Never Ending

I wrote this last Saturday:

So . . . yesterday we took two three-hour exams and today we took one more. I wish I had received Mompriest's comment last night because suddenly, at 9:00 pm, I lost any capacity for sleep, and began to churn through all my perceived errors. Today I've been able to put all that to rest, probably because . . .

the Hebrew passage, delivered to us at noon,, is the story of Elijah bringing the widow's son back to life.

I sank into a fairly profound depression for several hours as I contemplated wrestling with that one for five days. (Have you ever tried to count how many stories there are in the Bible of dead sons coming back to life? More than just the main one.) I thought about switching to Greek (it's up to us), but all things conspired against that brilliant idea: memory (none), desire (none), and reality: the New Testament passage in question is one of proclamation and, let's face it, I am way more attuned to narrative.

And when that thought occurred to me, the next one was: does that say something about a call to chaplaincy as opposed to a church, or what? Perhaps I will get something completely unexpected out of this last exam, in the form of clues for next year.

(And I'd love to hear from the other RevGals on this one. My sermons have been criticized this year for being exploratory rather than insistent. The assessment is accurate, but the question remains: Is there a place for exploratory, musing, contemplative preaching in the church? The events of the last seventeen months have made emphatic proclamation an impossibility for me. And, on the positive side, have made the journey through people's stories all the more compelling.)

I think I have to go to sleep soon; I'm exhausted. I hope I can pull this off and put testing behind me FOREVER.

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Now it's six days later and I'm finally back home. Writing the exam was fine; I am getting much more adept at putting my personal stuff aside when I have to accomplish an academic task.

I spent some time on the phone this morning with a friend who has an urgent need to know about coroners, funeral homes, cremations, and ashes. I remembered how much it had helped me fifteen months ago to talk to friends who had that kind of knowledge and were willing to share it openly and candidly.

I have to say, the conversation this morning affected me a good deal more than writing the paper had.

Of course, the widow in the Elijah story turned out not to need the information that I now have.


(Louis Hersent Painting)

Break Time

I posted a bit about the Hebrew exam which we got yesterday and have to turn in on Thursday, and then had second thoughts, so I'll repost later this week. I was afraid that some kind of inadvertent discussion would ensue, and the last thing I need is to be the first person ever to have her exam discounted due to blogging.

It was kind of a nice day. I've stayed at seminary for the week-end, so I went to a GORGEOUS church this morning, a church at which one of our professors is the senior pastor. In the interests of even more discretion, I am not going to comment on the discussion some of us had afterward and my own observations contrasting this church with my home and field ed churches. Let's just say that between my classes and my experiences, I'm having a fascinating and enlightening year with respect to all the different ways worship might be.

It's been mostly dark and rainy so I've mostly stayed in and worked. (I did go for a soaking walk.) A fireplace would have made for a very nice afternoon.

Now I'm just exhausted. I plan to respond by playing around for a few minutes with one of those counters that tells where your blog visitors are from. So ~ if you're headed for someplace exotic, stop by for a visit!

Ords Black-Out

I expect to be put of blogging commission for a few days ~ exams in theology and in worship and sacraments are on Friday, polity on Saturday ~ and then at noon on Saturday we get the passage and questions for the Hebrew exam, which is due the next Thursday. (Yes, I'm putting all my eggs in the Hebrew basket; my aversion to Greek is too strong and, while we know the Biblical books from which the passages will come, I haven't had any time for contemplating two alternate possibilities.)

Mostly I am incredibly busy, and behind on every front. I have no idea whether I will pass any of the exams in this round. But every once in awhile I pause and think,

"I am about to take the exams for ORDINATION AS A MINISTER OF WORD AND SACRAMENT."

I'm not exactly sure how that can be the situation, but it is certainly a daunting and breathtaking and monumentally humbling (an oxymoron, I suppose) one in which to find myself.

That Little Question: Theodicy

As I prepare for my ordination exams, I keep tripping over the issues of suffering and evil. You'd think that I, of all people, would have a handle on them, but of course most of the explanations proffered in our couple of thousand of years Christian history are of little use in the face of reality, whether that reality be a family tragedy or something of the magnitude of Haiti.

In my roamings this morning, I found this, by Episcopal priest Matt Gunter. It's well worth a read. And if you're short of time, here's my favorite line:

"French poet, Paul Caudel, wrote, 'Jesus did not come to remove suffering, or to explain it away. He came to fill it with His presence.' ”

God knows my brain is so full of the bizarre conglomeration of material needed for the exams (Can you explain divine-and-human-in one? Whether to baptize a stillborn baby? How your church might purchase the vacant lot next door? The tension among ruler and prophet in I Kings? Anything at all?) that it has begun to leak. But I am going to file that line away for use forever.

And While We're On The Subject of the Challenges of Loss . . ..

I know that I have a number of good friends and readers who roll their eyes in disbelief, skepticism, irritation, and incredulity whenever the faith stuff comes up ~ and most especially in the context of things like my son's death, and death and loss in general. (Not that there is ever an "in general." It's always so painfully personal.)

If you've read any of Desert Year, then you know that I don't have a sentimental or squishy approach to faith, that I was besieged by a profound sense of God's abandonment in the year-plus after Josh's death, and that I am much more comfortable with questions than with answers. I am going to write more about all of that soon, but not now! ~ as I am confronted by the need to stop all unnecessary activity for two weeks in an effort to salvage my ordination exams, to which ironically, confident answers are the expected response.

I don't, however, want to depart for my husband's family and father's funeral and then The Library, without linking to one of the best things I've read in a long time about faith and consolation. I may have written that in the days after my son's death, I overheard my father say "At least she has her faith to comfort her," and that I shook my head as I kept walking down the hall, thinking that he didn't have the foggiest notion of the challenge of the Christian faith. Much of Desert Year was an exploration of that challenge, although I was far too immersed in pain to see or write a way out.

Ryan Duns, S.J. is an exceptionally thoughtful and articulate young man. I might debate his conclusion a bit, and suggest that there are times when consolation is not about confidence, which has a way of evaporating, but about hope when you can see nothing ~ and about not even your own hope, but that of others, who remain present to you and open to God and hopeful for life again, all when you have moved into some other dimension in which none of those things seem possible. Nevertheless, the post is a wonderful expression of an aspect of Christian faith seldom acknowledged. (I sometimes think that Ryan is channeling my first Jesuit spiritual director, something I recognize because I do it myself on occasion.)

At any rate, enjoy the music in the previous two posts ~ but don't think that I'm under the impression that faith is an easy road, especially when we live on life's most brutal edges.

I may be back sooner than later so that I can bemoan the need to write yet another exegtical paper in Hebrew ~ or I may wait till it's all over.

Presbyterian Surprises

I am a Presbyterian pretty much by accident. (Well, if I were REALLY a Presbyterian, I suppose I would put that a bit differently.)

And I am extremely ecumenical in background and approach and practice.

But as I study for my ordination exams ~ in theology, worship and sacraments, and church government (Hebrew is a take-home and requires a completely different approach) ~

I am falling in love with my accidentally-aquired Presbyterian heritage and home.

I have friends here in seminary who just shrug their shoulders and say, "I've never known anything else." But my experience has been quite different and so, for me, Christianity, Protestantism, and the Presbyterian tradition are all conscious and distinct choices among a variety of alternatives.

Who knew that studying for ords would be, ummmmmm, actually exciting ~ and even sort of transformative?

*****

That said, I still will not hesitate to mention the countdown: two weeks from tomorrow they begin, three weeks from this morning I turn in the Hebrew exam, and then, I'm thinking, a motel with a hot tub . . . ?

Florida Musings

Although I am far from home and school, I'm thinking a lot about ministry, because I am preparing for the PC(USA) ordination exams, which are now less than four weeks away, and I'm preaching in my field ed church on Sunday.

I'm not happy with my sermon, but I find that I'm enjoying the studying. As I (try to) pull material together and read through a couple of theological overviews, I'm discovering a new appreciation for my seminary education. And I see that I have changed not a little. (Gulp of relief: for awhile I feared that I might emerge from seminary like a couple of other people I've heard about, who upon their graduations said," I haven't changed one bit from the moment I arrived!")

Of course, much of the change has come via another route. Today I am thinking about that in the context of two other things. For one, Quotidian Grace is highlighting blogs of ministers who are mothers. I imagine that someday that group will include me, albeit not as I had planned or expected. And secondly, last fall, two young men in my class preached sermons in which they referred, one explicitly and one by implication, to seminary as a "mountaintop experience."

Not exactly, I thought at the time.

I suppose that it will be many, many years before I will understand what it has meant to study for ministry while grieving the suicide of a child. To explore all those meaning-of-life-who-is-God questions in an academic environment while stuggling through them at the deepest personal levels. To be engaged in hopes and plans for middle-age changes while saying good-bye to a very young life measured mostly by possibility.

God, it has been so hard.

I have no idea what the future holds for me. (Given the past sixteen months, I have to conclude that only someone completely devoid of gray matter would attempt to predict even the next five minutes.) But I hope that my ministry will be marked by a deep respect for the experience of the absence of God, an enlarged capacity for listening in silence, and a vocabulary from which religious cliches have been banished.

(Of course, none of those abilities, such as they are, will be of much help on the ordination exams. And what does that say . . . ???)

Anyway ~ that's the report from the Florida Keys this morning.