Song of the Hour

Not this hour, my love?
It is here too soon.
Please don't let me go.

How do the stars smile?
Fists clench even now
to strike the cheek of my master.

The carpenter's hands that will
dry my tears forever
clench too, in unanswered prayer.

Eyes that won't look away
from my lost soul
will soon see no more.

Lips that told me
everything I've ever done
must be stilled.

Even tonight, those lips sing
a lullaby so sweet that
I cannot believe it is for me.

Those eyes
both unveil and burn away
all my pain.

Only one God
could kneel and wash away
the dust on my feet.

And only you, my love,
would trade a throne of light
for a mantle of blood.

Not so soon, my Lord?
This dark and worthy hour.
Please never let me go.
Never let me go.

The Semester so far....

This is a picture of the desk in my bedroom. It pretty much sums up my life for the past week. Lots of writing. Lots of reading. Lots of quality (and quantity) time with Greek.

This semester is different than the last one. The academics are tougher, both because they're more rigorous and because they are challenging some of my preconceived notions about things. The best part about this is that I'm trying to carve out time to reflect on all of this -- what it's teaching me about God and living for him (and others) day by day. The awe and gratitude I feel for receiving this training far outweighs the stress and weariness that come with seminary. A few times, I've had to slip away after a lecture to be alone with God for a few minutes just to praise him.

Daily life apart from studying has also been good. My fellow students often take breaks by playing board games or watching DVDs. My housemate taught me how to make homemade bread last week, which gave me a great way to work out all of my angst on a big ball of dough! I'm still messing around with my uke -- trying to improve my types of strums right now.

Then, there are the jokes. We got a few inches of snow yesterday, so a group of us walked to a classmate's house last night and began bellowing Christmas carols outside her door. That's just a recent example.

Anyway, that's a snapshot of everyday life. More updates to come.

3 Thanksgivings:

* For the provision that allows me to be here
* For my family
* For homemade bread

3 Prayers:

* For discernment for the prospective students coming here for visitor's weekend this week
* For peace and strength for our seniors as they look for jobs
* For the men and women who come to the homeless drop-in center on Friday mornings

Yes, this is my ukulele. Eat your heart out, Andy Warhol.

This week, the uke band at Trinity (also known as MT 500, or Music Therapy 500) received a revised play list that added something like 60 new songs. I was very excited to discover "Clementine" made the new list, along with additional lyrics to "You Are My Sunshine."

Despite this development, I still managed to get my first systematic theology paper written (describing the Christian theology of Justin Martyr), among other things. Whoo-hoo!

3 Thanksgivings:

* For my dad's 75th birthday last week
* For some sunshine today
* For the love of Christian community

3 Prayers:

* That all of us may enter into "the observance of a holy Lent" on Wednesday
* For Trinity's board members as they meet this week
* For financial provision for the school

Spring Semester starts tomorrow

Well, a lot has happened since my last post. Obviously.

Fall semester ended well, although the exegesis paper for Biblical Interpretation was quite a challenge. A lot of older seminarians told the people in my class that the exegesis paper is sort of the traditional hurdle for first-year students, difficulty-wise. If you don't know what exegesis is (because it wasn't long ago when I didn't), it's basically a study of a passage of Scripture that tries to get at its meaning. Some of the ways we do exegesis is by studying important words in the Scripture passage, its grammar, the historical background of it, and how it fits into the rest of the chapter, the book, and the Bible. Whew! Talk about humbling. And rewarding.

I had a few weeks off, took a one-week intensive class on the Pentateuch (a.k.a. the first five books of the Bible), and am currently enjoying my final day off before spring classes begin. Got another full plate this semester:

1. Systematic Theology
2. Greek II
3. Introduction to New Testament
4. Introduction to Missions
5. History class on models of Christian community

One change this semester is that my housemate Sarah (above middle) has to move back to New England this week. The photo depicts me along with our other housemate, Hannah, engaging in a bizarre inside joke that would take way too long to explain in this post. Suffice to say, we had a lot of fun with Sarah and will miss her.

3 Thanksgivings:

* For the start of new classes
* For a pain-free trip to the dentist last week
* For a renewed awareness of God's presence

3 Prayers:

* For Sarah as she departs Ambridge this week
* For peace, strength, and humor for this new semester
* For the poor living in Ambridge and Pittsburgh

Motley Crew

This photo, if you hadn't guessed it, depicts our flag football team (the image is borrowed from the school website at www.tesm.edu). We ended up going 2-1 in the Luther Bowl last week, and two of our players got stitches. Thankfully, they're healing up quickly.

A friend of mine recently described this photo as a motley crew. Interestingly enough, my Old Testament professor had said just a few days prior that it's remarkable that God uses people in his plans, especially a "motley crew" like the people in our class.

She added, "And if you don’t think you’re a motley crew, you should be up here and see what I see."

True dat.

3 Thanksgivings to God:

* For the ability of the human mind to absorb Greek verb endings
* For this day of sobriety
* For putting a song into my heart

3 Prayers:

* For God's help in glorifying him through my studies
* For complete healing for all of the football players who were hurt on Saturday
* That love for Christ may abound in all who call on his name

Updates!

It's been a long time since I've written, partly because I kept trying to load some photographs and failing. I am now willing to concede temporary defeat, and I'm sending a text update. (But someday, I will find a way to post pictures from the All Soul's Day costume party).

It's a little over partway through the first semester. Here are a few notes on what we've learned so far:

1. Greek: I can now read Biblical Greek on a first to second grade level. Whoo-hoo!

2. Church History: I can tell you Protestants and Catholics really didn't like one another during the 1500s, but everyone hated the Anabaptists. (Insert friendly shout-out to Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary here).

3. Biblical Interpretation: I am learning to do sentence flows -- basically, split verses of Scripture into clauses and list whether they're subordinating or coordinating. It seems my elementary school grammar teacher is vindicated -- I really did need to learn this stuff.

4. Old Testament: The prophetic books in the Old Testament are longer than the entire New Testament, but many Christians don't read them. And, the prophets really were saying more than just, "Repent!" But, they were pretty weird.

5. Spiritual Formation: We have learned about confession, fasting, sabbath-keeping, study, worship, prayer, etc. I've been fighting the feeling that I should be practicing all of the spiritual disciplines in existence. At the same time.

All joking aside, the semester is going very well. I'm learning tons -- more than I can process at the moment, in all honesty. And, humor is proving to be very important. As is the ukulele.

Speaking of humor, we had a pep rally at Trinity today for the flag football team, the Kneelers (yeah, we're in Steelers country here in Ambridge). The co-ed team (whose captains coerced me into playing) is going to compete in the "Luther Bowl" on Saturday in Gettysburg against a bunch of other seminaries. The pep rally was...well, let me share a sample of one of the cheers from today:

A-N-G-L-I-C - Anglican!
A-N-G-L-I-C - We're here to win!
A-N-G-L-I-C - Christ conquered sin!
A-N-G-L-I-C - Kneelers! Fight! Win!

Anyway. You get the idea.

3 Thanksgivings:

* For the birth of Aubrey, my great-niece, at the end of October
* For continuing good health and energy to pursue my studies
* For friendships, both here and back in San Joaquin

3 Prayers:

* For lowered stress levels at Trinity as finals get closer
* For financial provision for the school
* For all of those in the Diocese of San Joaquin, especially those in leadership, as we approach convention in December.

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