An Ecumencial Impulse

As I was growing up, I was exposed to some pretty mixed religious influences.  My extended family is largely conservative evangelical.  My parents raised me in the Episcopal Church.  For the last twenty years or so, apart from dropping in on the occasional Quaker meeting, I have been a member of a Congregational church.

One thing that has been compelling for me about being in seminary is seeing what passions gave birth to those traditions.  My first course on the history of theology was thrilling because I began to see the layers of choice and chance that contributed to the practices and diversity of our present-day churches.  But it has always been mystifying to me how my very theologically savvy parents could make sense of moving from Nazarene to Episcopalian.

A year ago, as part of my American Religious Histories class, I did a paper on the origins of the Nazarene Church so I could get a better handle on how that came about.  Last summer I took a course in UCC History and Polity – which included the Congrega­tionalists in the mix.  This January, I am rounding it out with a course in the Anglican (Episcopal) Tradition.  With each pass, the path from Martin Luther to Phineas Bresee through John Wesley becomes clearer.  Call me a geek but I find that pretty exciting!

But I am reminded that the history of religion has its dark sides as well.  This month, I am preparing for a sermon about the relationship between scripture and slavery in America. In the process, I read about the struggle to end the slave trade in the British Empire.  One account made clear that the Anglican Church – the predecessor of the church I was brought up in – benefited from and was complicit in maintaining this brutal injustice in the Caribbean.  Pretty disturbing stuff!

Throughout seminary I have also been motivated to deepen my ecumenical and inter-faith awareness.  A number of my closest friends in junior high headed off to Hebrew school many afternoons.  I’ve gotten a taste of Judaism through taking a World Religions class, studying Hebrew a bit, and attending synagogue some.  (I certainly want to know more about Hinduism!)  As an adult, my first marriage was to an increasingly devout, conservative Catholic.  Next semester, I’m taking a class through the St. Paul Seminary to get a taste of how Catholics approach the Pauline epistles differently than Protestants.

For years, I have been claimed by an ecumenical impulse: “why can’t we all just get along?”   But while I love certain people and want to treasure their traditions, oftentimes, others who are also dear to me have clearly felt wounded by those very same faiths.

Still… I intend to somehow be part of healing those wounds while listening to those whose voices I have not yet fully heard.

-Karl Jones, MDiv student

Respite

Late last week my mother called to say she was going to cancel her trip to Laughlin, Nevada because my sister had injured her back and couldn't travel. On other occasions, my response would have been, "Oh bummer. Guess you'll have to reschedule."

This time, my response was, "Unacceptable!" The difference is the logistics needed for mom to get away. As I mentioned before, my dad is currently under in-home hospice care and the program allows one 5-day opportunity for respite care. For mom to get away took countless phone calls with healthcare providers and social workers. For me to accompany her took a weekend's worth of doing my day job, including going in to the office on the holiday, and getting my ducks in a row.

I originally felt this sudden trip was one I was doing for my mother and, in the sense that I'm letting her drive the agenda, it is. But, despite the fact that I'm checking in with the office a couple of times a day, this is a good bit of respite for me, as well.

The seminary does a nice job of scheduling in respite times each semester -- it's called Reading Week. But for the large group of students who are holding down full-time jobs, that week becomes one of working overtime to catch up on neglected duties and taking what little time is left to attend to neglected family and school work. In short, there's very little rest for seminarians with families and jobs.

So, I'm taking a little time to reflect during this impromptu vacation on the craziness of the last semester -- one where I took a class, worked a job, did an intense internship on a cancer unit in a large hospital, provided assistance to my parents, loved my spouse, moved to a small room where I live for half of my week away from my home and family. While I think this is something I don't care to repeat (although I will be continuing this life until May), I can't think of which pieces I can cut out.

It's during these rare quiet times that I realize that, like many of my classmates, I am driven and encouraged by something greater than myself. Over the Christmas weekend, I woke up repeatedly thinking of the hymn "Spirit of the Living God, Fall Afresh on Me." I have to say, the Spirit has fallen on me so much during the past several months that the outside observer would think the Spirit may have imbibed in too many spirits.

I start my J-term 3-week intensive class on Monday. In 3 weeks' time, we accomplish the same amount of work as what is done in a regular semester. I'll be able to use a little vacation time (but less than I had planned because of my current detour), but the internship and family situation cannot be put on hold. Spirit, don't be too graceful. Fall as you may. I am ready.

- Jayne Helgevold, MDiv student

Discovering Your Work

It feels somewhat surreal to go from the last few weeks of the term with papers and exams for four classes to the unstructured days of holiday break. I assume I am not alone in being greeted with a major cold as the gift that keeps on giving. I am anxiously awaiting the day I wake up with a clear head. 

I have my syllabi from the last semester along with my papers and notebooks assembled and am preparing to write my Post-Course Reflections for my Integrated Notebook. Let me break that down a bit.  Post-Course Reflections ask questions about each course you have completed and include: major learnings; what you wrestled with in the course; what were personal breakthroughs; and what you discovered about yourself during the course. It takes some discipline to complete these after each semester but the reward is that you can capture important information about your journey through seminary and where certain insights, growth, and stumbling blocks occur. The Integrated Notebook serves as an archive with all of your past papers, reflections, faculty evaluations of your work, etc. It provides an opportunity for you and your faculty advisor to see where you have come from and where you are going.

For me, in my crazy-paced life which tends to focus solely on the present, it provides proof of my hard-earned past and my yearning for the future. In my second year of seminary I can see a major shift in my academic competence and self-perception. Despite my frequent questioning of myself as “minister in formation,” that is exactly what I am. My Christmas list this year took a drastic shift and included a Unitarian Universalist (UU) chalice necklace, The Peoples’ Bible, and a UU Standing on the Side of Love sweatshirt and bag. I am now confident enough to say that I am in seminary and working toward ordination without fear of someone shattering a delicate connection to my new identity. 

This week also includes: firming up logistics to secure a full-year (1548 hour) internship at a local UU church (which far exceeds the UTS internship requirement but is required by the Unitarian Universalist Association for ordination); preparation for sermons and services for several UU churches in MN this coming February; reading books to prepare for a 10-day UTS global justice trip to Chiapas, Mexico this January; making a calls for interfaith work in St. Paul to defeat the November 2012 ballot initiative which would enshrine discrimination in the MN constitution regarding the definition of marriage; and I am in discussion about a spiritual direction group with local women clergy this January in order to feed my own spiritual practice. 

A quote attributed to Buddha sits within view of my desk “Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” As unlikely as it seemed a few years ago—I feel like I am becoming a minister. What an incredible gift to be able to do so.

-Laura Smidzik, MDiv student

First Semester is Complete! Merry Christmas

     I have completed my first semester of seminary with the feeling of accomplishment, relief, exhaustion and giddiness.  Given the advice to write down on a calendar all the due dates of the papers and exams, the end of the semester looked pretty daunting.  I shared this calendar with my family, so that everybody would be aware of the times when I needed to study and buckle down.  I do believe that this is a habit that will continue throughout my seminary experience.  Speaking of family, mine are rock stars in all of this.  My kids say they don’t even realize that I am at school because their schedule hasn’t changed.  It has, they just haven’t noticed.  On the days where our school schedules didn’t mesh they went to friends houses which was a treat in their minds, but a life-saver to me.  I have a wonderful circle of friends willing to take my kids if there are last minute schedule conflicts.  I have a husband whose work schedule is flexible enough to be home with the kids when needed.  With this I say that God is good, all the time.

    I am feeling like I have made the right choice to come to seminary.  All of the experiences so far have led me to believe that this is the place I am supposed to be.    Through all of the hard work and frustration, finally getting to that ah-ha moment when things become clear is rewarding beyond belief.  Receiving encouragement from my professors has been a lifeline when I am not feeling so confident.  Feeling the camaraderie with my fellow seminarians gives me the energy I crave.  Witnessing authentic dialogue between classmates and professors feeds my soul and calms my spirit.  It is like I am learning to swim, and understanding the basics, I am now ready to move on.  Seminary is teaching me the life skill that I will need when I face the vast sometimes turbulent waters of life and am able to boldly swim with confidence and perseverance.

    I will not be taking a January-term class and am excited for next semester.  For now I am going to enjoy the holidays with my family.

- Sarah Kronkvist, MARL student

In the Nadir

The shadows come in the early afternoon at this time of the year, and the sun’s angle drops them across the landscape in low sweeps, and the light begins to fall away. The sun does not linger, but blinks out at the edge of the world, and we are in the deep. I listen to “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” and its plaintive hopefulness, the longing of centuries, comes down through the haunting music and the words. Sometimes I think have more common with the ancients than I have realized; I feel a nearly primal fear at the going of the light.

In my class on The Moral Thinking of Bonhoeffer, we are into the book Letters and Papers from Prison, and it is my turn to present a response to the reading for the week. It is a morning class, and we are back after Thanksgiving week, a little hazy after the holiday. I read Bonhoeffer’s words: “Never before in human history have there been a people for whom every available alternative seemed equally intolerable.” I pause, a space that seems necessary. My classmates and I look at each other across the room. It is a small class and that has allowed us a particular depth of discussion and exchange. We have challenged each other and ourselves as the weeks have gone on; I don’t think we ever leave a class session without knowing that something critical is at stake. As I leave the class, I am unable to forget other words Bonhoeffer wrote: “We thought we could make our way with reason and justice and when both failed….” And I think, well, if reason and justice fail…I mean, I believe in reason and justice. But how do I believe in them? As matters of faith? For even now, I see that reason and justice do fail, and fail repeatedly.  Not always. But often enough.  It is not a comforting conclusion.

My Bonhoeffer class is cross-pollinating with my Christian Ethics class this semester; and I find that I love the discussions and the challenges they bring. And I realize, finally, the key reason why I am pursuing this kind of education: it is an education that takes seriously the role of love in human affairs. Not love in an easy, sentimental way, but love as it has been passed to us in our wisdom and faith traditions; not love merely as textbook theories, but love in actual lives lived. Love that calls us somewhere. It will call some of us to parishes and prisons and hospitals, to teaching and preaching; it will call some of us out into the streets. 

Before I leave school for the day, I stop to buy a book that my professor has just published. It is called Burning Center, Porous Borders. That night I open it up and read: “Once upon a time Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said, “Abba, as much as I am able I practice a small rule, all the little fasts, some prayer and meditation, and remain quiet, and as much as possible I keep my thoughts clean. What else should I do?” Then the old monastic stood up and stretched out his hands toward heaven, and his fingers became like ten torches of flame. And he said, “Why not be completely turned into fire?”

“Yes, ‘why not be completely turned into fire?” my professor writes. “But what shall we do to be on fire?” What shall we do? The year has reached its nadir. The sun drops below the earth. Justice and reason might fail. Love, St. Paul said, never fails. Do I believe this? Yes. I believe it because there is a community who believes it and who has believed it for thousands of years. At times, it seems that we are crazy to believe it, but I wonder: wouldn’t we be crazy not to?

I fall asleep thinking of fire. I dream that I am holding a camel on a leash; the camel is pulling me west. Not towards a star in the east, but to California. (Okay, it’s a dream. And what Minnesotan doesn’t dream of California? ) I do not know that I will awaken to find out that my dog, my friend and companion of many walks and meditations under the stars, has died during the night. I do not know this yet, but when I do awaken, this community of seminary friends will be there, and they will comfort me.

Burning Center, Porous Border, by Eleazar Fernandez

The story of Abba Joseph is cited in Chittister, The Fire in These Ashes

- Kathryn Price, MA student

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