The end of beginnings

Well, year one of seminary has come to a close. My room is all packed up and is as empty and institutional as when I arrived. It is strange to feel as though I have too much time on my hands as I get ready to go back to Portland, seeing as how from the moment I arrived it has felt as though there is never enough time. It is as though there is a stop watch going and everyone here is racing to beat it.

There is a part of me that can't quite believe that I have already finished a year of seminary, while another part of me can't believe it has ONLY been a year. I have been thinking back to what I thought seminary and living on the East Coast in Princeton would be like, I can't say that it is what I expected and I can't say it isn't. I think we like to idealize things in the beginning. We come up with grandiose ideas of what living in a new place, learning new things and meeting new people will be like. Even when we try to claim we are being realistic in our expectations we often add a little extra shine more so than is really present.

If I have learned anything this year that would be it. We like to grab onto new things and think that magic will happen and when nothing miraculous happens we are disappointed. (Not saying that I am disappointed). Seminary is not magical and neither are the people you meet here. We are all human beings, we are all people searching for what it is that we are called to do, we are all succeeding and failing, standing tall and falling on our faces. I think that is what I have found most hilarious about this place, here we all are supposedly with strong faith convictions, determined to enact good in the world in the name of God and we can't even figure out how to be humble and serve one another. We sit around loving any chance possible to announce what professors we are friends with, what awards we have received, where we get to go over-seas, how many hungry people we have fed today, and how we plan to single handedly save the world, the whole time caring about only one person - ourselves. We compete to be on top not thinking at all about the five people we trampled to get there. Now I am not saying that all competition is a bad thing, I am a very competitive person. I do think there are mature ways to be competitive with out it becoming a completely self-serving activity. I don't think Jesus sat around at the local bar bragging about the number of people he healed or brought back from the dead, oh, thats right I think he maybe even told people to not talk about it.

So as my first year of seminary comes to a close what have I learned? I have learned that I am no more or less equipped to be in ministry than those around me. That Princeton is a two syllable word that people try to make sound much bigger. Specifically though I have learned that humility is essential, saying please, thank you and I'm sorry will get you farther than demanding you are right, and that all you can do is keep trying.

Blessings and peace,

Amanda

Book Addiction

Recently the seminary held their annual book sale. The proceeds from the sale go towards building the libraries of seminaries in less advantaged locations.

The entire sale is put on by student volunteers. I volunteered by sorting the donations that came in. Boxes and boxes of books from pastors, students, staff, and community members poured in. Now, sorting books while a volunteer position did come with an amazing incentive. To compensate volunteers for their time volunteers got to take books for free. It started out with 1 book per hour and then went up to 2 per hour as the date of the sale neared.

Sounds like a wonderful deal, right? It is a wonderful deal except when you have a book addiction like me. For those of you who may not know, I love books! I mean I really LOVE books. I love to hold them, turning the crisp pages, smelling the glorious fragrance that is simply 'book'. I love looking at their spines all lined up on the bookshelf beckoning to be opened and read.

Frankly if I could spend my days in bookstores I probably would, so being tempted by the mounds of books that came in for the book sale was a difficult thing. Needless to say due to my many hours of sorting I ended up collecting quite a few books (or boxes of books :). Now as I am packing up my room for the summer I am finding it difficult to store them all. I mean, poor things, having to be stuffed into cramped boxes where they won't see the light of day. I suppose they will forgive me right?

Happy Reading,

Amanda

Touching Base

It has been sooooo long since my last post. I really hate to use the excuse that life got really busy, because as we all know life is always busy and the only way we actually get anything done is by prioritizing. Well, life did get really busy and unfortunately a whole bunch of things ended up at the top of my list. The last few months have really been all about school, a few weeks ago we had finals and finished up spring long term classes, which I might add was a glorious thing to finish.

I took a class on forgiveness and reconciliation which was purposeful in putting a face on the nebulous concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation that often get thrown around in the media and social contexts. On the other hand, it managed to make the concepts themselves more complicated. I was given the wonderful opportunity though to go into New York City and here Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak about global reconciliation. He touched on some very significant issues that our world stands to face in the next years and decades. (I hope to post a separate blog entry about the comments from his lecture.)

I also took a class on War and the Christian Conscience. While the class covered a lot of very important theories it didn't do such a good job at connecting the real world with the theoretical. All in all it was a good class, but one hard to do in only ten weeks.

I am also proud and excited to announce that I am done with speech class! I could say that it was one of my most inspiring and informative classes but, there is no use in lying it consumed hours of my life that I will never get back, hours that could have been spent doing more productive things probably, but at least I can say I did it and it is done.

Also, since I last posted I met with my CPM (Committee on Preparation for Ministry). All went smoothly.

Now that I have confirmed that I am still alive, not lost under stacks and stacks of John Calvin books, I hope to post more often again.

Hope this finds everyone well,

Amanda