the sole flubbering fool in a room full of our amazingly capable peers. Every now and then we have go out and S-T-R-E-T-C-H ourselves beyond the point that we feel comfortable going. We may discover a talent that we never knew we had, or we may say, "yeah, I'm never doing THAT again!"
Either way it beats sitting at home wondering what we could have, should have, would have done if we only had the guts to try.
Hello guts.
I expect to be seeing (and feeling) a lot of you over the next few months.
Just don't get too comfortable. I hope to be showing you the door before too long.

Now lets get down to business.
A new semester is here and we've got some Jesus learnin' to do!

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye...

Adieu, Adieu, to you and you and you!


After watching Bush's farewell address on TV last night I just have one thing to say...

GO AWAY! GET OFF MY TV! JUST LEAVE ALREADY SO I CAN WATCH GRISSOM'S FINAL EPISODE OF CSI!

Well ok, that's actually three things, but they needed to be said.

Oh, and one more thing - George, please stay in Texas.
Remember what Thomas Wolfe said, "You can't go home again."

Happy Happy Joy Joy!

I got my final grades for the fall semester (insert drum roll here)....
and I got a B+ in Systematic Theology!!
When I saw the grade I literally jumped up and down in my dorm room.
You'd think I won the lottery or something. And in a way I did, because anything less then a B would have dropped me below the 3.5 GPA I need to maintain for my scholarship.
Thankfully, with an A, A-, and a B+ (and a "Pass" for the class I took Pass/Fail) I managed to eek out a 3.7 for my first semester.

Now it is time to do the happy dance!

You can't teach an old coat new tricks...

So, I bought a new winter coat.
The day after I got home for Christmas break I was browsing in Sears and they had a huge sale on Lands End coats, so I bought one.
It's red and puffy and oh so warm.
I've been wearing the same basic black winter coat for 10+ years, so buying a new winter coat - especially a red one - is a big deal for me.

Now that I have two coats I thought I would alternate between the two, but in reality I haven't worn the old coat since I bought the new one.
So it took me all of two seconds to decide to leave the old coat hanging on the back of the dining room chair as I packed up to head back to school this morning.
My winter class is only two weeks long and then I'll be back home for a week, so I can decide then whether I need to have both coats up in Boston.
My SO and I packed up the car, made the 3 hour drive to Boston, and shortly before reaching the Newton exit on the Mass Pike, I reached into my bag to dig out my dorm room keys.
And then I realized that they were in my coat pocket.

No....not in the pocket of my NEW red winter coat.
Why would they be there?
That would make too much sense.
They were in the pocket of my old black winter coat, hanging on the back of a chair 150 miles away from where I needed them to be.

Not a big deal.
I could get a replacement set from my building's res rep.
Unless she was on vacation in California....which she was.
So.........we turned the car around and drove back home to CT, and found the keys exactly where I thought they would be.

The sad part is that I remember zippering the keys safely in my coat pocket rather then in my bag where I usually keep them, thinking 'I may forget my bag, but this coat goes wherever I go.'
Just as it has for the past 10 years.
And then I bought a new coat.

Now I will be driving myself back to Boston tomorrow.
One 5-hour+ round trip per weekend is enough for my SO, and she graciously agreed to walk to work for 2 weeks so I can keep the car.

I get the car AND I have a new red puffy coat?
It must be my lucky day! ;-)

Politics makes strange bedfellows...

A lot of people on my side of the political fence have their knickers all in a bunch because President-Elect Obama went ahead and invited Rick Warren to be the presiding clergy at the Inauguration.
He's anti-gay, they say.
Yes he is.
But what kind of Democrat, what kind of Christian would Obama be if he shut people out just because they disagreed with him?

As much as I loathe the position of (most) evangelical Christians when it comes to the discussion of the rights of GLBT people, what disgusts me even more is that they have become a sect that chooses to focus on a few hot button issues about which the Bible has little to say - gay rights, abortion, sex education, creationism - while neglecting the issues about which the Bible has the most to say - poverty, oppression, the marginalization of the few by the many.

My point is, how can we accuse the religious Right of having too narrow of a focus, if we then turn around and do the same?
Christian gay rights groups like Soulforce have a hell of a time just getting conservative pastors to sit down with them and have a conversation. If the Right says "We won't talk to you or associate with you because you're gay," how is the Left making things any better by saying "We won't talk to you or associate with you because you're anti-gay?"

Obama is right.
There are issues on the table that we can agree upon, and we ALL need to work together to address them.
Do I want the legal right to marry my partner? Yes.
But the guy who is sleeping on a freezing cold sidewalk tonight because he doesn't have a home and the shelter is full....well I think his issue is a little more pressing at the moment.

I recognize that I am in a privileged position to be able to say that.
I managed to make it out of my teens and through the hell of high school without killing myself, many gay kids are not so lucky.
Every minute of every day someone somewhere is verbally abused, fired, thrown out of their home, assaulted or killed, just because they don't conform to the sexual 'norm' that someone else has ingrained in their head.
And as much as some Christians would like to deny it, the words flowing from the pulpit can do as much damage, if not more, than those shouted in the street or whispered in a high school hallway.
Yes, the gay rights issue is an important issue, a life and death issue - as is poverty, oppression, health care, violence, addiction, the economy, education, and a slew of other issues that leave people homeless, helpless, and hopeless.

Jesus said, "you will always have the poor with you."
Well, I believe we will always have Christians who believe in their heart of hearts that being gay is a choice that God has forbidden. I can't get inside their heads and change their minds, and neither can Obama. That doesn't mean we can't find common ground on the 98% of the Bible that we can agree upon - feed the hungry, support the weak, strengthen the fainthearted, help the suffering, honor all beings.

We shouldn't stop talking to each other, or inviting each other to share in our common celebrations, just because we disagree on how we believe God intends for us to live in this world.

I say kudos to Obama....we finally have a Christian in the White House who pays more than lip service to Jesus' command to "love thy enemies."

Paul said "we, who are many, are one body in Christ” (Romans 12:5)
Now if we could just get the left hand and the right hand to stop bitch-slapping each other we might just get around to putting one foot in front of the other and solving some of the problems in this world.
Amen.

Bwahahahahahahah!

Ladies and Gentleman - the Four Stooges...
Moe, Larry, Curly and Georgie:

DONE!

I am now officially in decompression mode.
I emailed my last paper of the semester last night and woke up this morning high fiving God for helping me get over the first hurdle of seminary.
My winter class starts in three weeks but until then I plan on doing NOTHING.

Well....I do have one (really thick) book to read before the class starts, and I did promise my SO that I'd organize her books in her office....her hundreds and hundreds of books. Oh, and I need to do laundry today, and vacuum, and clean up all the sawdust that the maintenance guys left behind when they came to fix our ceiling (a year and a half after the rain destroyed it), and I have to drag out the SpotBot and eradicate all the kitty puke stains that have accumulated on the carpet since I left for school....but first I need to go to Bed Bath and Beyond and buy some more Bissel Kitty Puke Stain Remover for the SpotBot because we ran out (our kittys love to puke)....and THEN I can put up our Christmas decorations (and see if the $14.99 5ft Christmas tree that I bought at the Crap-o-rama, errr, I mean Christmas Tree Shop, actually looks like the picture on the box).
But first, I need to clean the kitchen....and the bathroom.

Other than that, it's time to reeeeeeeelaxxxxxxxxxx!
Hey, it will be at least three weeks until anyone asks me to explain the Trinity - cat puke here I come!

Now, here's Roomba Cat to give you a preview of my day:

Isn't Foreigner a rock band from the '70s?

A snippet of a conversation that I had with my mother on the phone last night...

Mom: Are you all finished with school?
Me: Almost, I have one last paper to write for Systematic Theology.
Mom: What do you have to write for that?
Me: Oh nothing much, I just have to explain God and the Trinity in 3000 words or less.
Mom: Well, the Trinity shouldn't take more than 15 words.
Me: (laughing) I think it will take more than that.
Mom: What's to say? The Trinity is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Me: Yes, but not every Christian tradition agrees on what that means...for example I have to explain the differences between the beliefs of the Western Church and the Eastern Church...
Mom: Oh...well, I just know what the Catholics believe. I didn't know you had to write about foreigners...


Moms....gotta love 'em.



OK boys, which one of us is going to be Mick Jones this time?

In the home stretch...

It’s 2 am and I can’t sleep, so seeing as my every waking hour is crammed with school stuff, now is as good a time as any to blog!

Of course I won’t be able to post this until later today because the internet connection is down in the residence halls….again. So I’ll have to go over to the student center or library to get online. (yeah, they thought that T1 line they put in four years ago was plenty big enough to handle the wireless needs of a few hundred seminary students….little did they know that people would be downloading full seasons of “Heroes” from iTunes, video chatting on Skype, and playing World of Warcraft all hours of the day and night. Seriously, when do these people get their work done? (so says the one with the Slingbox streaming her cable TV signal from home to her laptop.)

The semester is over next week. I still have two group presentations to do and two papers to write but I feel as if I’m coasting towards the finish line. The presentations are complete for the most part, they just need to be presented; one of the papers will be fairly easy to knock out, and the other will probably have me tearing my hair out over the weekend, but the end is nigh, and I can feel it.

So, how do I think I did? So far so good. In my Pastoral Counseling and Creating Healthy Congregations classes I’ve gotten an A or A- on every paper, and the presentation we did tonight in the PC class went really well. In my Paul class I got an A on the one paper we had to do, and I’m feeling really good about the worship service that my group is presenting tomorrow. The one grade I’m still iffy on is for Systematic Theology. I got a B on the first paper (which I was bummed about at first but then found out from talking to other students that that’s considered a “good grade” for that class and very few get higher then that….geesh!). I’m still waiting to get back my 2nd paper, and the 3rd is due next week, so the final grade for this class is a giant question mark right now.

I wish I didn’t have to care about grades. And as I’ve heard ad nauseum since I got here: “churches don’t look at your seminary grades when they’re thinking about hiring you, so relax,” but unfortunately I can’t. I have to maintain a 3.5 GPA to keep my scholarship, so those B’s have me bumming while other people are humming. (that’s a little rhyme there, did you catch that? Give me a break it’s 2 am).

The reason why I’m bumming even more is that at the beginning of the semester I had the choice of taking one class Pass/Fail and I chose the Paul class given that we were being graded on only one paper and one presentation (you tank on one and you’re sunk).
Now it looks like I would have gotten an A in that class. Crap.

The big surprise for me this semester is how much I’ve been enjoying doing the group projects. I pretty much took the reigns on all three of them, as everyone liked my suggestions during the brainstorming sessions, I ended up designing/organizing and formatting each presentation, and kept everyone on the same page via emails. Don’t get me wrong, everyone did their fair share of the work, and added onto the ideas that I came up with, and given that most of my fellow students are working and/or have families to tend to outside of seminary I’m sure they were happy to hand off all the organizing work to the poor schmuck (me) who seemed eager to do it. But hey, it was fun being the schmuck. It felt good to come up with an idea, envision how it might play out, put it all down on paper and have people say: “this is great! Let’s do this!”

I especially enjoyed designing the worship service for the Paul class. They even let me do the bulletin (I know….schmuck) but I love doing creative stuff like that, choosing a format, picking the fonts, making a logo for the front cover, making it look all nice and professional…
Hmmm…I’m sensing that I’ve discovered that I like being in control.
The good thing is that I don’t feel like I NEED to be in control. I came up with the framework for the presentations but everyone was free to do what they wanted with their parts. And even though I designed the worship service I was happy to let someone else write and perform the sermon (a woman who I just found out today has only preached once in her life and has yet to take a preaching class…this should be interesting!)

My fear coming into seminary was that I would be the mousy one who would sit back and let everyone else take control and hold back on making suggestions out of fear of having them rejected. So it has surprised me not only that I enjoy the creative process so much, but that I have been so forward with offering suggestions, and so organized when it came to presenting them in a format that everyone could understand and then being the proactive one keeping everyone updated and on the ball.
I used to dread these class presentations when I was kid. Now I’m so excited about how well tonight’s presentation went and I’m so looking forward to tomorrow’s service that I can’t sleep.

In tonight’s class we did a presentation on Death and Resurrection and I played the role of a pastor presiding over a funeral/memorial service while the others were the voices of the grieving and the deceased. We did a communion ritual at the end to symbolize renewal and rebirth and after we finished my professor came up to me and asked, “Are you a pastor?” When I said no, her eyebrows shot up and she said “well you certainly act like one – you preside very well!”

You know, when you make the decision to turn your life upside down and dump a ton of money into following one particular path, words can’t express how good it feels to hear someone who has been on that path for many years tell you that you’ve made the right choice.

Suddenly those B’s don’t seem all that important anymore. ;-)