Still Here

I've been swamped with work, and have been a bad blogger. I'm starting to wrap my arms around the work of this semester - finally - and am feeling much less overwhelmed by it all.

Still no resolution of the Field Ed situation. It will sort itself out. Soon, I hope.

Suddenly it is dawning on me that I am actually going to graduate this year. I just finished my resume. We will be doing our Church Deployment Office profiles soon (sort of a national database of who we are, what we're interested in, what our strengths are). General Ordination Exams are (gulp!) three months and one week away. I will have sufficient credits to graduate by the end of December, although I do have one required Christian Ed class that I will need in the spring. I will be doing my thesis, though, so I will end up taking a full load in the spring, and graduating with something like 94 credit hours.

It is exciting, frightening, confusing to be in this place which is kairos and not chronos. So I turn to a prayer that was a meditation at our class retreat this past weekend. It says much to me:

Pack nothing.
Bring only
your determination
to serve and
your willingness
to be free.

Don’t wait for the bread to rise.
Take nourishment for the journey,
but eat standing, be ready
to move at a moment’s notice.

Do not hesitate to leave
your old ways behind –
fear, silence, submission.

Only surrender to the need
of the time – to love
justice and walk humbly
with your God.

Do not take time
to explain to the neighbors.
Tell only a few trusted
friends and family members.

Then begin quickly,
before you have time
to sink back into
the old slavery.

Set out in the dark.
I will send fire
to warm and encourage you.
I will be with you in the fire
and I will be with you in the cloud.

You will learn to eat new food
and find refuge in new places.
I will give you dreams in the desert
to guide you safely home to that
place
you have not yet seen.

The stories you tell
one another around your fires
in the dark will make you
strong and wise.

Outsiders will attack you,
and some who follow you,
and at times you will weary
and turn on each other
from fear and fatigue and
blind forgetfulness.

You have been preparing
for this for hundreds of years.
I am sending you into the
wilderness
to make a way and learn my ways
more deeply.

Those who fight you will teach you.
Those who fear you will strengthen
you.
Those who follow you may forget
you.
Only be faithful.
This alone matters.

Some of you will die in the desert,
for the way is longer than anyone
imagined.
Some of you will give birth.

Some will join other tribes
along the way, and some
will simply stop and create
new families in a welcoming oasis.

Some of you will be so changed
by weather and wanderings
that even your closest friends
will have to learn your features
as though for the first time.
Some of you will not change at all.

Some will be abandoned
by your dearest loves
and misunderstood by those
who have known you since birth
and feel abandoned by you.

Some will find new friendship
in unlikely faces, and old friends
as faithful and true
as the pillar of God’s flame.

Wear protection.
Your flesh will be torn
as you make a path
with your bodies
through sharp tangles.
Wear protection.

Others who follow may deride
or forget the fools who first bled
where thorns once were, carrying
them
away in their own flesh.

Such urgency as you now bear
may embarrass you children
who will know little of these times.

Sing songs as you go,
and hold close together.
You may at times grow
confused and lose your way.

Continue to call each other
by the names I’ve given to you,
to help remember who you are.
You will get where you are going
by remembering who you are.

Touch each other and keep telling
the stories
of old bondage and of how
I delivered you.

Tell your children lest they forget
and fall into danger – remind them
even they were not born in
freedom,
but under a bondage which they no
longer remember, which is still
with the, if unseen.

Or they were born
in the open desert
where no signposts are.

Make maps as you go,
remembering the way back
from before you were born.

SO long ago you fell
into slavery, slipped
into it unaware,
out of hunger and need.

You left your famished country
for freedom and food in a new
land,
but you fell unconscious and
passive,
and slavery overtook you as you fell
asleep in the east of your life.

You no longer told stories
of home to remember
who you were.

Do not let your children sleep
through the journey’s hardship.
Keep them awake and walking
on their own feet so that you both
remain strong and on course.

So you will be only
the first of many waves
of deliverance on these
desert seas.

It is the first of many
beginnings – your Paschaltide.

Remain true to this mystery.

Pass on the whole story.
I spared you all
by calling you forth
from your chains.

Do not go back.

I am with you now
and I am waiting for you.


--"Passover Remembered" by The Rev. Alla Renee Bozarth from Women's Uncommon Prayers

Random Dots of Wednesday

• I preached at Community Eucharist at the seminary. I used the Sunday sermon, and it was well-received. Some of our new students were there. It's hard to imagine seminary without last year's seniors. Another year and we will be the ghosts in the machine.

• We took both cats to the vet's this morning. One will have to go back on Friday to have a broken tooth extracted. Major $$$ today, more major $$$ on Friday. Gulp.

• The sermon for this Sunday is just not happening yet. I'm going to have to get serious about it tomorrow. Elijah in the cave, to be preached to a congregation that is seriously committed to social justice ministry. I'm thinking about how even the most committed prophets get tired and go hide in their caves, especially when society attacks them for their prophetic words. Any ideas, folks?

• The weight loss isn't happening either. I had such grand plans at the beginning of the summer, and now we're in August and I weigh more than when I started. I feel like a human dumpling.

Vacation cannot come too soon. I need to be out of town for a few days to decompress.

Transitions

Yesterday, I attended Litigator's college graduation out in California. His hasn't always been the easiest of roads - it took him 5 1/2 years to complete his degree - but he is doing wonderfully, and I am so proud of him. Since I very much wanted to be at the graduation at Big Old Seminary today, I flew out to LA very early in the morning yesterday and took the red-eye flight back last night, arriving at Big Old Seminary at a quarter of the hour when the ceremony was to begin.

About that early flight yesterday - it was scheduled to depart at 5:45 a.m., so I set the alarm on my watch for 4 am so I could take a shower and have a healthy breakfast. I slept through the alarm and awoke with a start (and a moderately loud "oh, @#$@" that roused poor PH) at 5:11 a.m. Don't know how I did it, but I did make the flight, running down the concourse with my sandals in my hand since it was faster than stopping to put them back on after going through security. The rest of the flight out was uneventful, although it took a while for my heart to stop pounding. I was looking forward to getting to LAX, meeting up with StrongOpinions, whose flight was set to arrive 15 minutes after mine, picking up the rental car and heading to Litigator's place. SO, however, missed her flight, so I sat around LAX for two and a half hours - and it really isn't an airport which is friendly to those who wait for an incoming passenger. When we went to pick up the rental car, there was a line of 70 people (no, I am not exaggerating here) waiting. So we got up to Litigator's several hours later than planned, but still in plenty of time to go to the graduation. His school (of Communications, Media, and the Arts) graduated something around 700 students. Names indicated heritage that was Latino, Armenian, Hawaiian, Italian, German, Georgian, Chinese, Filipino, French, Japanese, Swedish, Irish - you name it). A large percentage of students were the first generation in their family to go to college; an equally large number worked while they studied. A very exciting and impressive group of young people, and it was wonderful to see Litigator amongst his friends, who hold him dear as we do.

This morning's graduation ceremony at BOS was less than a tenth the size. Our Presiding Bishop was there, receiving an honorary degree, as was a former BOS graduate who is now Primate of Sudan, who also received an honorary degree. The address to the students was given by a beloved professor, a very gifted speaker and homiletician - our class will be hard pressed to find a speaker as wonderful. If you want to read the address it can be found here: https://www.vts.edu/ftpimages/95/misc/misc_54414.pdf

It was wonderful and sad to bid farewell to the seniors, who enriched our lives in ways both spiritual and more mundane. They will strengthen the church and the larger world, just as the young people I saw graduate yesterday in the California sun will transform their world.

Godspeed!

Hallelujah!

All exams are done. All papers are in. To wrap everything up with a bow, I had my candidacy interview with the Commission on Ministry today and they said they will enthusiastically recommend me for candidacy.

A surprising moment: I went to the chapel to pray and calm myself for a few minutes before going to the candidacy interview (some of the interviewers have the reputation of being snarky, so I was a tad worried), and my advisor happened to be there. I really appreciate her great gifts as a teacher and a scholar, but she isn't the warmest, fuzziest person in the world. She came over and said, "You've got the candidacy interview at 1?" "Yes" And she put her arms around me and gave me a big hug, and said "It will go very well. Don't be afraid." It was twice as sweet in its unexpectedness.

I guess this makes me a senior, and a candidate. Remarkable - it seems to have gone so quickly, although in the midst of it, it sometimes seemed interminable.

Thanks be to God.

Some Churches have Church Cats

Our seminary chapel has a raccoon. Actually, now we have several raccoons. Apparently, a female raccoon set up house in one of the window wells, then gave birth to seven baby raccoons (what are they called? Kits, maybe?). One of the sacristans spotted them, at which point the mother raccoon ran away. The groundskeepers removed the little ones from the window well and put them in a box with a towel in the bottom, then put the box in a sheltered place near where they came from. They are quite beautiful and their fur looks exquisitely soft. I hope the mother comes back soon for them. Otherwise, heaven only knows how long they'll survive.

Speaking of surviving, tomorrow is exam day. Systematics in the morning, Ethics at night. Oh, my!

The day starts off with a bang. I'm on chapel team this week for Morning Prayer, and on Thursdays we are permitted to do "experimental" services. So we will be having a bluegrass Morning Prayer, at which I will be officiant. I have no idea if this will be successful or not (twasn't my idea, but I'm game for it). I do know that it will help put the stress of the exams in perspective.

And if that doesn't do it, I'll go check out the baby raccoons again. Or eat some chocolate. Or both.

Are We There Yet?

I finished two more papers over the past three days. One more to go. Still facing one enormous OT exam and the final Hebrew exam, which shouldn't be scary but is. Classes end next Tuesday, and my exams are on the 11th and the 15th. It is hard to believe this year's almost over. Even harder to believe that my friends in the senior class won't be here next year. Even harder still that we juniors will be the experienced, wise middlers to the new junior class come August term.

I'm feeling like I now can "read" my professors - what they like in terms of writing style, how they evaluate us, what they mean in their assignments. Not perfectly, to be sure, but I feel much less disoriented than I did ten months ago. Of course, that sense of disorientation will start anew with CPE, and Field Ed, and a new batch of classes in September.

But now I know where to get a cup of coffee, and that the snacks they sell in the bookstore are half the price of the ones in the vending machine.