Still a Challenge

I went back to my home church today, for the first time in a very long time.

I realized how much I miss many, many things about it. 

But it's still so hard.

It's Trinity Sunday, and so we sang Holy, Holy, Holy.  

That was the opening hymn for Josh's funeral service, because it is the opening hymn every Sunday at Chautauqua.  When my kids got old enough to complain about accompanying us to the ampitheater service there ever summer, I told them that one day when they were old and still doing the same thing, they would look back with gratitude.

Guess I was wrong about that.

We've only been to Chautauqua once since Josh died, and that was to scatter some of his ashes into the lake on the first Thanksgiving.  I'd like to go back for at least a day of BBT's preaching this summer, but I'm not sure that I'm up to it.

I can't figure out where to sit in church.  No matter where I try, the memories of that service 21 months ago feel like a physical invasion.

When I skipped Pentecost last week, Gabriele wrote that by this time of year she is longing for the green of ordinary time.

Yes.  It seems to me that ordinary time is quite complicated enough.

This Is So Weird (plus Daily Photo 6: Cross)

I have cleaned out two dressers and hung some pictures and done four loads of laundry and played around online and .  .  .   there's no rush at all.  

I can plan to spend the entire week-end in the yard (which looks like the jungle) with lengthy breaks to hang out with my brother and his wife, who may come to visit  . . . and there's no rush at all.

However long it takes to do something is how long I have.

The Spiritual Task of Household Composition ~ 2

You thought I had forgotten all about it, didn't you?

The truth is: I am at a complete loss.

I am lying on the wicker loveseat in the library, looking at the shelves and shelves and shelves of books and realizing that I need to think, first, about what my priorities in reading, collecting, and saving are.  A lot of my photography materials are in here, along with a lot of but by no means all of our books.

I think one priority might be access.  Which means, God help me, organization.  I mean, it would be nice to go in search of a book and be able to find it within a couple of minutes.  As opposed to concluding that the only solution is to go to Borders and buy another copy.

Another might be a sense of space, peace, and beauty.  Which is to say that not every square inch needs to be jammed with printed material.  Some of these shelves should be reserved for pottery and photos.  Apparently some pillars and sculptures would be good as well.

A third priority might be a cat.  Actually, that would be my first, but it is a matter of some contention here.

Look at that!  Stained glass of a cat in a library!  And look at how magically things fall into place in the presence of feline oversight!

The fact that this is my third blog post in less than 12 hours should be some indication of just how overwhelmed and unmotivated I am by the messy material world I inhabit.

Other (Academic) Things I Learned in Seminary

• That if you know something about the geography, the Hebrew Bible comes to life in a new way ~
•  
• That our task is to make the confessional bridge from ancient words to contemporary life ~ 
•  
• A few of those words in Greek and Hebrew ~ 
•  
• And quite a bit about how to explore the texts originally written in those languages ~ 
•  
• And to be grateful for commentaries written in English ~ 
•  
• That we should have all started with at least a basic philosophy course ~
•  
• That the memorization of sermons is not one of my things ~ 
•  
• A little about how to engage with theology ~
•  
• And a little about how to write a theological paper, thanks to a handout provided three weeks before graduation after three years of blundering around ~ 
•  
• That John Calvin and Ignatius of Loyola had both more and less in common than I had imagined ~ 
•  
• That both Roman Catholic and Reformation writing on sin, grace, and freedom are far beyond my capacity to comprehend ~
•  
• That Miroslav Volf might offer me a way back after intolerable loss ~ 
•  
• That, as I suspected, I am a pre-beginner wading in the shallow end.

• 
  

Garden (Daily Photo 5)

This one is an attempt to give QG a watercolor subject from Pennsylvania.  Most days when I'm at seminary, I walk the three miles to, around, and back from the Highland Park reservoir; these are the gardens below it.

Angel (Daily Photo 4) and Confluences

This morning I went for  a walk in the cemetery, which is filled with statues and sculptures of angels.

Then I had a conversation with someone in which the Annunciation came up.

And for a day now, I've been thinking about this exquisite poem, which I found here, thanks to Mary Beth.   While ordination for women is a given in my denomination, I spend a lot of time with women for whom it is not.

Woman's Body

by Frances Croake Frank

Did the woman say,

When she held him for the first time in the dark of a stable,

After the pain and the bleeding and the crying,

'This is my body, this is my blood?'

Did the woman say,

When she held him for the last time in the dark rain on a hill-top,

After the pain and the bleeding and the dying,

'This is my body, this is my blood?'

Well that she said it to him then,

For dry old men,

Brocaded robes belying barrenness,

Ordain that she not say it to him now.

So, What Did You Learn in Seminary?

Mostly, that I know ~ nothing.

But I think that this was my favorite, and I hope that I am doing Famous Matthew Scholar justice when I quote his ruminations on what we do and don't know about Jesus, after 2000 years of Scriptural writing, commentary, the Jesus Seminar, and whatever:

"I was up in Maine, sitting on the beach one day and looking at a huge barnacle-encrusted rock.  And I thought, you know ~ I can't see a single portion of the original rock; it is completely covered in layer upon layer of barnacles.  But if you asked me, I could tell you the general shape of the rock."

                                                                                                 ~ Dr. Dale Allison

He also pointed out in each of the classes I took from him that "Jesus is and does what he says, more consistently and authentically than anyone else.  Take a look at the Sermon on the Mount."

I might have learned a few other things.  But I think that those are the big ones.