giving thanks, and thankfully receiving: a lesson in swallowing my pride

Shit!  Dang it!  Crap!  #@$!  The gamut of swear words and fake swear words ran through my head, then were sometimes spoken aloud, then I would feel guilty for saying the real swear words, then I would say, “Sorry, God,” then I felt guilty for being so worked up over something that really I had no power over and wasn’t life threatening by any means.  I had been checking my email all morning yesterday for some news from the financial aid director concerning the processing of a student loan which I was originally determined to not borrow but suddenly found myself desperate to have.  I need to pay off the signature loan on my truck; that will save me $280 a month.  I need to pay off the rest of my auto insurance for the year; that will save me an additional $65 a month.  I need to pay off this semester’s student fees balance.  I need to send my Clinical Pastoral Education tuition to reserve my spot at my hospital site of choice next summer.  I need to buy lunch!  I need I need I need…

But that email never came and as the morning wore on, I was becoming increasingly nervous as I was to leave to go home with my friend “Zora” for Thanksgiving.  I wanted to have a little money to take with me, in case we went out for coffee, or to pitch in for gas, or generally be financially helpful.  For all of what I thought were my good intentions, I felt a wave of panic when the email finally did arrive but not bearing the news I wanted to hear: “Still no check, so expect it Monday.”  Monday?!  How would I ever make it that long?

Finally, it was time to go and I had to explain to Zora that my loan check did not come in today and, umm, do you think you could buy me some lunch today?  No matter how infrequently it occurs, I hate asking for help.  I don’t mind it when others ask me and usually if I can, I do help because there is usually this unspoken sense of reciprocity at play.  But when it’s my turn, I feel nothing but embarrassment, shame, and this big.  I mean, here I am, completely at the care of Zora and her family.  The money issue is out of my control, completely, totally.  All I am left to do is trust.  And be thankful.

Which I think is precisely what God wanted me to feel.  Not necessarily shame, but the overwhelming feeling of gratitude when the thanks you give comes from your heart, from a place of being powerless and not having that sense of I-did-by-my-own-doing.  I’m not talking about perpetual victim mentality, I’m talking about being at the end of me–the deflation of my pride and control–knowing that anything I think I can provide for myself belongs to God anyway and when I don’t have it, I’m none the richer for it because God still provides for my needs through other means.  This was the meat of the Thanksgiving Eve sermon that was preached at Zora’s family’s church last night and was yet again another a-ha, I get it, God moment for me.  Seems like I’m always relearning this one every so often.

overwhelmed yet? just a little.

I had so many good intentions of filling up blog post after blog post of all the amazing wonders and intellectual rigors that make up the life of a seminarian.  I have obviously fallen short of that goal. RIgors abound, to be sure, to such an extent that I have not adequately made time to recount them all.  My life is definitely filled with studying, attending classes, scratching my head (more often than not), then thinking about ideas that have been discussed, puzzling over them, feeling exhausted by the whole endeavor, taking lots of naps in between classes, thinking, and working… oh, and working 35 hours a week while taking 13 graduate level credits, not recommended.

A couple of weeks ago, I withdrew from my Exegetical Greek Readings class.  This was not an easy decision to make because this has some ramifications on the rest of my seminary career.  For one thing, I had not come to seminary anticipating I would have to work as many hours a week as I currently do. I had foreseen the need to work, yes, but not to this extent.  When the alternator in my truck died a couple of months ago, this was an unforeseen financial setback.  At the time I was pushing 25 hours a week with work-study and my job at the cafe.  When I was told how much I would have to pay to have the alternator fixed, I asked my manager at the cafe the very same day to increase my hours.  

This in turn has caused me to have to make decisions everyday regarding what reading assignments I would and would not complete.  What seemed the most imperative to class discussions I gave my attention.  What seemed like supporting reading, I pushed to the side.  In reality, my lecture notes are what has saved my tail on every exam so far.

In the midst of all of this, I asked God, “What am I doing here?  I didn’t come here to just ‘get by.’”  The answer came very quietly, “Yeah, quit killing yourself.  You don’t have to finish in four years.”  Oh yeah… well, I didn’t necessarily want to make seminary a five-year plan, but dropping the most time intensive class has really lightened my load quite a bit.  The only thing is, by staying at this seminary, Exegetical Greek is a required course and I will have to retake it next year.  Retaking it next year means my middler-year course schedule will be shuffled and some courses next year will have to be shuffled into an additional year.

All of that is fine and well, which brings me full circle, back to the whole work debacle.  Do I really want to stay here for a total of four more academic years working a minimum wage job?  I have looked around and other jobs that pay more aren’t as flexible with my school schedule.  More prayer.  More “what should I do”s.  

I’ve reopened my admission file with the other seminary I had been accepted to; they happen to have a distance learning Master of Divinity program, designed to be completed 2/3 time rather than full-time, with occasional on-campus two-week intensive courses offered.  I am not officially accepted into this program yet, but I am making plans as if I will be.  I will continue on with my January Interim course as planned and I will be taking a reduced course load next term as well.  In May I will head a few hours north to do my 11-week unit of Clinical Pastoral Education and then in August I will return to Alaska to resume my interpreting work.  I expect to begin the distance learning coursework beginning the fall semester ‘09.

Does this feel like defeat?  Yes and no.  I had really been looking forward to a traditional on-campus type of learning experience and in some ways I got it.  I really love the seminary community here (even if one or two of the professors here cause me to break out in hives).  But someone wise once told me that going to seminary does not end the discernment process.  Seminary is a greater extension of that continuing discernment.  Through coming here, I have discerned that I needed to come here, that this year is an incredible year of new personal (I hope) and spiritual growth, but I am a working adult and will most likely have to remain a working adult throughout the course of my seminary career.  It makes sense to me that if I have the means of pursuing my education in an alternative format that allows me to work in my previously chosen field (and reasonably enjoy it while making an almost-living wage at the same time) then I need to do it.

Being here for only five months and already planning my farewell doesn’t really sit well with me in some ways.  In other ways, though, it feels like the beginning of another new chapter in my life.  I’m just excited to have options, period.

incarnating the truth

This is my friend Susan, from back home.  She is one of the most courageous people I know and is an inspiration.

some thoughts on the post-election

I am a Christian who voted for Barack Obama.

That said, I was so proud of how Obama gave gracious mention to McCain’s concession last night as well as to McCain’s integrity in serving our country.  The applause nd cheering by Obama’s supporters instilled in me a sense of pride, that even though they hadn’t voted for McCain they still felt a sense of unity as Americans, that we are all in this together.  For the first time in a long time, I felt proud to be an American.

I was equally impressed with McCain’s speech.  I thought he was equally gracious in his speech toward Obama.  I wish I could say that his supporters who were present could have followed his example.  The booing I heard was anything but gracious.  

On the home front, I was bombarded with vitriolic emails from my hyper-fundamentalist sister, who criticized my Christian character in voting for Obama, questioned my motivations for being in seminary, and lamenting how Americans could vote for someone–a MUSLIM no less–who wasn’t even born in the United States!  Even after explaining as patiently as I could that, yes, Obama was born in Hawaii even though he spent his childhood in Indonesia, and yes, Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ and does not espouse Jeremiah Wright’s radical anti-white and anti-America doctrine, I was brushed off with a flippant, “I don’t know where you get your information…”

Even my mother questioned whether or not Obama was really an American.  My own parents were slightly more cordial than my sister but any exchanges from them were distant and even slightly icy.

I’m saddened that my family feels it is okay to take out their bitterness and disappointment on me as much as it saddens me that political ideology has become a dogma for them.  I pray that there are far more gracious Republicans out there than what I witnessed last night on TV and on the phone/emails from my family.

some thoughts to patrons of the food service industry

I am a full-time seminary student.  

I am also a server in a restaurant.

I work 35 hours a week–25 hours a week are in the restaurant and 10 hours a week are on-campus with a work study position–at minimum wage.  Yes, it is not an ideal situation but it is what needs to be done.  I have earned a much higher wage in the past but in the area of the Midwest where I live there is not an abundance of work in my prior chosen field.  So I depend on the meager paychecks I earn from both of these jobs and more especially on the tips of the good patrons who frequent the particular restaurant I work in.

I work hard.  In fact, I bust my ass to please you, the patrons, as well as to make sure that you have enough coffee in any of the 10 coffee pots we have set up, enough silverware and plates, napkins, straws, creamers, sugars, butter, extra sides of salsa, and whatever else your hearts can concoct to make your meal and experience an enjoyable one.  I check back on you frequently to see if I can bring you any additional items, to see how you like your meal, if you might need me to bring you a refill on soda or another glass of wine. I clean up your messes when you leave (and yes, most of you make messes the likes of which I thought only children were capable of, I won’t lie) and pull soggy napkins out of soda cups (why do you do that?).

And at the end of my shift yesterday, when many of you folks had worked up quite an appetite after worship at your favorite local congregations, and after every table we had was occupied for three hours straight as customers rotated their way in, after a seven-and-one-half hour shift and after tips were divided between the four of us servers who were working, I walked away with $7.00 in tips.  $7.00.

I wish I could say this was an isolated incident.  But it’s not.  I know many of your faces.  Many of you are genuinely nice people.  I even know many of your names by now because you come in quite frequently.  So why don’t you tip?  Week after week, I run your credit or debit card through, you scribble your signature below in the box next to the X, and you leave the gratuity line blank.  I don’t understand.  Does my breath smell bad?  Did I forget a napkin?  Or did I not bend over backwards far enough to kiss my own ass as well as yours?  (Sorry, ass-kissing and ego-stroking are not in my job description.)

My mother, who has also worked most of her life in food service, seems to believe that people aren’t tipping much or as well due to the economy.  But I know that can’t be true because I see many of you up to three and four times a week.  Obviously you aren’t impeded by the economy from your favorite pizzas and salads and glasses of wine.  

This isn’t written to be a sob story.  This is written by someone who works very hard and has bills to pay as well.  PLEASE.  Please, please, please, if you like a restaurant enough to be a patron there then tip your servers, even if it’s only a dollar.  We have bills to pay and food to put on our tables, too.

things we should learn in undergraduate education, #1

Office machine skills.  Seriously.

Because one never knows when one will wind up working in an office and will need to run various types of copies, and printing onto envelopes, and–oh–how to run a letter-folding machine.  A LETTER-FOLDING MACHINE, I ask you.  I had to go down to the mail room today with a stack of letters to have them run through and folded a la the very sharp and professional “z fold” style.

Except that the woman who was running the mail room–who is a college graduate I might add and is new here (in her defense)–did not know how to run the letter-folding machine.  Alas, nor did anyone else in the entire building for that matter!  The one person who did know how to run it was unavailable.  Therefore, I was left to hand-fold all those letters in the very sharp and professional “z fold” style.  It took much longer than telling a machine to do it but I can’t say I’m not building up some MAD SKILLS here…

where is god sometimes?

Something I have been meaning to write about for a while and haven’t is concerning a friend’s divorce.  This is a friend whom I don’t keep in good contact with and lives in another state so I was a bit out of the loop when I discovered that she and her husband were divorcing.  I was pretty shocked, needless to say.  From all appearances they had a great marriage and had a lot in common.  Both are (or were) Christians and active in a church, typically a place where marriages are highly supported.  So what happened?

Without going into all the personal details, one of the partners came to realize that there was something fundamentally missing in the marriage, something that couldn’t quite be pinpointed until someone else entered the picture.  There wasn’t adultery per se, but it shook everything that my friend had thought was unshakable.  The couple entered therapy where a vast mine of buried issues suddenly surfaced after several years of keeping them [what was thought to be] safely buried.  Unhealthy co-dependency patterns were recognized and the couple agreed to separate and then divorce.

I had so many questions for my friend, the big one being this:  why not try to reconcile since it looked as though the issues were things which could be worked through since they had now been identified and they had an otherwise “good” relationship?  My friend explained that divorce was really for the best since it would be years to work through and break the co-dependency patterns.  What about the power of God to heal this?  What about the commitment to love each other through sickness and health until death do you part?  My friend could only say “I don’t know, but this is really for the best.”  

I grieve the loss of this relationship and the happy memories I have of them as a couple.  Of course I don’t think any less of my friends, I have let them know I wish to support them in any way I can.  But I am still left with this empty little space in my gut for them.  

The thing is, they aren’t the first couple in this congregation to divorce.  In fact, they are the third couple in the past few years that I know of.  I don’t think that it’s anything this congregation is or isn’t doing.  Despite a big push in many churches across the country to build programs which promise to build strong marriages and healthy families, divorce just happens.  And according to the Barna Group polls, divorce especially among Evangelical Christians is statistically at 27% which beats out non-believers who are at roughly 23%.  Among my fundamentalist brothers and sisters it’s even higher at a whopping 30%.

The numbers seem to be against people staying in and remaining happy in their marriages.  And it makes me wonder, where is God in the midst of divorces?  Not just the ones fraught with domestic violence and abuse or other issues, but the seemingly normal ones that just fizzle out?  

In contrast to divorce are the heart’s cries of those fellow single friends who would love to be in marriages or committed relationships but just can’t seem to find their match.  I know a few single guys in particular who are sinking into a dark personal despair because they are beginning to wonder if something is wrong with them that seems to repel a potential partner rather than attract.  And they wonder where God is in this.

I do, too, sometimes.  I’m single and I honestly never thought I would still be single at the age of 32.  Yet here I am.  I admit that I sometimes wonder why, but I no longer bemoan it and rail at God in my pain.  See, at some point, my friend the divorcee (pre-divorce) began to ask God a different set of questions, to change what was prayed for.  At some point I also began to change what I prayed for.  Instead of accusing God of holding back on providing a mate for me, I heeded God’s voice which said, “Can you trust me to fill that place in you that longs for a helpmate until I have formed and prepared you to be the man you need to be for the one I am likewise preparing for you?”  Humbling, that revelation.  I am a work in progress and God’s not done with me yet.

Yes, God hates divorce (Mal. 2:16) but God can also transform what is broken, sometimes into something very different than what we had before.  I believe God grieved with my friends as they amicably though painfully parted ways and I believe God holds my single friends in his arms, too.  It doesn’t explain God’s apparent silence at times in the midst of the pain of divorcing or remaining single and unfulfilled, but God promises that we are not forgotten.  The Spirit offers this promise of hope for all of us:

“Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  I say to myself, ‘The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him’” (Lam. 3:22-23).

one more post before I go to bed

I’ve been asked about 50 times over the past couple of weeks about what I think of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate for VP.  I’m no Sarah Palin expert.  I am from the next town over (Palmer) from where she served as mayor (Wasilla), which isn’t that far and both have populations under 9,000 people respectively.  For most people, those figures should mean that I know all about Sarah Palin and her inner workings, but I don’t.  I know, I’m from Alaska and what good am I?  

If you really want a snapshot into Sarah Palin’s (and my) context, check out this slideshow montage with spoken commentary here courtesy of Slate TV:  

http://slatev.com/player.html?id=1772099431

That about sums it up.

Not really.  But it was humorous and kind of true.  I think the guy who did this commentary is someone who either is not from Alaska or is someone who moved to Alaska fairly recently from some major suburban existence prior to.  Like, his comments on zoning and the accompanying photos.  From his outsider’s perspective, they really are ridiculous.  And on some level I know they are.  But I grew up seeing shit like that, so I’m used to it (desensitized is a more accurate descriptor) and don’t give all the roadside architectural pollution much thought.  Yeah, a lot of it really is shit, I won’t lie (and I don’t use the word ’shit’ lightly, just sayin’).

So, Palin trying to ban books notwithstanding, I think she has been a good governor for Alaska overall.  She’s not a typical Republican which makes me respect her.  She doesn’t tolerate the Good Ol’ Boy system, she has a really keen nose for corruption and isn’t afraid of canning people who are crooked (and she has).  I can’t say I’m too keen on the idea of McCain as president, but if another Republican has to be in office, I’d rather it be McCain than Huckabee.

hilarious

What do you get when you cross a Veggie Tales Silly Song with “The Office”?  See video below.  This made my night.  LOL LOL LOL

who is jesus to me?

For my class Jesus & the Gospels, we were asked to prepare a short presentation with a song, poem, or some other kind of visual aid to answer the question, “Who is Jesus to me?”  To give some context here, this course is a strictly academic (read that non-theological) treatment of the historical Jesus, not the Jesus of faith.  One of the instructors for the class pretty much from the get-go has made the statement that the two Jesuses are not the same at all.  

Now I’m no New Testament scholar.  I can concede that the Gospels probably were not meant to be completely historical treatments of the life of Jesus, since there are variances between them.  I studied literature in college and I get metaphor and I can see that there is a bit of that thrown in to emphasize the writers’ point.  But I’m struggling with the idea of the Jesus of faith and Jesus of history as incompatible.  I’m having difficulty going there because if there is a dichotomy, the Jesus of faith is a myth.  I can respect the Jesus of history, but the Jesus of history alone isn’t enough to give me hope in this life.  That would be like saying there is a Martin Luther King Jr of history and a Martin Luther King Jr of faith, and the MLK Jr of faith died and was resurrected.  It’s simply not true.  

So, back to the assignment.  I ended up choosing a song by Sara Groves that I find to be very personal, honest, and even a little emotionally moving.  This song embodies who Jesus is to me, at this place and time in my life.

 

AWAKENING – SARA GROVES

 

Dress down your pretty faith. Give me something real. 

 

Leave out the “thee” and “thou” and speak to me now. 

Speak to my pain and confusion. 

Speak through my fears and my pride. 

Speak to the part of me that knows I’m something deep down inside. 

 

I know that I am not perfect, but compare me to most, 

In a world of hurt and a world of anger I think I’m holding my own. 

And I know that you said there is more to life. 

And I know I am not satisfied. 

But there are mornings I wake up and I’m just thankful to be alive. 

 

I’ve known now, for quite a while, that I am not whole. 

I’ve remembered the body and the mind, 

But dissected my soul. 

Now something inside is awakening, 

Like a dream I once had and forgot. 

And it’s something I’m scared of 

And something I don’t want to stop. 

 

And I woke up this morning and realized that Jesus is not a portrait 

Where stained glass windows or hymns or all the tradition that surrounds us. 

And I thought it would be hard to believe in 

But it’s not hard at all

To believe I’ve sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. 

 

And he’s not asking me to change in my joy for martyrdom 

He’s asking to take my place

To stand in the gap that I have formed 

With his real, and his sweet, and his real amazing grace. 

And it’s not just a sign or a sacrament. 

It’s not just a metaphor for love. 

The blood is real and it’s not just a symbol of your faith. 

 

So leave out the “thee” and “thou” and speak now.