Hell Week, Seminary Style

Fraternities and Sororities have nothing over on Seminaries when it comes to Hell Week.  This was it.  Hell Week 2012 for Candler School of Theology.  Mid-Term.  That week in which you have a midterm take home due that is 12 pages long, a mid-term covering 1500 years of history, an Old Testament Quiz, a 10 page paper due.  It is that week in which students begin questioning the wisdom of coming to seminary, wondering if they are really cut out for this kind of academia.  It is that week when the newness has worn off and parts of the Bible are being read that get looked over in Sunday School and from the pulpit.  You know the ones.  Passages that tell you to take your disobedient children to the city gate and have them stoned to death.  Those passages that reflect a patriarchal, male dominant, female enslavement/ownership society in which women are viewed as property the punishment for rape is a virtual slap on the wrist.  Some students wonder who this God is.  They have never heard such things and they question their faith in ways they never thought possible.  There are long faces, tired face.  There are weakened immune systems and trips to the clinic or the hospital.  Let us not forget all the Wives, husbands, children and significant others who have become seminary widows, widowers and orphans over the past week.  We entered our own wilderness.  It's easy to look back at our different Egypts and think we were better off there.  It is easy to forget all the divine interventions that brought us to this exact place headed towards our promised land.  We listen to the song of Moses and we wonder if we are with the God who wounds or the God who heals, the God who gives life or the God who takes life.  Then we see moments of Grace such as a professor extending a deadline.  We get emails from professors assuring us that if we did poorly on the midterm there is a way to recover.  We are encouraged by our fellow travelers on the journey.  We remember.  We remember what/who brought us here and we remember why.  Keep those things fresh in your hearts and memories and know that God is with us, ever present in the wilderness, ready to bring us into the promised land. 

On the home front:  We averted a massive tragedy yesterday.  I entered the house when I got back to North Carolina.  Leigh Anne was out on the lawn mower mulching leaves.  I set down my bag and begin the process of doing laundry.  I was tired and my head was pounding.  I heard a loud buzzing noise in the house.  It sounded like something could blow up any minute.  I checked the water heater, no not that.  I checked the air conditioner, it's unplugged.  I turn off all the electronics in the room, still loud buzzing noise.  I turned off the lights.  Still loud buzzing.  What could it be.  I went and got Leigh Anne reluctantly off the lawn mower.  She thinking I was being silly came into the house and once she heard it she too  became alarmed.  She rechecked everything I had already checked and we deduced that the only other thing it could be was the gas heater.  She went outside and turned the gas off to the house.  I very cautiously and with fear turned off the gas valve inside the house.  Both of us expecting an explosion any second.  The flame went out, nothing exploded and the buzzing continued.  We knew the sound was coming from near the door way.  Was there something going on with the electric meter.  Leigh Anne turns off breakers, the buzzing continues.  Is something in our walls, has someone planted a bomb.  The possibilities continue to grow until I pick up my duffel bag and realize the buzzing is coming from within.   Did someone plant a bomb in my duffel bag.  This is a crazy world.  Then at once we both recognize the buzzing as the electric razor in my makeup kit which had been inadvertently turned on when I threw my bag on the ground upon arrival home......Life resumes. 

Break from Reality

You get a little extra blogging this week simply because I'm in the middle of doing 2 months of documentation from work and I need a break from reality right now.  I'm so full that I could be sick which has got to be one of the worst feelings in the world.  I think I would rather have a hangover than to have a food hangover.  Tried out a new (to me) place tonight.  My friend Aryn states she can smell it from her house and has been wanting to try it out.  When I told Jessicuz where I was going she confirmed that the food is as good as it smells.  So, out the door I headed to meet Aryn at Fox Brothers barbecue.  The lack of parking further confirmed the anticipation of a good meal and they did not disappoint.  Pulled pork, ribs, mac and cheese and cornbread dressing that I later found out was Jalapeno cornbread dressing which would explain the heat in the bites.  The meat fell off the bones and there was a lot of it.  I brought half the meet home to Donald. Still, I am so full 3 hours later that i think I would vomit if I put another thing in my mouth, even drink. 

I suppose you could say it was a celebration meal or a lament meal depending on how you look at things.  We got our first Exam back today.  My grade was what I suspected it to be but nonetheless I was not happy about it and want to do better.  Nonetheless another new friend, Zeb, reminded me via his blog that it's not about the number but about learning "new ways to engage with our God and with the communities God lovingly sets us in."  This reminded me of my Uncle Stan's advice a couple of weeks ago when he told me how he and his wife had told their professors their last year in seminary that they didn't want to know their grades.  They would accept any comments but they didn't want to see the grade.  He said this was very freeing to him.  It freed him to enjoy and concentrate on the experience of learning. 

I am so thankful to have a professor who is so passionate about the old testament.  Today's revelation is that Grace comes before the Law.  So many times we think of the Old Testament as Law and the New Testament as Grace.  This is a flawed assumption.  It was God's grace that gave Israel the law via the Ten Commandments (or more literally, I learned, the Ten words)  The children of Israel were in the wilderness.  It wasn't like our idea of wilderness trips in the Jeep, four wheeling in the mud and showing off our virility.  It was a dangerous place to be.  A place without food and without water, with scary creatures.  It was a place away from the towns and the governments that provide structure.  It was a place of chaos and with the Ten Words and grace God gives order to the chaos.  Just as he ordered the world from chaos in the creation.  Just as he brought salvation to Noah and company out of the chaos brought by a flood.  God recreates, and recreates.   Why isn't that exactly what God did and is doing with me when he took me out of the chaos of a lost job, and uncertainties and placed me in the midst of this wonderful community called Candler School of Theology.  I think it is, God continues over and over again to order the chaos and to recreate us!  Praise Be to God! 

One last thing for the day.....I discovered one of the ghettos today.  I'm a bit surprised that it was the ghetto.  It didn't really feel like it.  I was anxious to get away from the school building today so went to McDonald's on Candler ave. to have a diet coke and read some Communalism in America.  I picked a quiet corner and planted myself there.  The manager, a young African American man, was the most enthusiastic manager I have ever experienced in a McDonald's.  He didn't stop talking the whole 2 hours that i was there.  "Way to go grill, good job getting those orders down."  he took a walk through the lobby "everything okay mam, can i get you anything."  I realized what was happening when toward the end of my visit he asked me my name and then told me I looked just like his former manager in Arkansas and he thought that I was there spying on him to see how he was making it as a manager.  Bless his heart.  That is not how I knew I was in the ghetto though.  Another young man came in.  He wanted to charge his phone.  He went to what he thought was an outlet and it appears there was once one there.  "do y'all not have any outlets."  "No." replied the young lady mopping the floor.  "When did that happen."  "I've been here 6 months and there have not been outlets."  "only in the ghetto would there be a place with free wi fi and no outlets."  That is how I found out I was in the ghetto.  I enjoyed my 2 hours in the ghetto today.   I might even go back.......if I survive this food hangover. 

Songs for the Soul

The School week ended this past week with a chapel service of music.  All kinds of music:  Organ music, African drums, Spirituals, Praise and worship.  My sould was full to the brim when I left that chapel.  Talents I didn't know existed were showcased.  Chill bumps covered my arms, tears welled up in my eyes, I fought a lump in my throat.  All of these symptoms of a joyous moment of awe that I am sitting where I am sitting.  I am at Emory University pursuing my MDIV after 30 years of obstacles leading to this very season.  I am in awe that I have a supportive family and supportive friends who are enabling me to be on this journey.  I am in Awe that in those 30 years of seeking, searching, coming near to giving up, that God never gave up on me but kept calling my name.  "Here I am LORD, send me!  I continue to listen to that still small voice and here is one of the things the still small voice said to me this week.  "Sometimes activism is necessary, Sometimes it is time to cry out to God and to the people for change."  The Israelites were in distress in the Wilderness and they cried out!  This summer I was asked to cry out simply by providing Chaplaincy services to a group of people who were staging a sit in over an issue that was oppresive to them.  I agreed that this was oppressive and change needed to take place.  However, I let fear speak instead of my voice speak.  I turned them down citing my family, possible television exposure, fear of retaliation from my denomination and such as my reason.  Persons I am aquainted with were arrested during this time and I was not there to be the hands and feet of God wrapping them up in love.  This past week at school I attended a meeting of sacred worth, an organization in Candler School of Theology which advocates for the sacred worth of ALL individuals.  On the agenda for this meeting was a vote as to whether or not the group should sign off on a letter requesting that Chick-Fil-A be removed from our campus due to it's financial support of organizations that are aggressive/oppressive to the GLBTQ community.  When this situation first hit the news I was not in support of boycotting Chick-Fil-A.  My belief is that one could interview the CEO of every business that business is conducted with and find some philanthropic endeaveor that is in conflict with ones on morals and values.  Why single out this one?  I had a conversation with my cousin about it later.  She pointed me to an article that alleges that one of the groups supported by Chick-Fil-A, The Family Research Council, was present in Uganda in support of legislation there that would make being GLBT a capitol offense.  While I have not researched the valdity of this claim, I am appaled at myself for not researching more before making a decision on how I would handle this issue in my own life.  So for now, like the children of Israel, I cry out!  Regardless of my beliefs regarding GLBT, I do know that I value the worth of all lives and that murder is not the just answer.  I continue to have conflictual feelings about activism as I tend to be a relationship builder seeking reconcilliation.  However, I will be less quick to judge activism in the future and more diligent about researching issues that others see as worthy of activism.