Different Sources - Big Things to Keep in Mind

As it happens, they are both men.  One is an African-American Presbyterian pastor and professor of urban ministry in a PC(USA) seminary; the other, a Caucasian Jesuit priest, an editor at America magazine who makes appearances on The Colbert Report.

As he ended the last class he would spend with us, our professor urged us last week to bear in mind the great privileges which are ours. Most people in the world, he pointed out, do not have the luxury of sitting in air-conditioned and well-lit classrooms to study theology or the Bible.  Most people lead very different lives indeed.

I thanked him afterward and told him that he had reminded me of something the last twenty months have blotted out.  And had brought back a particular memory:  At the end of our first year winter quarter, I had taken a break during our Prophets and Psalms exam ~ three hours of nonstop writing ~ to walk up and down the hall a couple of times.  As I stood at the window at the end of the hallway, looking out over the snow-covered campus and trying to unclench my hand so that it could write for another hour, I thought: I am so incredibly graced.  Here I am, writing on the prophets and the psalms for three hours because ~ because I can!  Because it has been my privilege to study them for three months, long enough to have at least a little something to say. 

I did not know that six months later, the only Scriptural writing I would be able to tolerate would be Psalm 88 ~ that it would be another six months before I could read even Job.  I didn't know how bleak my world would become or that I would lose sight of any purpose or meaning.  And so I was grateful for his reminder of another astonishing grace: that even with all that has happened, it has still been my privilege to complete (assuming I finish that last paper looming ahead) the course of study for my M.Div. and to become at least minimally prepared for ~ well, I'm not sure what, exactly.  But for something.

Which leads me to one of the books I'm reading on my brand new laptop Kindle, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life by James Martin, S.J.  It's not news to any of my readers that I am enamored of Jesuit spirituality, and this book is an easy and fun introduction for anyone else who might be interested as well.  (Readers of My Life With The Saints will know that Jim Martin is a terrifically engaging writer.)

Most of the material in The Jesuit Guide is familiar to me, but last night I came across something I'd never read before.  He's discussing the "spiritual but not religious" identity so many people claim today, and arguing astutely for both, on the basis of spirituality transferred via religion.  The specific example he uses concerns the idea of our God of Surprises, the God who both surprises and who waits for surprises, which he has encountered through four individuals writing in religious contexts, and he quotes novelist Ron Hansen, whose character Mariette says:

"We try to be formed and held and kept by him, but instead he offers us freedom.  And now when I try to know his will, his kindness floods me, his great love overwhelms me, and I hear him whisper, 'Surprise me,' "

Now, depending on your theology, you might be more or less comfortable with the God who not only surprises but is surprised.  I'd say, Let that one go for now, and imagine the potential for surprise, any surprise at all, in the context of all-encompassing loss and darkness.

I have been working on survival, not surprise.  And yet, as I look back over the past few months, I have found both.  I don't always want them, but there they are.  

And so, I wonder:  if I manage to survive this loss, and if I remain cognizant of the great privilege of study and preparation that I've been afforded, how will God surprise me?  How might I end up surprising God?

Poached Eggs

I love poached eggs, so that is what I am eating. I was going to write this post while I waited for them, but the computer went haywire for just the wrong amount of time.

Today: Seeing someone for spiritual direction, getting my hair cut, maybe going to mass. Maybe not, as it has been something of a distraction lately that I cannot receive communion there. OK, more than a distraction. Last week I left in the middle. It's been a haven for me for nearly two years, but not right now.

Tomorrow: two church services, at one of which I am preaching. That means I have a sermon to finish.

Monday: a long and challenging meeting.

Tuesday: a quiz, which means I have some studying to do.

And then: everything cleared with a week left in which to write my Volf paper, which is pretty well planned. If no one gets sick or hurt or dies, I am in pretty good shape.

I've been thinking a lot about what I've learned in seminary. Three years, lots of lectures and discussions and tests and papers. Here are a couple of the big things:

Professor in casual conversation: When I preach the gospels, I usually steer clear of contemporary illustrations. The stories pretty much tell themselves. When I preach the Epistles, then I use a lot of illustration.

Professor in class which I am secretly (and "illegally," as it turns out, auditing): The text itself is thin and underdetermined. What theologians do is fill in the blanks, of which there are many.

Notice the contexts in which I heard two of the main things I am taking with me.

Eggs consumed. Onward. Or downward, to the basement where laundry awaits.

Can't Do It

The graduation thing.

I still have a week to decide. But, really. The gap between the dream and the reality is so wide.

I don't think I have to do that to myself.

What My Mother Taught Me

I have very few memories of my mother, memories that I know are for real rather than someone else's story. I must have been six when this happened:

I grew up out in the country, in an area on the edge of Appalachia in which many people lived in extreme poverty. Although my own family owned a thriving business, I was aware of the conditions around me to the extent that a first-grader could have been, because I rode a bus every day and so saw the homes of many of my schoolmates.

This particular day was cold and dreary. I'm guessing it was November. Some of the local children came by, selling raffle tickets. Because they were on my bus route, I knew who they were, though they were all older than I and none of them were in my room at school. Their house was actually visible from ours in the winter, across a couple of corn fields, but they would have had to walk at least a mile down their road and up ours to reach our door. Not an unusual walk or bike ride in those days, although I was too young for it at the time.

My mom bought some tickets and turned back to her housework, and then she began to cry. "It's freezing out there," she said. "It's freezing, and those children are not wearing socks." She grabbed a box and began to stalk through our bedrooms and basement laundry in fury, grabbing socks and sweaters and whatever else looked useful. Then she got into her car and drove away, and came back and said nothing more.

I seldom think about my mother. When she died, which would have been just under a year later if my sense of time is at all accurate, there was little discussion and no encouragement whatever to hang on to memories. It was a different era and the adults in my family, I realize now, all went a little crazy. But I wondered, this past week-end, whether Josh might be alive if his grandmother had lived. Because maybe she was a person who knew how to see things and how to take care of them, and maybe she could have taught that to me if we had had more time.

Church: Norway

I've been interested in church architecture and design for a long time. We've discussed it a bit at seminary; I wish it were the subject of an entire course. One of my (many, many) plans for this post-seminary summer is to begin work on a series of photos of churches.

In the meantime, in order to satisfy that particular urge, I thought I'd take a look at some churches which are, at least at present, outside my geographic range.


Image here.

From wikipedia:

<<A stave church is a medieval wooden church with a post and beam construction related to timber framing. The wall frames are filled with vertical planks. The load-bearing posts (stafr in Old Norse, stav in Norwegian) have lent their name to the building technique. Related church types are post churches and churches with palisade walls.All of the surviving stave churches except one are or were in Norway, but related church types were once common all over northwestern Europe.>>

Mother's Day

Heavy

~ by Mary Oliver

That time

I thought I could not

go any closer to grief

without dying

I went closer,

and I did not die.

Surely God

had His hand in this,

as well as friends.

Still, I was bent,

and my laughter,

as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.

Then said my friend Daniel

(brave even among the lions),

"It's not the weight you carry

but how you carry it --

books, bricks, grief --

it's all in the way

you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,

put it down."

So I went practicing.

Have you noticed?

Have you heard

the laughter

that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger

to admire, admire, admire

the things of this world

that are kind, and maybe

also troubled --

roses in the wind,

the sea geese on the steep waves,

a love to which there is no reply?



(Imagde here: Geese over Galway Bay by Monasette.)

Noticing

Yes, I am, I promise I am.

Karen -- days ago -- put a terrific video up about the value of camp for kids with cancer and their siblings.

The other Karen wrote about an amazing wedding: courage facing down challenge.

Cynthia wrote about her own courage, although it probably hasn't occurred to her to call it that.

Magdalene continues to post the most wonderful sermons, all of which I plan to print out and put into a binder and plagiarize. I can't see any reason to bother with my own when she does all the work so eloquently.

So yes, I am reading. There's a lot that I haven't mentioned in the way of wonderful blogging. But I am a bit overwhelmed. There is not much time left, with graduation looming there are no extensions, and I have unbloggables to deal with.

Evaluate this. Evaluate that. Please. I am still standing; I think that's plenty. You really don't want the details.

There will be lots of time in a few weeks. I'll be back.