So you want to go to seminary?

This video has been making the rounds on Facebook recently. As much as it makes me laugh (“rural North Dakota”, whoever made this was clearly Lutheran ☺), I struggled with the video because in between offensive comments the man asked some tough questions and the woman had no good answers. All she could offer were cliqued quips that sounded even more naïve in the automated computer voice. I wondered: could I do any better?

The questions the video raised caught me off-guard. After all, I’m three years and a fair amount of student loans into this seminary experience. I also feel just as, if not more, called to be in this profession as I did when I started. But the man is right. I know all the statistics. Clergy do have the highest rates of alcoholism, depression and obesity, the moving constantly thing is hard, and there isn’t lucrative financial compensation. On paper, this seminary thing is crazy.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized, maybe there isn’t supposed to be a rational answer. I did not come to seminary because I listed the pros and cons and being a pastor came out as the best option. I came to seminary because it began to feel like the only option. Vocation, be it to seminary or the medical field or accounting, is the thing you find you cannot not do.

The woman in the video said she wanted to go to seminary because she was called by God. I would change the voice and say that I am in seminary because God called me. The action is all God’s. And no, it doesn’t make any logical sense. But faith doesn’t always make logical sense. That’s why it’s called faith. Following God’s call to seminary may not measure up to the world’s standards of success, but neither does following a carpenter’s son and a ragtag bunch of fishermen. So here I am. Naïve? Maybe. Idealistic? Probably. Called by God? Yes, I think that too. Dear man in the video, I’ll let you know how it turns out for me.

The Absurdity of Faith

This Saturday I set off the burglar alarm at church. Again. This time it was the one in the theater, set off by the draft of me opening the main doors because the theater doors did not get shut the night before. So I didn’t even know it was going off until the police arrived. After meeting the police officer, determining nothing was wrong, and showing him out of the building, I re-alarmed the system and left. I can never stay in the office after setting off the alarm; it makes me too jumpy.

Driving back to the vicarage I was so angry. “Why is nothing ever simple here!” I yelled at God. God, in her infinite wisdom, did not answer.

That afternoon I made a hospital call. I was coming off a bad experience at the hospital, so I had been dreading this all weekend. Not the visit itself, but having to face my fear and go back in the hospital. But after the burglar alarm, I found I wasn’t as scared any more. The absurdity of the day served to put things back into perspective for me, remind me of who was really in charge. The silent God wasn’t answering, but she was moving. Moving in my heart and soul and spirit to knock me down from my self-confidence, remind me of God’s confidence, and teach me to laugh again. Thanks be to God who comes in the unexpected, in the absurd. Thanks be to God, who moves.

Equal Under the Scantron Machine

My internship site is a polling place. As I sit in my office and work on a sermon for All Saints Day, a steady stream of people have been walking past my window all day, off to do their civic duty. I am easily distracted while sermon writing, so I admit I have spent most of my day staring out the window, amazed at the broad swath of people coming to vote. Business people in sharp suits, single mothers with small children, older people, younger people, people pushing walkers and pushing strollers. What has captured my attention is the equality of all of these people in the action of voting. Everyone gets one vote, no more and no less. Our government is no paradigm of perfect representation, and we can talk about barriers to voting, hanging chads, gerrymandered districts and the like, but in its purest form there is something amazing about an election. In a nation so divided by race and class and access to power, we are all equal in the eyes of the great scantron machine that counts the ballots.

This week we are celebrating All Saints Day. This is a day for remembering, creatively enough, all of the saints. Not just the ones with great wisdom or knowledge or ability to perform miracles, but the ordinary, everyday saints as well. Saints like you and me. So on this election day in the middle of All Saints week, I remember that in God’s eyes we are all saints, all equal in the loving embrace of God.

The Lark in my Heartbeat

This week I did two rather unrelated self-care activities. I went to a retreat about Benedictine spirituality and a Josh Ritter concert. On the retreat we talked about the importance of taking Sabbath time. One of the presenters shared one of her practices for introducing moments of Sabbath into her day. She has a CD of chants she plays in her office. When her favorite song comes on she stops what she is doing to devote her attention to listening to the song. For two minutes she takes time to breathe and re-center herself on God.

It seemed like a simple practice so I decided to give it a try. Only problem is I don’t have any chant music. Nor did I think I would like listening to a CD of chanting all the time. But I can listen to quite a bit of Josh Ritter. So I tried it using “Lark” off of Josh Ritter’s new CD So Runs the World Away. The chorus of the song goes like this:

I am assured, yes I am assured yes
I am assured that peace will come to me
A peace that can yes surpass the speed yes
Of my understanding and my need

The song helps me remember that in the midst of all the crazy I can find peace. The three minutes and five seconds of the song takes no time out of my day yet leaves me feeling refreshed, focused, and assured of God’s desire for peace in my life. Josh Ritter spirituality, somehow I think St Benedict would approve.

Theology Duck

A few weeks ago I found myself having to write a sermon on a Friday. Fridays are normally my day off so I really try not to do that, but on this particular week there was no getting around it. The other problem was this Friday was an absolutely beautiful day. Being stuck inside was the last place I wanted to be. What to do? Luckily, I live in beautiful upstate New York. I took my laptop and went to Skaneateles, a little village on the northernmost tip of Skaneateles Lake, just a half an hour from Syracuse. I got a cup of coffee and found a little park right at the tip of the lake. Here is a view from the bench where I wrote my sermon.


This duck helped.
Great text, beautiful day, friendly duck, decent sermon. The life of an intern is pretty good.

Prayer

“Listen Lord, Listen Lord, not to our words but to our prayers. You alone, you alone, understand and care.”

The lyrics above are from a song from the Taizé community in France. I led a Taizé-style worship for a while and know the song well, but the meaning of it never hit me until last week.

I’ve never been much of a pray-er. I’ve tried various types and styles and methods, but nothing has ever really stuck for me. I struggle with that. After all, I’m in seminary, I’m studying to be a pastor, shouldn’t I be good at praying.

But we were singing this song in worship last week, and I was feeling totally overwhelmed by the experience of being in a new place, juggling new responsibilities, and trying to figure out who I am in this new role that is “vicar,” when suddenly it hit me. Maybe my problem is I have been defining prayer too narrowly. Prayer doesn’t have to be carefully composed soliloquies. (As one of my favorite bloggers points out: “I leave that to the real professionals like Thomas Cramner and the Blessed Mother.”) God doesn’t need my words; God hears my prayers. Even the ones I don’t know or cannot speak; the ones “too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26).

And not only does God hear, but God cares. The God who is creator of the universe and Lord of all, cares about the worries and concerns of one small, lonely intern in upstate New York. This is, as Dr. Satterlee would say, some good news.

Home

Saturday was the one-month anniversary of arriving in Syracuse. On Friday I will have been on internship a month. Nestled between those anniversaries lies another one. One month ago tomorrow marks the day I decided to drive six hours in the middle of the night to spend the day with people I love. Rationally, this was probably a terrible decision. One could argue it was not responsible of me to start internship on as little sleep as I did. But for my soul, it was perfect. I stayed on my old roommate’s couch, snuggled a friend’s new kitten, met my pastor for coffee, and generally immersed myself in the wonderful feeling of being home.

What is home? In the past ten years I have lived in eleven houses in five states, as well as several periods of extended couch surfing. In this transient stage of my life, home has become not a building, but a place where there are people who know me and love me. Thus my parents’ house in California is home, but so is Washington, DC, where I built a community for myself after college. LSTC is home. Syracuse is not home yet, but I can see how it could be. And in this strange year where most of my classmates are in diaspora across the country, sometimes it seems like Skype is home.

So here's to that ever-expanding place called home. Where people love you and the space feels familiar and safe. Even if sometimes those places are virtual.