Mid-Unit; Mid-Summer; 4th of July

This week in CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education), we present our mid-unit progress.  We share with the group where we are at on each of our goals, and we evaluate our peers and our supervisor.  We really start looking at group systems which helps us when we encounter the inevitable church council and ministry teams.  How do people work together, what role does each person take on, consciously or unconsciously.

Mid-summer- already?!?!?  One of my last summers since next year I will be heading to or already on internship.  I continue to be astounded at how quickly this has all gone.  Even though I ignored God's nudges for the last 10+ years, now that I am in the midst of doing what God wants me to do, a part of me wants it to simply slow down.  And the reality is, this summer I am able to do that.  Where I am staying in Rochester, I have the privilege to stay in a home.  Yes, a true home where I am cared for, served, and am part of the family.  And because of this, I am able to take a chance and slow down.  Yesterday I did some baking, a cheesecake and two batches of scones.  Later this week I am getting a massage, and each week I am able to take time to simply be.  Be present with God, in the midst of God's beauty.  And Scott comes to see me so that we keep in touch via SKYPE, but also I am 'relieved' of the driving headache this summer while he drives from Madison and we spend a mini-vacation in a hotel, catch up, tour Rochester, and spend time with friends.

Fourth of July- fireworks oh my!  Unfortunately this year I will  not be able to be part of the Columbus WI fireworks crew since I am in Rochester, and I will be oncall on Friday night.  I will hit at least one fireworks show while in Rochester, so I will sort of get my pyro fix attended to.

Last week I preached on Galatians 3:23-29.  In a couple weeks I am preaching on the Good Samaritan.  I am thinking I will start off with a story of Fr. Damien who worked in Hawaii with people who were quarantined

One of the churches built by Fr. Damien on the island of Molokai

 

because of Hansen's Disease.  I am still working on the art of tying a particular text to people who are in the hospital and making it relevant.  What a true privilege it is to speak to people about the Good News we have in the Gospel, and what a greater privilege it is to walk with people as they journey through life, living out the Gospel.

Gospel on God's Terms

I am from Cleveland, Ohio, and I am a westsider.  Even though I am now living in Chicago attending seminary and am packing up my apartment to spend the next year on internship in St. Louis, Cleveland is my home.

I love Cleveland.  I love that it is filled with salt-of-the-earth people who work hard at jobs they less than love so they can put food on the table.  I love that our world renowned art museum is free.  I love that we are a city that has the one of the best heart hospitals in the world, and that we can turn something like our river catching on fire as a reason to name a Great Lakes Brewery beer.  It doesn't matter that we have been hurt time and time again by our sports teams, we always have hope that this year, this season, this time will be the year. 

I love Cleveland so very much, and my heart is breaking for it right now in grief as we learn that in our neighborhood on the west side of town, three women were held hostage in a basement for ten years.

I have been invited to preach at my home congregation this weekend, a date that has been booked for months.  I love going home to preach, but I must admit I am very intimidated about climbing into the pulpit this week.  There is no question in my mind that at least one person between the three services this weekend will know a family member of one of those women, if not the women themselves.  The Holy Spirit has been gnawing at me all week, leading me to preach the sermon that was not planned instead of the one that was. 

The blessings about home churches is that they love and nurture their seminarians.  They can love us to a fault.  No one in my congregation would bat an eye if I preached the sermon I had written, the one about mothers and baptismal vocations.  They would forgive me for overlooking the elephant in the room.  They would forgive me for preaching the easy way out.

But that is not what I as a leader of the church am called to do.  I can feel the Spirit leading me down a road that hopefully will bring the right message to the right people in the right time.  This is why we preach - to bring the Gospel of Christ to the God's people when they need it most.  God does not ask us to preach the easy sermon.  God calls us to be faithful to the Gospel on God's terms, not ours.

So today I pray.  I humble myself before the wisdom of the One who shelters people in all their joys and sorrows.  And I trust that where in my humanity I fall short, the grace of Christ will ring loud and strong. 

Restlessness

I think right about we could all use one of these.

Usually March signals the shift in the atmosphere that we have all been clamoring for. Winter has had her run on the stage, and now the scene changes and the intermission is slowly coming to an end. The orchestra now lifts the flute to their lips, and we await the light trill; the orchestra positions the violia against its shoulders and we await a sunny note to be pricked. What instead we are met with is a long drawn out soliloquy which has no end.

The Ides of March also signals the countdown, one month until we merry folk find out exactly where we are going; The Internship process for our interesting and calico band of seminarians has been one to write home about-filled with laughter and with a mysterious air. Therefore as we hunker down in the Refectory and the library, hushed away in the deep, soft chairs of the Grand Hallway our eyes are bright with mischief and with the question "Can we just know already?" 

Does the thirst that perhaps has been quenched throughout academica, returned because we have the need to actually be immersed in ministry? To make that first home visit; preach sermon for the third time on Sunday; converse with colleagues at Synod meetings; preside over a funeral? To actually be on our own and see what life is like on the other side? Do we view our Senior peers with envy because they soon will be living the dream?

Or mayhaps the Holy Spirit is dancing throughout the rainstorm, telling us that its alright to come and play?  The idea of being a living witness through Christ radiates through our being and we will be able to share and journey with new fellow brothers and sisters. It is exciting and nerve wracking and hopeful and scary all at once.

And last week, we were able to shed some of that nervous energy as we honored our own St. Dorothy-who even as she leaps into semi-retirement, still is informing us and helping us with scholarships galore:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKiCqG7AQHo

Here's to the coming Spring, and to finally able to sing the words..

Lape Bondye, God's Peace.

You Are Loved

There are no words that can make any sense about what happened yesterday.

I spent most of this past week furiously writing and finishing two papers, ironically for two of my ethics classes and Friday I was finally done. My Treehouse unfortunately suffered for it and with my own children at school, my husband and I went to run errands for the upcoming Christmas season.

We landed on Belmont and Clark, walking and came upon this young man holding this sign. "How long are you going to be out here, dude?", my husband asked him.

"Don't know, man" he smiled.

There are those who believe that the Gospel can only be preached safely inside a building of someone's choosing. This young man woke up and decided to do this, and THAT is what being a witness to the Gospel means. I have no idea if he is Christian or not but what he did was profoundly Christ-like.

Later, my husband would remark that perhaps if that young man who was trapped in so much darkness had seen this sign somewhere, maybe he wouldn't have reacted to life the way he did. No one knows.

The very hard part of our vocations as pastors and pastoral leaders is that we must not only pray for those affected, but also pray for those who have strayed so far away from the Light. So my prayers include all that have lost their lives.

As we returned back to Hyde Park, I heard the roar of planes overhead; leaning out of our car window slightly, I saw three fighter jets...in the missing man formation. 

Those children will be missing from their homes, their bedrooms and from their parents' arms. Yet, they are not missing from our hearts and minds and where there is that empty space, beyond the Veil...they are welcomed, eternally...and so are, will we.

The Good News is that all of us are Loved, no matter where we are in our faith journey or how we call on God or even how we struggle to understand His/Her existence.  

The Creator weeps, and the Creator welcomes us Home.

Lape Bondye, God's Peace.

A Rare Energizer

While I hoped to start this mad-dash to the end of the semester re-energized from my wonderful Thanksgiving break at home, I was already dragging by mid-day yesterday.  Woof.  I rolled into my 6:30-9:30pm Church History class tired and anxious about the long night of work ahead. ...And then, we visited LSTC's Gruber Rare Books Collection, housed in JKM library. 

I was excited to have the opportunity to hear about these rare books from the library's current curator--and my current Pentateuch professor--Dr. Ralph Klein, but little did I know what we were about to see... 

Luther's "September" New Testament

For an hour and a half, my class slobbered (metaphorically speaking)  over original prints of numerous books including a Gutenberg Bible (15th c.), Martin Luther's translations of the New Testament into German (1522), and a King James Bible (1611) to name a few.*  It's not every day when you get to stare at such profound and tangible pieces of history.  I was tickled! To say the least, this was an amazing field-trip for a girl with an imagination--I could only think about the hands that prepared these books and then passed them down from one century to the next...

Oldest known complete
Greek cursive New Testament (9th c.)

I cannot express how humbling it was to be in that room. I was standing among books that changed the course of church history; I was standing among two esteemed Biblical scholars of the modern age; I was standing among my peers while we engaged this history even while looking forward toward our own discernment journeys and how we must continue too share the gospel as it had been shared for centuries before us.  

And while I cannot explain exactly why this trip to the library was so re-energizing, when I left that room I was ready to hit the books again with full force.  Three cheers for books!

*****

 

*For all you Greek New Testament scholars out there, Dr. Klein even brought out the big kahuna: the oldest known complete New Testament written in Greek cursive (9th c.), known to New Testament scholars as manuscript #1424!!!