Sunday, April 7, 2013

Season of Alleluias and Assessment

A week ago, it would have been Easter. As I sat in church, at the second service, a poem idea bubbled up.


I thought of angel committees who are putting together an assessment document for God, who simply wants to hear the alleluias, without having to quantify their effectiveness.

Clearly, I may have been in the world of higher ed administration a touch too long.

Yet when I told one of my poet friends of this inspiration, she responded, "No no! Convince the Almighty about the value of clean columns and rows with detailed rubrics! After all, the Universe MUST NEEDS make quantitative sense! How else can we tell of its effectiveness?"

How sweet of my friend to give me words that the angel committee will use!

I think of God, lonely for the days when one could hear the alleluias so clearly, as they echoed across the universe. I think of God, surrounded by chatter and charts and numbers and rubrics for assessing the effectiveness of the alleluias and a matrix for assessing the accuracy of the rubrics.


It's the second Sunday in what should be the season of alleluias--but for many of us, it's assessment season.  Which one will win?

2 comments:

Jeannine said...

Hey Ms. Kristin! A conversation on Facebook led me to think of you - this is a little friend - well, she's 33 now - who reminds me in her thought processes a lot of you and your theological work - I think you'd find her work and blog very interesting (she edits a theological blog, is working on a book, and is currently fighting cancer: http://becomingbronwen.wordpress.com/ - She has a very refreshing and candid take on Christianity that, to me, is worth a thousand tired homilies. She's the kind of person I can see leading the next generation's church, you know?

Kristin Berkey-Abbott said...

What a great blog--thanks for pointing me to it!