That's PRESIDENT Pinko to you Mr McCain!

The best quote of the day...

Barack Obama's response to Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign's attempt to link him with yet another "radical professor" as proof that he is a (wink) secret terrorist intent on bringing down the country:

OBAMA: "I don't know what's next. By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

Bwwaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!

BTW - I don't think Obama is the one we should be afraid of...

Homework? What homework?

Here's a little pre-Halloween personality quiz....

What Your Cute Monster Says About You

You are a deep, thoughtful, down to earth person. You don't put much stock in appearances. You are never superficial or flippant. You take time in life to study, learn, and get to know people well. You inner demon is laziness. You can get so caught up in your own world that you neglect everything around you. People think you're cute because you're intelligent. Your wit and wisdom are charming.

The Cute Monster Test

Lazy? Silly blog quiz, I'm not lazy, I'm just temporarily diverting my attention away from my Systematic Theology reading by posting inane quizes on my blog.
Now I'm going to divert my attention some more by playing video games on my iPhone...

Oh....and I picked the brown monster because it reminded me of a little reindeer. :-)

Midterm Meanderings

I had papers due in all four of my classes last week so I’ve been taking it easy this week (meaning I only have to read 500 pages and write 1 paper instead of read 700 pages and write 4 papers). Now that I’m over the midterm hump I have a chance to catch my breath before starting round two.

Things are going really well, I’ve managed to keep up with the work and my classes are all very interesting. I’m really glad that I chose to skip over some of the intro courses. I was nervous about jumping right into Systematic Theology in my first term but thankfully my undergrad classes in religion prepared me well.....go ahead, ask me what hypostatic union means, I dare ya!

The big news is that I am now officially “In Care” in my local UCC association – yay!
The interview went well and I made it back to Boston in plenty of time to make my evening class.

It felt good to be home for a few days. My SO has come up to visit every couple of weeks but I hadn’t been home in 5 weeks. The kitty cats were certainly happy to see me! With my SO at work all day and me gone, the cats have been starved for attention. They spend every evening jockeying for position next to her on the couch and if she talks to me on the phone for too long they start fighting. It’s like having a couple of 3-year-olds. Now, if we could just get them toilet trained...

An old friend of mine was in town last weekend so we spent two days traipsing around Boston. It was good to get out of my cell….errrr…I mean dorm room for awhile. I haven’t seen much of Boston since I got here, other than the inside of a few churches. We walked along the Charles and watched the annual Regatta races, and ate way too much food at Quincy Market. She brought along an old friend of ours who is originally from Russia but he's been living in Boston for 30 years. He’s a physicist at MIT and he spends his free time translating the works of Marx into English. Fun, fun, fun!
Needless to say, he didn’t quite get the whole ‘theological school’ thing. While he didn’t quite drop the old “religion is the opiate for the masses” line, he made several comments that were a subtle attempt to bait me in a ‘religion vs reality’ debate. I didn’t take the bait. It’s nearly impossible to explain a faith-based philosophy to someone who has no experience with faith. It’s hard to explain one’s experience of God with someone who believes they’ve had no such experience because there is no God. It’s like trying to explain music to someone who is tone deaf. Sorry, not going there.

As Anselm said, theology is simply faith seeking understanding.
And the fact that I am at a place where I can gather with other believers and spend my days seeking such an understanding, and they call it ‘school', just thrills me to no end.

Lost in Cyber Space

Ok, so I thought I posted this update back in September but for some reason it never made it here and I don't know why (cyber bugs? faulty connection? I was too brain dead to hit the 'Save and Submit' button [my money's on the last one])
So, better late than never here's my last post:
(with an updated update to follow soon)

Seminary Ketchup
September 27, 2008

I’m supposed to be writing a paper on Paul and his pastoral strategy….
So it seems like a good time to update my blog <cough…procrastination>


I’m busy, busy, busy. Classes only began three weeks ago and I’ve already written two papers, read about 3,000 pages, and been labeled as “boring” by the extrovert who lives 3 doors down from me. Mainly because every time she knocks on my door (which is 5 times a day) I’m always “too busy studying to hang out and have fun.”
Which is not quite true.
I did venture into Boston with her last Sunday to see a movie at the Museum of Fine Arts. But she’s right. I definitely go into ‘hermit-mode’ whenever I’m not in class or attending some school event.
I have to. Otherwise I’d go nuts.
Monday through Thursday I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the cafeteria, and that’s close to 3 hours a day of just socializing, which for those of us of the introverted persuasion is a stretch. Pack a 3 hour class each day on top of that, most of which involve some form of group discussion, daily morning chapel service, Wednesday Community Chapel, a bi-weekly meeting of our Spiritual Formation covenant group, and numerous special events, info fairs, and fellowship gatherings that occur on campus nearly every day, and I NEED to squirrel myself away in my room every now and then, not just to study but to recharge my batteries.

Miss Extrovert down the hall doesn’t quite get that. She wants to “study together out on the quad” and since we’re not in any of the same classes I’m guessing that her idea of “studying” is sitting around chitchatting with books propped open on our laps.
Yeah. No.
This girl is the anti-me. I love how quiet it gets here on the weekends. She can’t stand it. Give me a book and 3 hours alone in my room and I’m happy as a clam. She’s climbing the walls after 30 minutes. Yet we’re living on the same floor, we’re in the same Spiritual Formation group, and she’s claimed me as her ‘seminary best friend’ because I helped her move in.
God definitely has a sense of humor.


Last Sunday I went to Old South Church, a UCC church near the Boston Public Gardens. It was the first stop on my “Tour of potential Field Ed sites.” I have to do two semesters of internship next year (15-20 hours a week) so my goal this year is to take a peak at as many of the churches on our site list as I can. Unfortunately, most of the churches on our school’s list are either outside of Boston or not easily reachable by public transportation, so my SO and I may need to think about getting a second car. I don’t want to limit myself the handful of churches that are near T stops – getting the right fit is more important than how I’m going to get there. Although Harvard Div has a few local sites on their field ed list which we’re allowed to use, so I may check those out next.
Why am I worrying about this now? Because I have to start the search process next semester and it will be here before I know it!


This past Tuesday we had an all-school “Community Day” – classes were cancelled and we all went off the hill in groups to work in the surrounding community. One group worked on a Habitat for Humanity house, one did some neighborhood canvassing for a local non-profit, and our group sorted and packed food at the Boston Food Bank. It was a blast and when we got back to campus we had a barbecue on the quad.


I finally got the report from the psych evaluation I had done at the end of July (yes it’s official, I’m crazy). So the next step is my interview with the Council on Ministry on Oct. 7, which if all goes well will officially give me “In Care” status in my local association.
To get to the meeting my SO will have to come up to Boston and bring me home for the weekend (yay!) so I can attend the interview on Tuesday morning, and then I’ll drive back to Boston, hopefully getting here in time to make my 6:00 class. Of course, all of this back and forth traveling will happen the weekend before I have major papers due in 3 of my classes.

Speaking of which, I better get back to Paul and his pastoral strategy (….something about the women staying silent and the men staying celibate….Paul apparently was not overly concerned with marketing strategies or church growth).

Ketch you later - Happy Fall!