Monday, February 27, 2012

A Labor of Love

I was recently a part of an exercise that can best be described as “speed dating.” Along with a couple dozen other UTS students, we rotated from room to room, trying to put our best face forward as representatives from area congregations did the same. It’s internship placement time at UTS.

Students in the Master of Divinity program are expected to do a minimum of two internships (well, three if you count the “mini-internship” the typical first-year student does in the mix). I am currently in the throes of my clinical pastoral education (CPE) unit at a large hospital. Next year I'll be doing my congregational internship with one of my speed dates.

It’s a combination of exciting and nerve-wracking to be in this position of entering a relationship with a congregation I’ve barely had a first date with, but I also have hope it will work out in the end. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started my CPE experience and now can’t imagine how anything else can be more fulfilling than being present with people who are sometimes simultaneously at their best and at their worst in the life-or-death situations at the hospital. Now I’m looking at the specter of congregational ministry. I’m uncertain if I’m cut out to work in congregations, but that’s pretty much how I felt when I entered my chaplaincy internship. 

These degree requirements are extraordinarily difficult. They’re time-consuming and are a much different learning experience than sitting in a classroom. But they are also an opportunity to apply what we’ve learned in an academic setting and make a real difference in the lives of others. On the days when it seems unbearable to pick up one more book or write one more paper, I reflect on how I’ve touched the lives of others and how they’ve entered my heart, and I stretch and grab my highlighter and get back to my studies. It’s a labor of love, and it’s time to learn to get to know a new love in my life.

- Jayne Helgevold, MDiv student

Friday, February 17, 2012

Returning

As I sit quietly enough to reflect over the past two months I recall the rush of fall semester finals, followed by the holidays, a brief break, and then a frantic push to read as many books as I could before I left for the Global Justice Trip to Chiapas, Mexico.  I managed to turn my final reflection paper in before the semester began. I am taking Preaching, Worship in the Church, and Constructive Theology. The amount of reading and work described in the syllabi is overwhelming. I have my own neurotic system of creating index cards for each assignment and cluster them together by weeks. I try to envision the time, intellectual capability, and energy to commit to these classes. I work hard to focus on the voice of gratitude over that of fear and complaint. Each index card represents new learning and an opportunity to engage in dialogue with the writer, my professor, and my classmates about issues important to our denominations and personal faith. What an extraordinary gift.

Running parallel to the school work are meetings with potential church-based internship sites for next year. I plan to do my full year internship in conjunction with the 15 hr./wk. internship required for the M.Div.  I’ve had the opportunity to preach in three Unitarian Universalist Churches this year and I am excited to enter into a deeper relationship with a congregation next year. I can already see how the courses I am taking this semester will feed directly into my leadership and skills in a church setting.  

My last area of focus is a 400/hr. spring and summer term internship with the Center for Public Ministry at United and Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance (MUUSJA). Several United students are doing internships within our own denominations as we work within faith communities to defeat the proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman in Nov. 2012. The long-term vision is a faith-based infrastructure that will work toward full relationship equality in Minnesota. My church, Unity Church Unitarian, has convened a multifaith group in St. Paul and I am excited to see what we can accomplish when we pool our passion, talents, and resources. As part of my internship I am chair of a committee which is planning a faith-based “Power Summit for key multifaith statewide leaders working to defeat the amendment.  I appreciate the mix of theoretical and applied learning that this semester offers.

During quiet times my thoughts return to Chiapas. On our last day a number of us hiked a steep trail in the cloud forest. The altitude added a layer of challenge as with each vertical step my lungs filled to what felt like half of their capacity. Our experience in Chiapas speaking and worshiping with indigenous communities and local leaders reminded me of how easy it is for me to walk through my life totally unaware of the unending list of privileges that my skin color, education, and socio-economic status affords me.  At the same time, I often feel my own marginalized status as a non-Christian in an ecumenical seminary and as a lesbian parent at a time in MN when it is open season on debating the value and validity of my primary relationship and family. Unitarian Universalists believe that faith is about the journey, not the destination. Without the hope of life beyond this one we need to look to this day and live it with integrity, service, and joy. I want build relationships across differences even though the air feels thinner and the steps are steeper than I ever imagined. United provides a place where I am pushed to keep climbing and where I can ask for time to rest when I need it. I’m not sure if there is a mountaintop I need to reach during my life time, but I can say for certain that the vistas along the way are breathtaking. 

- Laura Smidzik, MDiv student

Monday, February 6, 2012

"Do you see where I am?"

In the week before the start of spring semester, I am eager to get my hands on the books for the courses I’ll be taking: American Religious Histories, Constructive Theology and Worship.  I am roughly midway through my seminary studies and I’ve been looking back at where I’ve been and looking forward toward what is still to come. When I think about it, perhaps a theological education was always in my future. In elementary school I asked for a book on saints and martyrs for a birthday present, and after reading it, I presented my father with an ethical, if not theological question.  “Dad, suppose a person was about to be martyred for the faith and they realized they could do more good by staying alive, would it be wrong, then, to recant?” My father looked at me with a perplexed expression. I don’t remember his answer, but I remember his long, confounded gaze. We lived in Omaha, Nebraska, an ordinary family; we went to Mass on Sundays and our grandparents’ houses for dinner afterwards. There was nothing about our lives that suggested we were in danger of being martyred. Nor we were a family given to theological speculation: hearing adults ask each other what they thought of the new Pope was about as edgy as it got.

It was decades before I would understand the scope of my own question.  I went to El Salvador for a global justice course as part of my seminary studies. In one of the books for the course, Witnesses to the Kingdom: The Martyrs of El Salvador and the Crucified Peoples, Jon Sobrino writes about the interconnected theologies of liberation and martyrdom.  He notes: “For us – in contrast to most of the people in the first world – reality is a great hermeneutical aid.” There were things I could learn only by going to El Salvador and hearing people tell their stories. And there was something I could see only by walking with thousands of people through the streets of San Salvador with candles held aloft in the night to commemorate the assassination of Oscar Romero thirty years before.  It was in those streets that I witnessed the reality of resurrection.  Now I would be able to answer the question of my grade school self about refusing to recant vs. the pragmatic wisdom of staying alive: justice and love cannot be recanted. To refuse to recant them keeps them alive.

This was not something I imagined would be addressed when I enrolled in seminary. I remember someone asking me then, a bit incredulously, “What are you going to study there…God?”  I suppose seminary brings to mind images of other worldliness, an endeavor removed from the jostle of life. I think people might be surprised at the this-worldliness of our studies, the spiritual life we try to give voice to together, coupled with life experiences in a hospital or prison, or parish internships, or global justice courses.  I love both aspects of my studies; I love trying to address a question as absurd as, Who is God? and I value trying to ascertain what that means in the world in practice.

As I turn toward the new semester with anticipation, I recall standing in the chapel of Divina Providencia in San Salvador before the altar where Archbishop Romero was assassinated. My father had passed away by then, not knowing the turn my life had taken towards seminary and I thought of how surprised he would be if he knew where I was. In the stillness of that moment, the question formed suddenly in my heart. “Dad, do you see where I am?” I asked.  It seemed to me that from somewhere in the world I heard him answer, “Yep.”
 
- Kathryn Price, MDiv student