The Digital Story of the Nativity

(Thanks to Allie for posting on Facebook)

Our Darkness

La ténèbre n'est point ténèbre devant toi;

la nuit comme le jour est lumière.

Our darkness, is never darkness in your sight;

The deepest night is clear as the daylight.

-Taize

Worst Day of Seminary

I'm still a bit in shock and pretty numb, but I feel the need to get my thoughts down at this time. I often use my blog to process major occurrences in my life and it has helped me work through difficult situations in the past, so I'm going to utilize this forum for that purpose again tonight. Whether I actually hit the publish button is another thing altogether, but that I will decide later....

As I've written previously, my experience at seminary so far has been very positive. I love this community and I love my classes. I love the city of Austin and I've really felt like I've found my place. There have also been difficulties, which life always brings, and today one of the most difficult situations for me has taken a terrible turn.

One of the people that I connected with very early on here at school is a classmate of mine who had many things in common with me. He was close to my age, divorced, had an affinity for interfaith dialog, had read many of the same books that I had, and we had very similar taste in music. Shan and I hit it off during orientation and he lived two floors above me in my building. He was struggling with medical issues right from the very beginning of the year and stopped attending classes within the first month of the school year. He was withdrawn from classes for medical reasons and was intending to rejoin us in classes in the Spring semester. The school was very accommodating and made every effort to help him adjust and to get back on track. He reached out to me fairly often and occasionally would come to my apartment to visit and to tell me how he was doing. On rare occasions I was able to get him to join me and others out socially. He would often disappear for days at a time and we would watch to make sure that his car had changed parking spaces to know that he was leaving on occasion. He was checking in with professors and the Dean of Student Affairs (our chaplain) weekly to let them know how he was doing in addition to seeing doctors to deal with his medical issues. Many in the community were aware of his struggles and were doing what they could to monitor the situation and hoping to help in some way.

Sadly, he was found dead in his apartment this morning.

As of this time we do not know any of the details of his death and we are awaiting an autopsy.

The way it has been handled both formally and informally by this school, both those on staff and those studying here, has been great and yet another reinforcement that I am in the right place. As future pastors, we are learning how to be the church and how to help people deal with life. And this is a very real aspect of life that has hit our community today. It is one thing to plan a discovery weekend for prospective students, or to teach a class, but responding appropriately to a crisis situation and modeling for future church leaders how to handle one, especially one that hits so close to home is quite another. Despite the sadness of this day, I am proud to be a member of this community and to be learning from those around me.

The entire community gathered in the chapel this afternoon so that the president, Rev. Ted Wardlaw could share with us what is known at this time and to offer space for comments, questions, and/or reactions. We had a time of prayer together and sang Amazing Grace. A celebration of Shan's life will be held on Monday morning. There will be grief counselors on campus tomorrow and Friday and the chaplain visited our building this evening to see how we were all doing. Groups gathered together for dinner, for drinks and just to be together most of the afternoon and evening. My phone continues to ring with calls and text messages checking in on me.

I ache for his family who not only have to deal with their loss, but who also will have to come here to deal with his apartment, his car, etc. He had a fiancée in L.A. and friends throughout the country, having lived in Sante Fe, Colorado, Mississippi, and North Carolina. He lived in Turkey with his ex-wife and spoke highly of her, her family and the people of that country. I still can't quite believe that he is gone.

Personally, I had a difficult time dealing with him because his struggles reminded me much of the difficult times that I went through with my ex-wife. They were not the same, but it was similar in that I felt helpless to do much other than offer an ear and support. Sometimes that is all that we can do. Sometimes that is more than enough, sometimes it feels so inadequate.

In this situation I felt fairly inadequate. I know he appreciated me and that he felt he could come to me to talk, but I don't know if that was what he needed most. In all honesty that's how I feel about most of my interactions. I hope that I am providing for everyone that I deal with what they need most from me, but that isn't something that we ever know for sure, and we aren't always capable of giving what is needed. All we can do is be as authentic as we are capable of and pray that we are doing more good than harm by how we interact with the world and those around us. I feel that I have done that, but it doesn't make it suck any less that I wasn't able to do more for my friend and now he is gone.

I ask that you pray for Shan, that you pray for his family and friends, that you pray for this school and that you cherish those around you.

Something Shan always did, which I really appreciated about him and I will always carry with me, was that he always told me that he loved me when he left. We should all do that more than we do. We are all loved and it doesn't hurt to remind each other of that.

Know that you are loved and share that love with all that you encounter.

WKRP Turkey Drop in 30 Seconds

Many of my classmates at APTS are too young to remember this, but this is one of the funniest episodes of television ever to air in my opinion.



Much love to my mom and dad who are spending Thanksgiving in Cincinnati with Aunt Ruth and Uncle Ed. See you in a few weeks!!! Love you!

WTF has Obama done so far?

My apologies for the crass URL and the F-bomb being all over this page, but this site is a clever way to go through a comprehensive list of all of the accomplishments from the first two years of President Obama's administration.

LINK

Geeking Out with Yet Another Social Media Site

I am enjoying a relaxing break so far and decided to play around with yet another social media site. I'm giving Tumblr a try and wanted to test the features that will import from my blog as well as post to Twitter and Facebook. I thoroughly enjoy writing, sharing and staying connected electronically (as if you haven't figured that out about me already...) so I'm trying to find the most efficient way to use these sites together.

I've already been using "Selective Twitter Status" to send only the Tweets that I choose to Facebook and that is helpful. It looks like Tumblr is a really convienent way to share things from my iPhone while I'm on the go and to let my Twitter followers and Facebook friends know when I've got a new blog post on blogspot.

So I figured the best way to test out this feature was to post to my blog and see what happens.

My apologies to Tweeple and FB friends if there are a lot of duplicate entries since I import my blog into FB Notes currently. Once I see how this works I'll be adjusting settings.

Here goes nothing....

Fall Break already?

Its kind of hard to believe, but I’ve already reached the halfway point of my first semester. It seems like I just got started and I’m now officially on break and headed back to Maryland for a visit. Even though time seems to have flown by to get to this point I am physically and mentally exhausted and looking forward to some time to recharge and especially to see my friends and family. I’m sure part of the reason that time has flown by is because we have been so busy with papers and exams over the last several weeks and this last week in particular was chock full of assignments and exams.

In my last post I wrote about the school and the community and how I was adjusting, but not about my specific classes, so I want to share that now. I am taking four classes this semester – Systematic Theology, Introduction to Early Christianity: Apostolic era to 1650, Colloquy on Ministry and Vocation, and Introduction to the Old Testament.

Systematic Theology is probably my favorite class and Cindy Rigby is absolutely amazing. Sitting in her lectures is a little like Frog and Toad’s Wild Ride at Disney World. Its not the most linear path from A to B, but it is thrilling, there are gems all along the way and when its over I can’t wait to do it again.

My history class is by far the biggest surprise of the four. I really wasn’t looking forward to it, but Annie Bullock, who recently got her PhD from Emory, is a real treat. She is a wonderful storyteller, her PowerPoint slides are informative and amusing, and she really brings things to life for us so we can appreciate the context from which the history of our church has unfolded.

The Colloquy is a seminar style class which is co-taught by acting-Dean David Jensen and Alan Cole who heads up the dual-degree program at APTS. The purpose of this class is to help us to discern what our vocation will be and to learn and experience different methods of discernment. We only meet once a week, but for an extended period of time. Class is always broken up in to two components. Each week we spend half the time split into two smaller groups and have a book discussion about the reading. The other half of our time alternates each week. We have guest speakers from various vocations one week and then the next week we spend experiencing different spiritual practices and methods of discernment. Cole and Jensen rotate which group they facilitate each week. I am looking forward to taking a full class that meets more often with each of them.

The Old Testament is by far the most challenging academic class of the four so far. John Ahn is absolutely brilliant and has the impossible task of covering the entire old testament in 12 weeks. We aren’t just covering the content of the books, but also background for the origins of each book and the scholarship that has been and continues to be done to put the pieces of the puzzle together. With so much material to cover he moves at a blazing speed. The amount of reading and research that has to be done to keep up with his lectures and prepare for his tests is daunting.

One of my favorite things so far is how all four of these classes fit together like sprockets. It is really cool when we are sitting in one class and something from a lecture or discussion in another class will go off like a light bulb above our heads. I guess that’s what happens when you study for an advanced degree in any discipline, because it sure isn’t something that I can recall experiencing as an undergrad.

In late September we turned in our first paper, which was for History and the next week we had a mid-term in Theology. This past week was extremely intense though.

I had two papers due on Tuesday and a take home mid-term exam that had to be turned in on Friday. One of the papers was for Systematic Theology on the topic of the authority of scripture. One of the main texts for that class is Jean Cauvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (John Calvin – for some reason it bugs me that we have anglicized his name). We also were assigned several articles by various other theologians. Each of these articles was focused on how much or how little authority they attribute to the Bible. Our task was to spend a few pages explaining Cauvin’s position, then to pick two other theologians to summarize. Being at a Presbyterian school, we all had to write about Cauvin. Lastly we were to compare and contrast the views of the three and tell where we find ourselves with respect to scriptural authority.

The other paper was also a really cool assignment, which was for the Colloquy class. It entailed interviewing three people who consider ministry, of one form or another, to be their vocation. I interviewed a hospital chaplain, a recent seminary graduate currently searching for a church to pastor, and an APTS graduate who runs a non-traditional ministry which consists of a retreat center and winery. We were specifically looking to obtain from them how they discerned their call to ministry in general and to this specific field, how they maintain their sense of call while dealing with the day to day aspects of their vocation, what challenges they faced while discerning their call and how they maintain a sense of call when they were challenged as well as with any challenges that may be ongoing.

As I type this my plane is slowly descending towards Baltimore and I am now ready to enjoy my break. But there is a part of me that is really looking forward to getting back to my classes once my tanks are full again.

Last night at a party I was introduced to a term that I (and many of my colleagues) are embracing and claiming wholeheartedly -

I am a semiNERDian!