As I sat through each orientation session on topics ranging from the Curriculum to Student Programming to Spiritual Formation to the Library, I found the information overload to be a bit exhausting. As one professor put it, orientation is like drinking from a fire hose. All of this information is accurate, relevant, and good to know, but none of it applies to me right now. As I sat in chapel each morning, I felt filled with a wonderful joy, a profound inadequacy, and an enduring apprehension all at the same time. I am excited to be here. I know I am in the right place. And yet I am still asking "Why me? How God? Where?" The start of seminary feels both imminent and surreal. I am starting, and I have not started. I am ready, and yet completely unprepared.
A focus of orientation at Candler has been how, as students of theology, we are to stay grounded in faith and spiritual practice as we study scripture and our relationship with God. The balance of prayer and work, play and rest has been emphasized over and over again. As one faculty member put it, you don’t have a "prayer life," prayer is all of life, and that cannot be forgotten when beginning to study scripture academically instead of (or rather in addition to) spiritually.
By far the most captivating part of my first week in Atlanta has been the conversations I have had with people from all over the country. I have met some incredible people who will be in my class, who have spent years doing amazing humanitarian and mission based work all over the world. I have talked with people who have prepared to begin seminary for literally years, saving up money and planning their time to be able to join this new class of seminary students. I have been humbled by people who are sacrificing so much to answer their call to ministry, and by those whose gifts for pastoral care, worship, and servant leadership are already beginning to shine in just the three days I have known them. And I am looking forward to learning and growing with them over the next three years.
As I finish up this reflection, I am munching on a piece of communion bread a friend and I made this weekend. We got the recipe from the Dean of Worship and Music, Reverend Barbara Day Miller. The bread isn’t consecrated, and I substituted the cross on the bread patty for a tic-tac-toe board, but it is still a reminder that each of us in this class, and every person reading this reflection, has been called to a purpose, to a ministry, whatever that may be. The gift of life that Jesus shares with the world knows no bounds, and God is walking with us always, through each and every day.
No comments:
Post a Comment