Mid-Point of Reading Week

In some ways, Reading Week is like any other week, except I haven't had classes to attend.  I've finished a paper on Buddhism, done a less formal journal entry on the lecture for Church History II, done a lot of reading, done some work on an exegesis paper due Monday for my Luke class.  

But unlike the Reading Week back in October, I will spend the entire week here at my house in North Carolina.  I drove down here on Friday with a car load of stuff and got settled in.  The house is under construction, so it's hard to settle in, in some ways.  It's been years since I had a dresser (that will need to change this summer), and the closet that I could use is fairly inaccessible right now--the door is blocked by packages of flooring.

On Friday, we'll go to Lowe's and try to make some kitchen decisions.  Since we suspect that it will take some time to get cabinets delivered, we hope to place an order.  We have spent a lot of time measuring, measuring, measuring.  It's going to be a smaller kitchen than most of the remodeled kitchens we've had, but there will be plenty of work spaces and a dishwasher--and a working stove.

Yesterday I went to church for Bible study.  It was led by a woman who recently retired from the Lutheran seminary in Columbia, SC.  She has an ambitious goal, to lead people through the New Testament.  Obviously, it's more a survey than a deep dive.  Yesterday was the book of Acts, which is not one of my favorites.  The leader began by asking what questions we have about the earliest church, that first century after the Resurrection.  

It was interesting to hear the questions, to know the answers, and to see how the leader handled them.  It's the kind of situation I expect to face often when I'm done with seminary.  It also made me appreciate my seminary classes with the opportunity for wide-ranging exploration of these questions.

It's been interesting to be back here, where I will do the next phases of seminary studies.  I will need better lighting, along with a place for my stuff.  At least I have a solid internet connection.  

Today, in addition to a walk or two to enjoy the lovely weather, we'll do a dump run--time to start getting rid of some of this cardboard that comes as part of doing home renovations.  And later, we'll think about getting rid of some of the heavier stuff, like wood from the staircase demolition.

Right now, let me get another part of my Luke paper done.

International Women's Day 2023

Today is International Women's Day, so I did what I do on some holidays--I checked my blogs to see what I had written before.  Here's a snippet from 2016:  "Let us also take a minute to consider how amazing it is that the most qualified candidate in this campaign season, in terms of experience, is a woman. In the past, it wouldn't have been possible for a woman to accumulate enough years of service to make that claim."  At that point, I wasn't sure that Hillary Clinton would win, the way I was later in 2016.  Sigh.

Until this year, I'd have assumed that rights that had been awarded by the Supreme Court were ours forever.  That belief is gone forever.  Yet I also know that I'm living in a better place than many women across the globe.  Part of that reason is because of my race and age and class.  But part of that reason is that women across the globe face much more bleaker circumstances than women on the lowest rung of U.S. society.

So, it's a hard year to be thinking about the status of women and celebrating accomplishments.  But it's important to remember that there have been accomplishments.  This year, unlike other years, we're having hard conversations about what it means to be a woman.  I have hopes that these conversations about gender might help us get to a place where life is safer for all of us, wherever we fall on the gender spectrum.

And once life is safer for all of us, perhaps we can think about ways that life can be more satisfying for all of us.

It's also important to remember how bleak life has been in the past, in the not too distant past.  We have not slid all the way back to bleaker days, and it's important to remember that.  We do have rights, we do have opportunities, and we can move fairly freely in the world if we're careful.  Of course, even as I type those words, I think about all the people who don't have rights, who don't have opportunities, who cannot move freely--that's especially true in countries like Afghanistan and Iran.

Will we look back and remember this year as being the one where women were given more rights and more access and more freedom in Iran?  I don't have much hope for Afghanistan this year, but there is an interesting upswelling in Iran.  I also understand the power structures that will try to crush those of us who want something better, something more free, something more open.

In my Queer Theology class, we've done a lot of analysis of oppressive social structures, of what we might call Powers and Principalities if we used theological terms.  We've talked about how these structures are self-perpetuating, about how hard it is to defeat them because they have power and accrue power simply by existing and because they have existed for so long.

No one said defeating them would be easy.  But many people have seen the vision of a better life for us all, and they can assure us the struggle is worth it, even though it's hard.  Future generations will thank us, even if we leave them tasks to finish.

And let me end on a positive note, even if I'm not feeling particularly positive.  

We know that the world can change very quickly.  I have often thought about how my 1987 self would be astonished at the fact that Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and went on to be elected president of South Africa and how there is no longer an East and West Germany. We are called to be part of the movement to change the world in ways that are better for all--and particularly for the vulnerable and powerless. We have made great progress on that front. But there is still more to do.

So, today, let us continue.

Early Days of Reading Week

So far, it's been a lovely reading week.  We've had unseasonably warm weather; I'm beginning to wonder if that was it for the winter.  Here in the mountains of North Carolina, as in DC, I see bursts of jonquils and daffodils, and here in NC, I see them in places where I wouldn't have envisioned someone planting them.  Instead of Johnny Appleseed, I have a vision of Dora Daffodil.

We've gone on walks in this unseasonably warm weather--what a treat.  It's the kind of weather that makes us wish for a concert in the park, but what community events planner would plan for such a thing in early March?  So we will content ourselves with walks.

We've also done some planning.  Yesterday we spent several hours on the kitchen remodel.  We looked up widths and heights of potential cabinets.  We explored different counter tops.  We know what we like--we've designed several kitchens before.  We worry that we'll just repeat the same thing.  Actually, that idea doesn't worry me.  We know what we like, after all.

At some point, I need to turn my attention back to all the work that I need to do for seminary.  But I did try to work ahead, so I also want to feel free to relax and reconnect with my spouse.  I have two more online classes that I'm teaching, and they start on March 16.  Happily, I've already done the work of entering in all the dates and other information on the syllabi of each class.

I have been a bit worried about the last 6 weeks of the term--I'm taking 6 seminary classes and teaching 4 online classes at the height of the last 6 weeks.  But everything is not due all at once, so I have hope (and reasonable expectations) that it can all work out.

In short, I won't have much leisure time when I leave here.  Let me enjoy some now.

On Not Going to AWP and Other Moves

Many people I know are in some state of travel this week.  Lots of writers are headed to the big writing conference, the AWP conference.  I went to a few of them; Tampa was an easy drive from my South Florida house, and we had such a good time that I decided to go the following year.  Unfortunately by the time of the  Portland  conference in 2019, I had almost no travel money, and by the following year, I funded the whole thing myself, to San Antonio in early March 2020, where we watched conferences for later March being cancelled and wondered what precautions we might should have been taking.

I am not on my way to Seattle this year for the AWP.  It's too expensive, and I'm no longer earning the kind of money that lets me fund the whole thing, which is easily $1,000 for the hotel by itself, not to mention airfare, which could also approach the $1,000 per ticket price, or not, if one is good at getting deals or traveling light, which I am not.  The conference fare looks cheap by comparison.

Plus, given all the air travel woes of the past year, I just do not have the patience for that kind of trip.  I need to be back on the east coast to go to my seminary classes.

I had planned to be in England this week, a trip with one grad school friend to visit another grad school friend who lives there.  But when we got the announcement that the building where I have my seminary apartment will be bulldozed, I decided to cancel the trip so that I could get ready for an unexpected move.  I did some packing and took a car load of boxes back to my North Carolina house, where I will be moved by May 15.

If there had been no announcement about seminary housing, I wouldn't have revisited that decision to move to seminary housing.  A lot has happened since I made the original application for housing a year ago.  A year ago, we didn't have this Lutheridge house.  A year ago, moving to seminary made sense--it was cheaper than our South Florida housing.  But now it makes sense not to have two places to live.

I'll still be going to seminary.  Wesley is offering more and more classes in a hybrid model: there are 2 week-ends on campus, and online modules between the week-ends. I've taken one class this way, and I like the way it builds community, but it offers a lot of flexibility too. I've also enjoyed the classes I've continued to take by way of Zoom sessions. In many ways, for a class that's a lecture (and most of my remaining classes are lecture, not hands-on art, not experiential field trips), attending by way of Zoom is not that different than attending in the classroom.

I'm trying to stay flexible as we face the future.  These past few years have made me better at pivoting, but the need to pivot still takes me by surprise.  I can't decide whether or not it makes sense to make long term plans.  In the past few years, so many of my long term plans have been upended.  Usually it works out for the better, but it does make me question whether or not to plan at all.

So, for those of you headed to AWP, good luck with the travel plans.  May you face no unexpected pivots.  For those of us with unexpected  moves, may they work out to be better plans than the original.  And of course, I'm me, so I wish for us all good discernment as we plan--or don't plan--for the future.

Sermon Slam

On Thursday, I went to a sermon slam.  I wasn't participating, although the thought intrigued me.  But the winner went on to a regional sermon slam, and I'll be at the Create in Me retreat when that happens--so it didn't seem fair to compete.  Plus, I thought I should observe one first.  I've never seen one, although I suspected it would be like a poetry slam.

As we waited for the sermon slam to start, we had dinner, which was a great opportunity for fellowship.  My fellow students at my table had never seen a sermon slam either.  I talked about poetry slams, which was a new concept to the students who ate dinner with me.  I realized I've never really been to many in-person poetry slam either, only one or two, back in the early years of this century, when it seemed like everyone wanted to compete.

The sermon slam on Thursday was less raucous than some of those early poetry slams.  We did clap, but we gave everyone the same amount of applause.  We did score the sermon presentations, but we filled out a paper slip which kept the results private.  Four women competed, and everyone won prizes.

For the first round, the participants had the Bible passage in advance: the transfiguration on the mountain story. Everyone gave a dynamic, compelling sermon.  They had a seven minute time limit, and everyone used the full time.  As with my Foundations of Preaching class, I was pleasantly surprised by how four people could have a passage--and not an obscure passage--and we could enjoy such different sermons.

For the second round, each participant got a passage from the Old Testament, all passages from the revised common lectionary, not something obscure.  One of the organizers had a bag of passages written out on paper, and the participant reached in to choose one.  They had the option to reject the first one and try again. 

Each participant had 3 minutes to work on a two minute sermon.  I found these sermons more dynamic.  Was it because they were truly more dynamic?  Did I just like them better because I knew that the prep time was shorter?  Did I like them better because the sermons themselves were shorter?

All too soon, it was time to go to class, my Church History II class, which didn't have the same energy level as a sermon slam.  However, it was the kind of afternoon that left me happy to be able to be part of it all, happy to have sampled some of what I hoped that life on campus would be.

Ninth Trip from DC to North Carolina

Yesterday was a travel day.  March 6-10 is our reading week, and I can do the school work that needs to be done from anywhere, so I planned to get up early and head down to our North Carolina house.

I'm usually up early, but the night before a travel day, I often have trouble sleeping.  I knew that the day might be stormy so I gave up on trying to sleep, and I was on the road by 3:45.

The first few hours of the trip were clear, no rain or fog, which is good, because the roads around DC can be hard to navigate in the rain and fog.  Once I was out of range of WAMU, I switched to a West Virginia station, where I heard about school closings and delays because of winter weather. Later, the station out of Harrisonburg, VA told me that there was a winter weather advisory for the Shenandoah Valley starting at 7 a.m., and the possibility of ice in the higher elevations.

I thought about the fact that I was in the Shenandoah Valley, and that I would be climbing in elevation.  I was expecting wind and rain, not snow and ice.  Happily, I didn't ever get snow or ice and not much wind or rain.  There were periods of not much rain, but lots of previous rain blowing up off the road, but from the 18 wheelers, not the wind.  The clouds were never far away as they obscured the mountains for the whole trip.

I was surprised by how many people drove through the gray, gloomy day with clouds descending on us, and they didn't have their headlights turned on.  Long ago, in the first college composition class I ever taught, a student argued that all cars should come with daytime running lights, a feature which then seemed futuristic and over the top.  Now I think that they should be a feature that can't be turned off manually.  Let the default be light.

I have now made this trip 9 times, and yesterday was one of the first times where I thought, I have been driving this car for hours and hours, and I'm still so far away!  Usually I'm thinking, this drive is so pretty, and I'm making such good time.

Still, it could have been worse.  As I left Harrisonburg, I noticed that the interstate was shut down on the northbound side.  I kept moving, and soon enough, I was pulling into my driveway.  We unloaded the car, and I went back out to get a few groceries.  I was still expecting storminess, but while we did get some rain, it wasn't as bad a storm as what people on the other side of the mountain experienced.  We ate a late lunch/early dinner, and settled in for some TV--the comforts of cozy domesticity, which neither one of us has experienced in awhile.

It's been a strange phenomenon that when I'm here, I have trouble remembering that seminary exists, and when I'm in my seminary apartment, this Lutheridge house seems like a hazy dream.  Let me do some work on the papers that are due before the end of the week-end:  the less formal weekly response for Church History II and the paper on Buddhism for World Religions (happily, I've written the more difficult part of this paper).  

Texts in Context

Today's post will likely be short.  I have some seminary writing assignments that need my attention.  In fact, I've been working on those this morning.  For my Church History II class, I have a Text in Context paper due today.  I'm writing about Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle, situating it in its historical context.  I have reached that stage where I wonder if I achieved the goals of the assignment, so it is probably time to bring the paper to a close.  Yesterday I thought that I had, yesterday I had a paper that pleased me, and today I am doubting myself.  If I let myself tinker too much, I'll have a mess to turn in, not a paper.

I also had to write a creative writing response to this prompt:   "A Theologian, a pastor, a child, and an artist walk into a room…"  I created something that surprised me, but I don't want to say too much about it here--I don't want the plagiarism detecting software to find a blog post and accuse me of plagiarism.   I did have fun describing the room.

Later this morning, I need to start writing a rough draft of my Buddhism paper for my World History class.  That one is due on Sunday, so I have some time.  But tomorrow is a travel day.  I'm headed back to North Carolina tomorrow, where I'll spend reading week trying to make progress on bigger writing projects, along with catching up on my reading.

I had thought I would do some of this writing yesterday, but I spent a huge chunk of time trying to sort out various seminary requirements.  In some ways, I've made it difficult for myself by not going to a Lutheran seminary.  Unfortunately, no Lutheran seminary offers a track in Theology and the Arts as part of the MDiv program.  Happily, I have found someone at my affiliate seminary who could explain some elements to me, so I can figure out a way forward.  I will do my internship the way that Wesley, my current seminary, has us do it.  After I'm done with my MDiv here at Wesley, I'll have to do a year-long internship, working a 40-50 hour work week, to fulfill requirements of the ELCA.

That's a long way away, at least several years, before I've done what I'll need to do to even be eligible for the internship.  The church doesn't make any of this easy.  Many of these requirements are so clearly for a different time, a time when seminarians came straight out of undergraduate school, unencumbered with families and mortgages and life experience.

Let me turn my attention to the more pressing tasks at hand.  Time for another cup of tea and one last editing session.