DStilled

Transforming Seminary Experience

Or at least that’s what the class is called. TSE is the first class we take coming into LPTS and the great part is that my entire incoming class takes it at the same time. So we get to discuss many things that would normally go unsaid or even unthought.  Here are some of my thoughts throughout the two week class.

Racism.  I don’t really understand what the big deal is.  Not that I don’t think racism is a problem, but more of why is this class – the first class we are exposed to – is a bout of diversity and racism.  Much of what we are starting to talk about just is common sense.  I say that, but of course I’m white and not in the minority.  Part of me really thinks, “why can’t they just get over it?  Isn’t racism over?”  Yet even as I write that, I know it’s not true.  So if I can’t understand as one who has suffered, then I will listen.

Church was cool today.  I got to go to St. Stephens and it really reminded me of my time in youth group.  I felt out of place at first, being one of maybe 5 white people in 500, but as the service moved I felt more at home.  Not that I grew up in a black church, but I did attend some services every now and then at formable parts of my youth.  The pastor was awesome and really connected with the audience.  I got to go with Eric and then eat afterward with him.  He’s an interesting character.  Sometimes I feel like he’s randomly profound and other times it seems like he overreaching his own thoughts.  Is that what I do?  Do I just hide it better?  Rambling to get thoughts in order to come up with a worthwhile thought.  It’s neat to see his thought process in front of me and I think I try to hide that.  It’s probably a pride issue.

“Women’s Ways of Learning” was awesome!  I knew that coming to seminary would elicit readings that I would enjoy instead of just suffer.  I’ve spent my entire life learning how the other gender works and this article was one more step in that direction.  “She felt exhausted by the period of graduate training and feared she had lost parts of herself.  She was setting aside private time to let the ‘Pieces of myself float back in.’”  “she tended to listen to what she called ‘a voice of integration’ within herself that prompted her to find a place for reason and intuition and the expertise of others.”  “quest for self and voice plays a central role in transformations in women’s ways of knowing.”  “All knowledge is constructed, and the know is an intimate part of the known.”  “the moral response is a caring response”  These thoughts really opened me to the fullness of humanity most relevantly known to the fairer half.  I felt that all people (men/women/different ethnics), if they seek the “voice of integration,” will live fuller lives.

The whole constructive knowledge in this setting we are in is weird.  I can’t tell you how many times people in class today talked about how they moved passed one way of thinking and are better now.  I sort of believe them because I too fit in that perspective.  There is just a lack of humility among us and that bothers me.  Perhaps it is simply everyone still trying to put on a good face.  Maybe I just want my surroundings to be more humble than I am (not too hard) so they will keep me accountable.  I know I have issues with that and now that I’m in this new place and life, I’d like to start it off on a humble foot.

All theology is interpreted internally.  All participants are given a choice, even if they are only aware of it on a sub-conscious level.  These ideas can really shake the foundations of how I was raised up as a Southern Baptist.  In the world of absolutes, scripture must be interpreted externally (with context a little) instead of using our own experiences to help determine the meaning of the scripture.  But theology isn’t JUST about scripture, even though I was taught it was.  The cool thing is that my dad has been living like this my whole life even though most of the church wasn’t.  Inerrancy of the Bible and other issues of authority shape how my theology looks.  Recently though, the struggle of determining what of those absolutes are and aren’t also are shaping that theology.  It is when the theology moves from internalized to lived externally that shows what value it holds in my life.

Lament For a Son was really a powerful book for me.  I was glad to see that one of our writing assignments had this book as a possibility.  Making sense of a senseless death really showed me a world and a perspective that I both don’t know and might need to know for counseling.  Grief, doubt, love turn into hope in the resurrection (faith makes all the difference).  Writing out his thoughts Wolterstorff cathartically bears his wounds theologically.  The power of WHY!  I couldn’t help but compare to CS Lewis – A Grief Observed because of the nature of the book.  And while CS Lewis showed me that death is not about the dead, Wolterstorff showed me that God is suffering too.  The role and power of suffering in what love is floored me.  Grief is a process of anger, of frustration, of gut wrenching sorrow but God is suffering as well.

White privilege is the heart of racism.  I’m so glad that we are finally talking about this.  I like being energized by my readings and because I so closed related to these, they touched me.  It’s weird though because it seems to me that Caucasians sub divide white race into others, but we don’t seem do it with other races.  The roles of hicks and “white trash” don’t correlate into other races.  That proves that there is a whiteness that even whites don’t always have.  Just like there is a blackness that blacks don’t have always.  Sometimes blacks acquire whiteness to succeed in the white world.  Can whites obtain blackness to succeed in a black world?

Today it was brought to my attention that privilege is all about power.  Racism is a system of power more to do with white privilege than just oppression – burden of racism is on the dominant culture.  But even more fundamentally is that power systems inherently oppress (race, ethnic, religious, caste).  What is a “normal human?”  What is distinctly human?  The fact that people are different makes racism paramount.  What do those in power do with that privilege?  How do we give up some of that power to equate footing for all?  True justice through love is only fulfilled in Heaven BUT the law is love and we must strive toward an approximation of that justice (Kingdom of Heaven).

Ethics a lot of time bugs me.  A lot of my connotations with ethics are negative.  I’m not sure why but it seems to me that ethics and faith are separate.  To me (or at least the way I was brought up) faith necessitates action and response so “ethics” was a way of doing good deeds without spirituality.  That feeling of missing the point of good deeds really irks me.  I liked the idea that ethics cannot be separated from history; and Christian ethics starts and is guided by Jesus and what He reveals to us about God.   It’s just my studies in positive psychology were very Buddhist in their thinking, but with research.  What is the goal of life? What is happiness?  Or with ethics, what do we do with our lives?  The one other biggie for me is the role of law.  Obviously ethics and law are different but should they be the same?  If doing nothing is not a response and I don’t want to respond, should the law force me to?  I don’t know the answer to any of these.  Maybe that’s why the murky topic of ethics bugs me.

Hospitality to me was always something that I do to make others feel welcome.  I grew up thinking that “southern hospitality” was it.  I love entertaining at my house.  I have had some great role models for that as well.  Talking about it globally or hospitality as the guest were ideas that while pertinent I have not dwelt upon.  Also in the Baptist tradition, we think of hospitality as a spiritual gift.  Yet the idea of duty and mandates reshaped the way I see sharing and belongingness.

Seminary Does Not a Man Make

My seminary experience is nearly a fortnight old. I am sad. I am enthralled. I am restless. I am hopeful. I am me. Right now the reading is good but not at all what I want to read about so I’m finding it hard to sit down and just do it. I can’t wait ’til it’s not 100 degrees outside and humid so I can read in a place I found. Redefining myself is a worthwhile but wholly draining task and I would simply choose not to add the hours of reading to it. I do so like the space of my own mind. As my mom’s shirt reads, “They know me here.” Half of the transforming experience of seminary is the simple fact of propinquity. You throw a bunch of religious, smart, hard working people together and lives and minds will change - generally for the good. Discovering what community means here is one of my main goals this semester. Finding my role in it and setting it up in a way that I can thrive would be fantastic. Right now I just can’t care about grades. Good thing this first class is pass/fail. I want to experience the human experience. I want to cry and laugh both on my own and with people worth crying and laughing with. The thunder outside goes really well with the Gladiator soundtrack playing right now. I’m not worried about not having human experiences; I just want them right now. I want friends. Yay for moving to new places.  I’m here as an observer and not a participant.  Obviously that’s not entirely true.  But there is a notion of my presence here as a listener.  I have come here to ask questions and to be primarily silent.  At least at first.  You could say I’m acting after Nehemiah.  He went to a different home and before he jumped into things, he sat back and listened.  As many of you know, I’m a Jack of all Trades.  I want to see the vista and view the roles people are filling and how the dynamics are working.  I want to be all things to all people and to do that I must know what is needed where.  Then after assessing the situations, I’ll step in where I want to.

New Life

I am now writing to you all, my lovely readers, as a man who no longer knows anything.  I can only believe.  I thought I knew who I was but even that is under question.  Why? you ask.  It is because I have now vacated Lexington, my home for so long and reside in an entirely different environment.  While the heat and humidity feel the same, the people, the room, my bed, the nearest grocery, my job — all different.  What is my new job?  Well, I am both a student of counseling and something else TBD.  The one amazing thing about my new home is the amount of shelving they gave me!  Loneliness hopefully won’t pour out on me.  I supposedly live in a small community in my own apartment in a mid-sized city.  We will see.  Orientation starts tomorrow and I hope I’m not the only one that knows nothing.

Just a quick recap since I got back from my trip.  I packed all my things and moved to Louisville, hung out with people I hadn’t seen in a long while and might not see for even more time, drove to Florida and back for family vacation, saw Simpson’s Movie twice, read Harry Potter 7, and realized that sometime in the past year I acquired enough stuff that I can’t fit all my belongings in my car anymore.