Day 203 (Prophets)

So, technically, today is Day 203, but I have posted late blogs before. Of course, I think this one is the latest at almost 8 hours. There were several things conspiring against me posting a blog last night.

1) Studying for prophets last night was intense and furious. Index cards were not put away until around 2 in the morning... still not feeling prepared...

2) The Internet at Holy Grounds was not working after that, and I was too tired to go to the student lounge.

1) My hatred of AT&T has led me to believe that I can live without my own personal Internet access. This will save me $60.00 a month, which is good, 'cuz that's a lot of money. But, depending on other sources to connect to the Internet is frustrating, and as you can see, beginning to interfere with my normal activities.

I will make up for this lapse by posting again tonight.

hopefully...

Day 190 (Life Story)

In a strange twist of fate, I ended up basically telling my entire life story tonight. The first part I told to Alyssa, Mike's granddaughter. The last part I told to one of the prospective students that was still on campus.

It all started when I woke up this morning, dead tired from studying the night before. Made it though Exegesis, made it through Theology, got through the Prophets quiz and the rest of Prophets class with my eyes open, but it was a challenge. In the van on the way home, I mentioned to Mike that I could really use a glass of wine, so he invited me over to let me borrow his book for Intro to Ministry, and of course, a much needed glass of wine. His wife, Kathleen, and granddaughter Alyssa arrived shortly after and they invited me to stay for dinner. We had delicious hamburgers with gorgonzola cheese.

Alyssa, 5th grade, had an assignment to complete a 500 word rough draft for a story about an immigrant. I agreed to tell what I knew of my mother's story as an immigrant to help Alyssa with her assignment. If you are going to tell a story about your parents, you naturally end up telling a story about yourself, so everyone there got to hear about a significant portion of my childhood up to about high school.

Afterwards, I went to Holy Grounds to do some homework. Christina walked in eventually with one of the prospective students following her like a baby duckling (this is my favorite nickname for the prospective students), and before you know it, we start swapping call stories. I had avoided the Saturday night dinner for just this reason, but telling my call story to just one person is not the same as telling it to a room full of strangers. Besides, my dad had been home from the hospital for about a day and a half by this point, so my mind was much more at ease. My call story starts when I was in kindergarten. I know this is not typical, but it's true. Although a lot of the time frame overlapped with the story I told Alyssa, I don't think any story points did. So that portion of life-sharing brought us up to the present day.

One story, two different audiences, two different purposes. Adding to "To Do" list: Write The Book of Chuck.

Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 162 (Real Life)

Is there such thing as a blog that really tells it like it is? I mean, one that isn't anonymous, anyway. Because, when I started this, I totally told myself that it was going to be brutally honest so that people could see all of the dirty little details of what it's like to be in seminary, let alone what it's like being a gay guy in seminary. But, the truth is, that may people that I go to school with and other people that I don't go to school with but am very close to, read this blog. I'm not saying that I've ever lied on this blog, it's just that I have to edit some stuff out.

I can't have a private conversation with someone and then blab all about here, as interesting as that might be for some of you to read. There are political things that go on with the school, things that students do that professors may or may not know about, and certain things that people say about other people that I simply cannot in good conscience put out there on the Internet for everyone to read. Remember, we are seminarians, not saints. Besides, I probably wouldn't have very many friends after a while. I do feel that I am a trustworthy person and I want people to know that. I suppose they must if they are aware of this blog and they continue to tell me things in confidence.

There are thoughts that I have that I simply cannot share here. Yes, as open as I am trying to be, there are some things that are just too personal, especially when they are thoughts about other people.

I hope writing this doesn't disenchant anyone who has been reading this blog.

It makes me sad that I can't represent the fullness of what it is like to be here, but there are more things that I have to consider than what would make a juicy read. But, Oh! how I wish I could tell it all!

In other news:

We had our last actual Hebrew class today. Bob gave us tomorrow off to study, so all we have left is the final on Wednesday. A decent sized group of us got together at Holy Grounds to study. I'll be back there tomorrow (with a bottle of red wine to take the edge off) to continue studying.

I showed those same people the movie Tank Girl when we decided it was time for a break. I guess you could say it did not go over well. I did warn them that it was not going to be some deep intellectually stimulating experience. It's just a fun, silly, crazy mess of a movie, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Not everything has to be serious. It's a movie from my youth and I will always love it for it's irreverent sense of humor. I must mention, however, that watching it again now, it was obviously created by some not-so-gender-issue-sensitive men (or at least I think it was). Being acclimated to the environment at SFTS, even I was a little uncomfortable with some of the scenes in the movie. I feel like I should write a paper on it now. What is graduate education doing to me?

Gay Guy in Seminary Day 161 (Ditching Church)

The seminary student was bad today and decided to sleep in instead of going to church. Please do not let this be an example for any of you. I was just really tired and felt like cooking instead. The orange glazed chicken turned out really great, but I still haven't gotten around to making the pumpkin cookies. Hopefully the shredded pumpkin isn't rotting in my fridge as we speak. Faith and I finished the Hebrew quiz today with the help of a few of our classmates (thank you Jeff & Kimberlee). Spent most of the day at Holy Grounds. Sometimes I feel like I live there, and Jim was telling me that I should consider running the place next year. Might as well, I guess, since I'm there all of the time.

I finally got an application back for one of the scholarships I was inquiring about. Hoping to get that out sometime next week. There's this other scholarship I still need to apply for. I know I shouldn't make excuses, but after all of this Hebrew, it's hard to get motivated to do anything productive. Maybe once Jan-term ends on Wednesday I can get all of the stuff done that I've been putting off.

Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 054 (Harmony of Voices)

We had a meeting tonight at Holy Grounds, the seminary's coffee house. Our Old Testament teacher put it together for anyone who was having issues with some of the ideas that have been presented in class. For a lot of people, their faith is connected to the historical truth claims of the Bible. Theologians, archeologists, historians and other scholars have discovered that some of the events in the Bible may not have happened in exactly the way that they are written. This can be a problem for people, like me, who have been taught that everything in the Bible happened exactly the way that it was written. For some people who's faith is so closely connected to the Bible stories being literally true, this can be scary.

What we have been learning in class is that tradition is not always going to give us an accurate picture of what the likely historical truth of biblical events are. Tradition tells us that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, otherwise known as the Pentateuch. Even the first time I heard this, I knew there was something wrong with that claim because these books are not written in the first person and there are events in it that occur long after Moses dies. It just doesn't make any sense.

There is also this idea called the "Documentary Hypothesis" that claims the Pentateuch actually comes from 4 different source documents, usually identified by the initials J, E, P & D. These documents were all written independently from each other and over time were integrated with each other to give us the Pentateuch as we have it today. If you read the Pentateuch closely, even in an English translation, it becomes obvious that there could not have been a single writer. If there was a single writer, then that person was crazy. You have people's names changing, God's name and the names of places change and there's stories that are told multiple time for no apparent reason and their details don't match up. And then, you have poor Moses going up the mountain, and down the mountain, and up the mountain, and down the mountain, and up, and down, and up, and up... wait a minute, when did he come down? Anyway, you get the picture.

But the thing is, our teacher is not teaching this to us to destroy our faith. She is trying to teach us the truth about what this document we call the Bible actually is. She's telling us the truth so that our faith can be based on more than just history, so that we can see the deeper truth behind the stories, which is so much more important than a simple historical truth. (Which is not to say that there is no historical truth to the stories in the Bible, because I still believe that there is historical truth to a lot of them.)

The way I look at it is this: we, as a church, accept that the Holy Spirit worked though people to have these documents written and that she (I've been told that the Holy Spirit's gender in the original language is feminine, so that is how I'm going to refer to her from now on. To be honest, I've never really been comfortable referring to the Holy Spirit in the masculine. Maybe this is why.) worked through people to make sure that it got put together in the form that we have it now. So this begs the question: Why all these different sources? Why the contradictions? Why the historical ambiguity? I think it's because God is too big for one voice to describe. I think it takes a harmony of voices, even if those voices, on the surface, seem to contradict each other, to give us even a glimpse of the nature of God. The different sources with their seeming contradictions don't bother me anymore. They were good enough for the Holy Spirit, and they're good enough for me.