Encounters

About four o’clock yesterday I quit studying at the library and headed home for an early dinner with friends.  A couple weeks ago on a Saturday my wife and I had attended the first of a three-session anti-racism workshop.  After tonight’s dinner we were all supposed to head out for the second installment.  Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to realize that I was probably not up for taking time off from my studies to see more of my blind spots and explore the world’s problems in yet more depth. 

The couple with whom we were having dinner are on-and-off-again Unitarian Univer­sal­ists.  Though I am the most religious of the bunch of us, we are deeply interested in each other’s lives.  So when Peter asked about my week, I found myself talking about how overwhelming but thrilling it had been to do my midterm for Christian Ethics. 

I still remember sitting in the library poring over Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” for the third time.  It is always bracing to be in the presence of his courage and vision.  But, this time, because I was formally studying it, I was struck by his rich knowledge of the philosophers and theologians that he was drawing on – from memory in his prison cell, initially.  I found myself wanting to also absorb Plato and Tillich in breadth and in depth.  But even more beautiful was the way that over and over he would take criticisms leveled by other pastors against him and the civil rights cause and reframe them as mandates which should be self-evident to anyone who carefully looked at Paul’s letters and Christ’s actions.  The process of retracing MLK’s steps through this great letter left me awed by his mastery of rhetoric and hungry to be more grounded in scripture.  That communion with such a great mind and spirit leaves me feeling like I’m in the right place.

The scramble to finish everything before the deadline – followed by detailed responses to the four case studies for my Final Integrative Seminar which were due a few days later – has also left me dead tired.   After everyone else left for the racism workshop and I had finished the dishes, I crashed on the couch for a couple hours.  Once my wife returned, we watched an episode of Commander In Chief – our decadent plea­sure these days – before I switched gears and returned to my studies.  For the last couple hours before bed, I read John Howard Yoder’s classic analysis of the gospels in which he lays out his fascinating picture of a thoroughly political Jesus.

This morning, after studying more and doing some of my work as a computer pro­grammer, I biked over to the hospital.  Each visit is different.  Each day is its own adventure and brings its own lessons. 

- Karl Jones, MDiv student

Wonderings Under the Autumn Moon

Two evenings ago after days of taunts and false alarms, I found the first flakes falling I knew that the curtain was closing on my evening walks. At the beginning of the semester I was assigned readings about spiritual practices. One of the first of these practices required creating a time of solitude or reflection at the end of the day. I gave it a try and got quite used to it. Now it’s getting cold. 

I can feel the days get dense and narrow near the end of autumn. They are already getting crushed into tiny units of clock time white-washed in fluorescent light where it only gets sunny and warm imagination. 

This year’s long autumn tempted me with a secret cache of time and I took it. I stole off most evenings before bed into the suburban streets of Fridley kicking the fallen leaves just to hear them tumble and scrape against the concrete while I thought about Carolyn Pressler’s OT notes wondering what it means that anyone still reads the Hebrew Bible- that anyone even wrote it in the first place. In the long autumn I started to ask again what it mean that I am still reading the Bible, now that it opens up to me like a handful of tiny, bright stars sprinkled across the night sky, drawing me underneath its canopy so I can feel around and listen for new sounds. 

What did those writers hear that made them into humans formed and aroused to life by the hands and breath of deity? What did they see that made them look again, certain that there was something else? 

Did they see what Sojourner saw and that her mother saw when they looked up to the night sky? I’m looking and listening too, even to the leaves I’m kicking about with my feet while I think about Augustine and poor brother Luther. They did finally find an end (or at least a beginning to the end) to their tortures underneath that canopy as well. Whatever was said that inspired writing about an Abraham and a Moses must have also intoned with a surplus of resonance that outmatched Augustine’s desire and consoled Luther’s conscience with grace enough to account for the remainder. I think Augustine, Luther and Calvin did make some headway for us. They rendered aid to consciences seeking a place to rest. But what next? 

Something remains that I can feel in the fallen leaves while the moon beams at me from behind soft charcoal clouds. I can feel it in my bones and I can hear it in Billy and Nina’s Strange Fruit and I think I see pieces of it in James Cone as well. The brother is right, you know, about Niebuhr’s investment in Jim Crow’s status quo. And I also think he is right that in the United States the cross of Jesus Christ is the spectacular lynching extravaganza that betrays a fatal flaw in Protestantism’s narcoleptic conscience that I still struggle to fully apprehend. 

That makes me think again about the social context of Luke’s Gospel that Marilyn has burned into me and I remember that someone in Rome seems to have believed that frequent public hangings could permanently arrest movements toward liberation and sustain Rome’s idea of peace. Is it not an obscene joke that some American Christians recently believed that their place in the American dream would be secure if only congregations of White lynch mobs could be washed in the blood of crucified Black people? Crucifying Black people did not save expectant congregants eagerly grasping their children by the hand gazing with devotion upon our charred and dismembered remains in dark woods and crowded town squares and I wonder if they ever understood why not. 

Then I ask the autumn moon and the fallen leaves and the one who made me notice them if it is not time to stop making their problem my problem too.

- Jermaine Ross, MDiv student

Be Strong and Courageous

Pursuing a Master of Divinity is not for the faint of heart.  Since the beginning of the semester, I have watched my father’s health continue to decline as he completes his sixth month of receiving hospice care.  I have made an effort to be there as much as I can, which isn’t very much; I have spent two months at my clinical site watching life’s drama unfold as families make what is literally life or death decisions, and I have six more months to go.  I have struggled to keep up with my studies with very little to show for it except for piles of books and reams of paper with random sections highlighted in hopes that it will have helped me with the midterm I’m turning in tomorrow (a few days prior to when this entry will post on our blog.)  I have continued to work full-time.  On top of that, I nearly got in a car accident on my way to class when I was so sleep-deprived that I pulled in front of a car that managed to swerve to safety despite my poor and dangerous driving.

It’s the last thing that put me and my family over the edge.  While I can – and have – taken a fair amount of abuse to get through seminary, it’s when I put someone else’s safety in jeopardy that we realized something had to give, but what?  I certainly am not going to cut back what amounts to a handful of hours with my dad and providing respite for my mother.  Because of financial aid and scholarships, there are a minimum number of classes I have to take each year.   Even if everything goes as planned, I’ll just be skimming by, and once before I had to pay back financial aid for some classes when I couldn’t hit the minimum – it’s too painful to do again.  I can’t quit the clinical pastoral education (CPE) component; I need the credits and also it has truly become the part of my week I love the most, where I’m actually able to minister to others and see some purpose for why I’m doing everything else.  What about the job?  Well, my spouse was laid off some months back, so we need my paycheck, and perhaps more importantly, the benefits.  Despite repeated requests to be allowed to cut my hours, my employer can’t swing it.  As it is, there are already about 30% fewer of us in our area doing about 50% more work than in the past.  I’ve already tried sleeping in my car (see paragraph above) and have learned that’s not a good choice, either.

It turns out the car is part of the solution.  Well, not the car, but the commute. Despite the reduction in household income, we’ve determined that the best solution is that I rent a room in Minneapolis that’s about 15 minutes from work and 10 minutes from my clinical site.  So, for the next six months, we’re paying a mortgage – and rent – so that I can at least have the chance to sleep nearly 8 hours a night, 4 nights a week.  While others were taking time off during our reading week break and catching up on their lives and relationships, I was apartment hunting and transporting part of our household to a small room that is about as different a setting from our quiet rural home as I can fathom.

One of the patients I was assigned on my first day as a chaplain intern died this morning.  I was with him and his family last night.  He hasn’t been conscious for about two weeks, but I’ve still gone in and shared his favorite verse – Joshua 1:9.

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.

Over the last few months the two of us have reflected on the meaning of this verse for those of us who are crossing over to foreign lands.  It was the last thing I said to him before I left last night, in hopes that there was still some part of his being that could hear me.  While I have no doubt he believes this in his bones, I wanted to affirm for him – and for me – God will be with us wherever we go.

 - Jayne Helgevold, MDiv student