This has been quite a week! Last weekend I hosted and was a pianist in a concert to benefit restorative justice. After months of preparation, it was a success both in attendance and money raised.
Here’s Monday. In the morning, I played for a ballet class, in the afternoon, biked to my chaplaincy training time (CPE) at the hospital and, in the evening, read about the future of churches in post-modernity.
After taking the bus out to seminary, I went to Tuesday’s midday chapel even though I was still in the middle of cramming to be up to speed with my reading and writing assignments for my Final Integrative Seminar in the afternoon. Chapel was a good respite. As soon as class was over (which included a lively discussion about the Holy Spirit), I bummed a ride from a classmate back to the hospital, eating dinner in the car, before my evening’s CPE classroom session started. This week half of us presented learning goals for the school year and got feedback from others. It was emotional to review what we see as our spiritual growing edges!
Wednesday morning, after first taking the car in to get looked at (reading while I waited), I played for another ballet class. After lunch, I met with a committee of ten about my sense of call to ministry in the UCC. Fresh out of the meeting, I got a call to do some computer programming ASAP. So – I headed off to Eagan to get that done. The afternoon’s committee meeting had been a bit grueling but not as bad as the period of second-guessing until getting a call later in the evening (while reading up for Friday). Finally, the process of discernment which informally started back in February or so became official from the denomination’s end!
After biking to the seminary from South Minneapolis, I spent Thursday morning organizing my time for the coming week, remembering to include chores at home. I read up some on the meditative practices we are to explore for class this coming week before assisting my friend Sonja in hosting chapel. After a bike ride to the hospital (through lots of wind) and four hours spent on the unit, I am done and drained. It’s hard to see how slow I am to grasp the simple feedback being offered! Here I am writing my blog post at home. Next, I will try to finish the reading for tomorrow’s class.
Friday morning I will finish the programming project started on Wednesday, then play piano for Parkinson’s patients. In the afternoon Christian Ethics class, we will discuss M. L. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, a novel, and the rest of this week’s reading. Then, I have a date with my wife!
Over the weekend, I plan on doing work to wrap up the summer’s independent study on the book of Revelation as well as starting our next book for Integrative class. Then it’s a breather before launching into next week!
- Karl Jones, MDiv student
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