Spring Semester: A Summary

I made it.

That's it. That's the summary.

No, okay, I'll go into a little bit more detail. But I think it's telling that it's taken me a month since classes got out to be able to write this post.

This is been the most grueling, anxiety filled year for me since my freshman year of college back in 2006. That seems a long time ago, and the person I was then seems so far from who I am now, and yet there have been times in the last nine months where I've thought, "hey, I remember you. You're that scared kid who panic-cried through a two hour phone call to your mom on your first night away from home." And I guess that makes sense, because this year I started school all over again, and I never expected it to be such a difficult transition. When I think about it, it's more like jumping suddenly into junior year than it is like starting as a freshman. In a two-year program you're immediately confronted with things like graduation requirements, internships, and thesis work from your first day. I remember talking to a friend of mine back in September who said, "Graduate school is great, but if you can help it, don't go." I think I understand that frame of mind a little better now. I love it, but it's not easy.

So here I am on the other side of the semester, looking back triumphantly (and with relief) and what I've accomplished so far. Let's start with classes:

- Hebrew Reading - This class was SO great, and the only bad thing I can say about it is that having class once a week (and at 8am no less) was not very conducive to helping me keep up the language during the other 6 days. That said, we read through some classic texts, talked about translation issues, boned up on vocab, and I feel much more comfortable with the language and translating it (as long as I have my trusty dictionaries around). I still can't read and translate a sentence in Hebrew the way I can with Spanish, but I can get an approximation, and more than anything I can see problem words in English translations immediately, and go back and check the Hebrew to see whether an English translation is taking liberties. It's amazing how translation can help you understand and form interpretations, and help you understand how other people may have come to different conclusions, even if you don't agree with them.

- Pauline Tradition - Severely disappointed by this class. Not being a big fan of Paul to begin with, I was hoping that I'd learn more about context, or about what we know about Paul himself, or even about how we interpret Paul in the modern world. What I got was a class on Greek stoicism and how Paul used stoic ideas to his own ends at certain times, and refuted them at other times. Most of what I got out of this class, I had already read on my own. The major problem was the professor's teaching style (no syllabus, no reading dates, no lecture notes. Just tangential rambling.), and I'm thinking about auditing it with another professor before I graduate, just to see if I can glean anything useful.

- Gospel and Epistles of John - I'm SO glad I took this class. It's an upper level elective, and not many people take it. I've come to the conclusion that John is the most overlooked gospel, not being one of the synoptics, and most people don't seem to care for it. I gather that this is because it's the one which deals with more of the philosophical themes, as if the author had read the synoptics and thought, "alright, now I'll write one with the same characters, and the same lessons, but instead of writing it like a children's book I'll write it like a novel." Personally, I'm a fan. I'm excited to take my synoptics class and do some compare and contrast!

- Prophets - A wonderful overview of the prophetic writings by a wonderful professor who truly believes that these texts speak to us today. Care of creation, care of the widow and the orphan, freeing the captives and the oppressed, calling out those who trample others for their own gain, seeing ourselves as those very people who live in excess and ignore the needy; these are the words humans always need to hear. How do we grapple with a God who changes God's mind? How do we deal with interpretations that see Christ in what are essentially Jewish texts? I used to ignore the Old Testament after about 2nd Chronicles. Now I find there's a rich world of poetry and prayer and philosophy I've never really read.

In addition to these four classes, I also audited a class on youth ministry in the church, which was informative, but unfortunately I've found that if I'm not doing all the reading and writing for a class, I just don't take as much in. Still, it got me thinking and discussing with my classmates, and was a helpful extension to the youth ministry class I took in the Fall.

And then of course there's my ministry internship. I finally made the decision last month to curtail it by a year, and so I'll be finishing up there mid-July and helping the kids transition over to the care of a new youth minister. There were a lot of reasons for this, some of which include the internship no longer being part of the requirement for my degree since I changed programs, the fact that I'm going to be writing a giant thesis next year (which IS a requirement), and findig that the anxiety surrounding the job (and just in general) has become so bad that I feel like the community would be served better by someone else. It was a really hard decision to make, but I'm sure that it's the right one. Now that I've had some time to work through the sadness of the decision and announcement (my own and others), I'm excited about the possibility of concentrating all of my energy on school next year, both in class and in writing my thesis.

So, even though this year, and particularly spring semester, has been unexpectedly difficult, I'm already getting excited about the Fall. In fact, I've already picked out my classes, though I can't register for another few weeks. I take that as a good sign. This is a big mountain I'm climbing, and there are some things I need to deal with, a few things I've needed to face, and some self-care that's a long time coming, but I'm still looking up, and I'm starting to feel really good again. I'm thankful for the help I've received, and I'm really proud of myself for making it this far.

I can't wait to see what's next.

Salvation?

“The alternative to success is discovering that people don’t love you for what you achieve; they love you for who you are. And the by-product of not succeeding in this job is the opportunity to pick yourself up and begin again. In my theology, God’s promise of salvation for people whose lives don’t turn out as they hoped they would is not the promise of a better life in some world to come. It is the promise of forgiveness and a fresh start in this world. ‘Save me’ need not only mean ‘Get me out of this situation.’ It may mean ‘Help me cope with this situation so that I am not destroyed by it.’”

- from Conquering Fear by Harold Kushner

Fear Not

אַל־תִּירָא

This phrase is made up of two Hebrew words, the first pronounced "al" and the second "tirah," and together they have usually been translated as "fear not." It's slightly different than what you would say if you wanted to say "do not be afraid," and it's not exactly a command (if it were, it would be "lo tirah"); it inspires comfort. These words are spoken to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, each of the prophets, and I'm told that the phrasing is even preserved in the Greek "fear not" spoken to Mary at the annunciation.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I deal with anxiety that causes me to start hyperventilating in department stores. I think about the fear of Abraham, leaving home, of Moses speaking to Pharaoh, of Joshua, who takes over the leadership of all Israel (and is told to "fear not" four times in his first encounter with God). These all seem like occasions in which fear is a very valid reaction. My fear seems petty and useless by comparison. But I take comfort by association, knowing that whenever God or any heavenly being is present, the first words to a human are "fear not." It reassures me to realize that God knows that fear is one of the most pervasive and universal feelings, and that we humans have a hard time dealing with it. When God has shown up, fear has been present, and conversely, when fear is present, God is also with us.

This morning, on my self-imposed Sabbath, I opened the book of psalms and flipped through it without looking until I felt like opening my eyes, and I stopped on Psalm 91. 

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, 
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
will say to the LORD, "My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust."
For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler 
and from the deadly pestilence; 
he will cover you with his pinions, 
and under his wings you will find refuge; 
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
You will not fear the terror of the night, 
or the arrow that flies by day, 
or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, 
or the destruction that wastes at noonday.

Well, alright then! As I was reading this, I immediately felt safer, even though I'm having trouble with this concept of God's protection lately (a post for another day!). As I read, slowly, out loud, I calmed down. Something about mouthing each word made me slow my breath. Later in the day, I was reading Harold Kushner's book about conquering fear, and he referenced the same psalm and says something along the lines of "notice how all of these scary things still exist." We're not told that bad things won't happen, but it's the paralyzing and self-centered nature of fear that keep us from happiness and goodness, and when we have faith, that fear is mitigated, sometimes slightly and sometimes altogether.

Today, I was only able to calm down for about two hours before the next scary thing set me off, but it was enough. Remembering these words is enough for now.

Praying With and To

"A non-Jewish friend once asked me, 'Harold, what do Jews pray for?' I answered, 'Jewish prayer is less a matter of praying for, and more a matter of praying with and praying to.' As the theologian Martin Buber put it, when we pray, we don't ask God for anything. We ask God for God. We invite God into our lives, so that the actions we take will be guided by a sense of God's presence."

- from Conquering Fear: Living Boldly in an Uncertain World by Harold S. Kushner

Fall Apart, Fall Together

It seems like I'm now in some kind of holding pattern wherein I have small breakdowns every two or three months. My last one happened right before Christmas, just as my first semester was ending, so I'm about due for another one! 

My anxiety has been getting increasingly worse since I started school and my internship at SpringHouse, and every once in a while I feel like I just can't do anything. If you have anxiety or depression, you can probably relate; it messes with your sleep, your eating patterns, your physical health, your train of thought, your ability to concentrate, and above all it makes you feel crazy and isolated and selfish. For me, anxiety manifests itself in all these ways, and I can feel it in my shoulders and in my chest. I feel asthmatic, like I have a rhino sitting on my ribcage, and my heart beats in all kinds of weird rhythms.

Last night at about 3:30am I had enough of my nightly tossing and turning and instead got up and wrote in a notebook. It's been several years since I kept a journal, but then again it's been several years since I've been under this much stress. My problem with journal writing is that I find myself writing as though I expect someone else to read it at some point, and so I try to think up flowery metaphors and I never include anything too incriminating, just in case. But last night I just needed to get the thoughts out of me somehow, and so I closed my eyes and wrote one sentence at a time, thinking carefully about how I felt and why I felt that way, and mostly about what was worrying me. After two pages I finally got to it:

I feel like I'm not good enough.

This is a feeling that has come up for me at almost every stage of my life so far; I'm very familiar with it. I would bet that almost every person on earth knows how this feels at certain times. But I let this fear of not being good enough (and fear is the key word here) determine everything about how I live and how I interact with people. 

Right now I feel like I can't do anything right in my internship; like I'm always playing catch-up, and like nobody likes what I'm doing or how I'm doing it. I feel like I'm running myself head-over-heels into the ground trying to force myself to be what everybody (including me) thinks SpringHouse needs, and I'm not cutting it. There's a possibility that I could end my internship after this year in order to concentrate on my thesis next year, and I know that this would be a smart decision, but I don't want people to think I'm a quitter.

I'm worried about school, and how there's never enough time to get everything done. And I know that I say "there isn't enough time" right after I spend two hours watching Netflix. But I have to have some time to relax and take care of myself, and if I run out of time, guess which thing gets cut; the homework or the self-care? And if I don't do well on my work, what kind of student am I? School is the only thing I'm good at, and what if I can't even keep up in that arena?

I'm worried about work for my dad's company, especially when he goes out of town. I feel like the company "needs" things from me, and as much as I care about my family, and as much as I want to make them my first priority, I just can't seem to get everything done there either, and it feels like floundering.

I worry about my relationship with Ari. It's hard enough having a relationship which only allows for about four days of togetherness every two or three months, but we're also trying to figure out how to move ahead together in the future, and we have should-we-shouldn't-we conversations about so many possibilities, all of them terrifying for us in one way or another. I feel sometimes like things would be better for her if she weren't dating someone so far away and didn't have to worry about things like moving, and there's always the "I'm sorry you have to risk alienating your whole family just to date me" insanity that goes hand-in-hand with this kind of thing.

All this keeps me up at night, and it wraps itself around my heart, which already feels heavy with information and light on faith. Last weekend when Ari and I found ourselves in the Harvard bookstore I made my way to the religion section, and after browsing through a few shelves I thought "what am I looking for?" The answer came back, "something to make me believe again."

As we like to say in seminary, "it's not that I'm having a crisis of faith.........I'm just having a crisis of faith." Well, get used to it, kids. That's what we're here for. We fall apart, together. We're all throwing ourselves heart-first into things we don't understand, and trying to measure and calculate a feeling that has driven most of the world to prayer directed towards something we can't see. This was never going to be easy. But in the night, when you think to yourself, "I am not good enough for this. I don't know enough. I messed it all up, and I can't find a way back," you are already loved, and already forgiven. 

And I remember that, even though at the same time I am still scared to death about what my supervising pastor will say, or what my professors will say, or what my parents will say. God has promised to love me no matter what; people are much harder to read. 

I don't know what exactly I'm going to do with all of these worries yet, but one thing I realized yesterday; I don't think God wants me to literally make myself crazy trying to get ahead, and if God does love me like everything I read seems to say, then God wants me to be healthy. I heard it this morning during communion in the words "take, eat," and my body with its anxious stomach and bloodshot eyes said, "I don't think I can," but we got bread anyway. This morning I felt like the one lost sheep who gets separated from the ninety-nine; my health (my life, the Hebrew would say) is important too, even though I'm just one among many. Just being that one sheep is important, even if I'm not a particularly good sheep.

And I am thankful for a God that has chosen to ignore the numbers and come find me when I'm lost, because I feel lost right now. I'd like to start making my way home.

#Same

"If you have a group of twelve kids who don't understand your illustrations and one of them probably wants to kill you, you have a youth group just like Jesus."

- Mark Yaconelli

This morning amid multiple raucous interruptions I read my kids the story of Jesus calling the first disciples and telling Simon and James and John that they would become "fishers of men." The kids thought this was the strangest and most nonsensical metaphor, couldn't get over it, and it was the only thing they took away from the entire lesson.

Oh well. Better luck next week!

The Importance of Being Earnest

So much has happened, structurally, in my first semester at seminary. Both in my academic world, and in my own mind. I had planned (and am still planning, but you know how that goes) to write a post about what I learned in each of my classes from last semester, but right now I want to talk about two experiences I've had in the past couple of days that really sum things up for me.

First of all, you should know that I've changed my program at Luther. I was excepted into the Children, Youth and Family Ministry program last fall, but as things went on I began to find that my heart was really in a slightly different place. Luther's programs are set up in such a way that, depending on what your concentration is, you are thought of as being on either the "ministry" track or the "academic" track. CYF, of course, is considered to be a ministry track concentration, which means that it's gearing you up for work in that particular field. What I found was what people have been telling me my whole life; I love academia. I love learning, and being in school, and research, and writing papers, and discussing big ideas with professors. BUT, at the same time, I love my job working for SpringHouse ministry center, teaching middle schoolers and working with young adults, and being part of a ministry team.
So, long story short(er), at the end of last semester I officially changed my concentration to "Old Testament," which means 1) that I can finally say my Hebrew class last semester was for fun AND relating to my field of study, and 2) that I will probably be going on to a PhD program after I graduate, and 3) that I successfully wrangled Luther into letting me change my concentration AND keep my job at SpringHouse, thereby smashing the two tracks into one. WOO!

And this is where the first story comes in, because ever since I changed my program, when people ask me what I'm in grad school for, I find myself totally out of words to describe what I'm doing. I used to say, "oh, I'm at Luther Seminary for children's education." People understood that. They always did the kind of "that's wonderful!" nod you do at people who work in community service, as if your job is so obviously worthwhile and fulfilling. Now, when I'm asked in the course of conversation by the person cutting my hair, I choke up because, let's be honest, what kind of reaction would YOU give someone who answered the question "what are you studying?" with "scripture!" It's like saying you're majoring in under-water-basket-weaving, except with loaded-gun potential, and you can see them immediately wondering "is this person about to tell me I'm going to hell??"

So, the point here is that for the last couple of weeks I haven't really told anybody the truth when they ask me what I do. And it's not because I'm ashamed; it's because I'm scared.
But. Tonight, at the coffee shop, the barista said "any big plans for the night?" and I said "homework. Grad school, you know?" and he said "yeah, I hear that. What are you studying?" and I said "Scripture, actually."

To which he replied, "oh, no way! What parts? I really like Job myself. That stuff is so weird and interesting. It really made me afraid of God."

And I grinned and said "oh yeah? Why, exactly?" and we went on to talk about what he thought about Job while he made my mocha. So. Crisis averted. And not only that, but I feel like it's a sign of encouragement. I walked away smiling like an idiot, and feeling so much less scared. Because I jumped and put myself in a place of sensitivity and discomfort, another person met me in the middle, and for a couple minutes we connected.

It was great.

The second story is related, in that it deals with my own inner dialogue and learning that, of course, it's not all about me. Last Sunday in church Pastor Jen, who is one of three supervising pastors for SpringHouse, was about to give communion, but realized she was out one assistant, so she asked me. I said yes without really thinking, and then realized that I've never assisted with communion before, and didn't really know what to do. When she signaled me up to the altar I picked up the two chalices of wine and followed her like I'd seen other assistants do. Then, we were in place, and she motioned people to come up to the front. Suddenly I thought, "oh my gosh, what's my line. What do I say??" It took me a couple of seconds to remember hearing "blood of Christ, shed for you" almost every Sunday for the last four years. I had remembered; I felt better.

But then I thought, "wow, what a weird thing to say to someone. I don't like this metaphor  I don't even know how I feel or what I believe about communion! THIS IS SUDDENLY REALLY UNCOMFORTABLE FOR ME."

But people kept filing up to the front, and I kept saying it. I kept looking into the eyes of the ones I knew, and smiling at the ones I didn't, and bending down and saying the names of the children who came up. And I felt an incredible peace. It didn't matter what I believed about this wine. I was giving something to these people, but it was not ME giving it, and so I didn't matter in this equation. It was like being a drop of water disappearing into an ocean, but an ocean that understood the individuality of each atom of hydrogen, oxygen and saline. I have never felt so unsure of myself one minute, and then so absolutely certain the next.

And this is part of what ministry is, for me, right now. I have a lot of doubts and a lot of questions, and even though I can now write in another language and create lesson plans, I still don't know anything. I look forward to another semester of searching for answers, but even more so to the moments when I realize my ability to do good in the world, despite myself.