Community

I haven't been imagining it. The junior class likes to party.

Oh, I don't mean in an "Animal House" kind of way. Our larger parties tend to include modified Evening Prayer or guitar-driven praise singalongs. But we do, as a whole, spend a lot of outside time hanging around one another...at small group potlucks, at sprawling Mexican food themed parties, at little kid birthday parties.

Besides liking parties, we're an ornery lot. Each week, we've taken to asking our longsuffering church history professor at least one impossibly divisive question.

For instance, one of my classmates -- completely deadpan -- asked this question during the final two minutes of a three-hour class last Tuesday, "Dr. Witt, was Mary really a perpetual virgin?" We've also asked him about infant baptism and some aspects of transubstantiation. I'm not sure what we'll come up with tomorrow.

It's a favorite phrase of one of our deans at Trinity to say, "It's a school, it's a school, it's a school." At a basic level, we can expect to leave in three years with our heads crammed full of Hebrew and systematic theology. But there's a lot more that happens here, and it's hard to really understand exactly how this "formation" thing works -- how we're going to emerge as pastors or teachers or whatever God's called us to be.

I think community is a big part of the process. As we pray and study and work and party and tease our professors together, I think (I pray) that God will continue to use us to form one another into what he wishes us to be. And isn't this one of the beauties of any Christian community? Isn't it one of the things I love about parishes?

Of course, there are dangers in community. Divisions. Jealousy. Pride. Anger. Unforgiveness. Impatience. Selfishness. It wasn't new for the believers in Corinth when Paul was writing to them. It's not new now.

It always seems to come down to love. When we're wounded by the broken places within our brothers and sisters -- a day that inevitably comes -- may the Holy Spirit empower us to love all the more.

3 Thanksgivings

1. For God's financial provision for the friend I mentioned in the last post
2. For fall leaves
3. For the bonds of community

3 Prayers

1. That the love of Christ will rule our hearts as we continue to form bonds of community here
2. For our professors -- for wisdom, energy and peace
3. For God's help in discernment

A Crunch (ain't talking about the sound fall leaves make)

This week presents the first of many time crunches for the folks in our class, so I'm keeping this blog entry short. I've seen two friends in the library today looking mildly freaked out and muttering about impending deadlines for this or that.

I know what they're saying. My brain is kind of swimming in a stew of second aorist Greek verbs, semantic meanings of "people" from a chapter in Acts, and Christological heresies.

On a slightly less academic note, I'm making progress toward learning the chords on ukulele to play "Where is my Hairbrush?" from VeggieTales. My professor Rod Whitacre, who is to blame for introducing me to the uke, would call this going to my "Happy Place."

3 Prayers:

* For energy and focus for us in our studies
* For my friend Keith, who lost his dad to cancer Sunday
* For financial provision for one of my classmates, who's in a real bind

3 Thanksgivings:

* For being blessed with a housemate who loves baking cookies
* For being blessed with a housemate who loves playing the violin
* For my Happy Place