Random Musings

Someone asked the other day when I was going to take time to update my blog, and my response was that I feel like I just did. Then I went back to look and realized it has been almost 5 weeks since I last wrote anything! Here we are at midterms already, and part of me is looking around in confusion wondering how we got here so quickly! So for those who have been faithfully checking back to see if anything is new, I thought I'd try to catch you up on the high points of the last 5 weeks.

Classes
Are going....yeah....they're going....hey, it's midterms, I'm tired of them! (Don't worry, that's normal around here!) I am LOVING my class on Women, the Bible, and the Church, and I'll write more about that specific class in a minute. The other two (an exegesis of 1st Corinthians and the Writings of the OT) are going well--I'm realizing how much Greek I did NOT learn last year in my 1st Corinthians class, which is a frustrating feeling, but I am also impressed at how much I did manage to retain. So this week and next week are a LOT of papers and reading (ok the reading never stops) and then there is a bit of a lull leading into finals. Remind me to keep working during that lull though--finals week is not looking so fun right now!

Church/Internship
I LOVE being an intern at Burbank! The church is amazing and has been so welcoming and accepting of me as part of their staff, and my supervisor, Ross, is an incredible mentor and role model. He's given me the opportunity to do anything I want--this week we're supposed to pick a Sunday for me to preach my first sermon (probably late November or January), and probably in January I'll get to teach the adult sunday school class on a topic of my choice. He's let me come to meetings with the elders, deacons, staff meetings, educational committee meetings, next month is the budgeting meetings and eventually I'll start joining him on his visits to hospitals and nursing homes. He's let me be up front every Sunday leading some aspect of the worship service, which has been a wonderful experience (writing and giving the call to worship or the offering prayer or children's sermon...). I think part of me was a little afraid I would start this internship and hate it and think "Oh no! I don't want to be a pastor! What am I doing in seminary?!" But the opposite has happened. This internship has made me feel incredibly overwhelmed and inadequate and has made me realize that I will never learn everything I need to know to be a pastor but I still feel compelled to keep going, I feel more alive leaving the church each day than doing anything. I love the conversations I am having with parishoners each week, I love getting to be involved in meetings and looking at how a church operates behind the scenes, and I love having someone I can bring any and all questions to. I am going to go before my session (the committee of elders) at Bethany in Seattle in November to hopefully begin the first step of the ordination process, the inquiry phase. It's a period of time that the church elders and the pastors in the area commit to walking alongside a person to help them discern whether or not they are in fact being called into the ministry. It's a process I could have entered a long time ago, yet I wasn't ready, and now I realize why. So much has happened in the last year, and so much growth has taken place, that I know I could have gone before session last August, but it wouldn't have been right. God had a LOT of work he wanted to do on me (and still does) but now I feel like I am at a place where He really is telling me I am ready to start this process. So I'll keep y'll posted! (I'll be in Seattle Nov. 14th to meet with session...)

Fun times in LA...
My parents were here in town this weekend! It was VERY fun having them here (and not just because they pick up the bill when we go to dinner!) I loved getting to show them my life here, a life they've heard a lot about, but weren't able to picture until they came to visit. They met my friends, came to church with me, met Ross, wandered the bookstore at Fuller (I think my dad could have spent HOURS in there!), and of course needed some kind of project that invovled Home Depot so they added more shelves in my cupboards in the kitchen. Ross let me lead most of the service on Sunday since they were here which was a great experience, (He wanted me to preach and I told him i needed more than 1 week to write my first sermon--especially in the midst of midterms!). I have a few pictures to post but my dad has to email them to me first so when he does I'll post those.

Women, The Bible, and the Church
This class is amazing. It has been such an eye-opening class to really look at this issue in depth. We're looking at some of the tough passages where Paul writes that women should not speak in church and should not have authority over men and we're looking at the cultural reasons he wrote those things in the first place. It has been such an affirming class to take, especially in connection with my internship in a church that is very supportive of me being in ministry. Last Wednesday Dr. Scholer gave one of the best lectures I've heard in a classroom. He spent 2 hours talking about Jesus and women--the different women Jesus interacted with (and he definitely didn't interact with the high society women, he talked to a lot of women no one else would have looked twice at which was VERY counter-cultural for his time!) and looking at how Jesus treated them. He had 3 main points about women that Dr. Scholer wanted us to gain from looking at Jesus and how he interacted with women: Jesus saw women as people of dignity and worth (something most men in those days did not do), women were disciples of Jesus even though they were not officially named in the 12 (Jesus could not have had a woman be part of that inner circle of 12 in those days--it would have been too counter cultural and would have let people to ask too many questions but women followed Jesus in every town he came to, they were the last ones left at the cross when all the men had run away, and they were the first ones Jesus appeared to when he was raised from the dead, in fact they were given the job of going to tell the men that Jesus was alive! The men were all hiding in a locked room and the women were the ones who had the courage to go to the tomb that morning.) and third, women were proclaimers of the Gospel--the first missionary ever named by Jesus was a woman he had talked with and he told her to go tell her town all that he had said. In the infancy narratives there are 5 people who declare the birth of Christ as being significant (Simeon, Zechariah, Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna) and we know more about these 3 women than we do about the 3 wise men--yet everyone preaches about the 3 wise men--Dr. Scholer challenged us to preach a Christmas service on the "Three Wise Women" next year :) Anyways, the lecture was amazing and affirming and I left wanting to weep at how much Jesus loved women and how muc honor he gave them in a culture and a time period that believed they weren't even worth bothering with. Dr. Scholer found a hymn that a contemporary hymn writer wrote about some of these women that Jesus interacted with and he had a student who is a very talented singer come in and sing it for us after his lecture. It was a powerful song to hear especially in light of what he had just been talking about for 2 hours, and I found the lyrics on line and thought I would share them with y'll. It's called Woman in the Night by Brian Wren who lives in England. See if you can figure out which woman each verse is about:

Woman in the night, spent from giving birth,
guard our precious light: peace is on the earth!
Come and join the song, women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again. (Mary's verse)

Woman in the crowd, creeping up behind,
touching is allowed: seek and you will find!
Come and join the song, women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again! (the hemmoraging woman who believed that if she could just touch Jesus' robe she would be healed)

Woman at the well, question the messiah,
find your friends and tell, drink your hearts desire!
Come and join the song, women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again! (the woman at the well to whom Jesus offered the living water)

Woman at the feast, let the righteous stare;
come and go in peace; love him with your hair!
Come and join the song, women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again! (the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears and dried them with her hair in the house of the Pharisee)

Woman in the house, nurtured to be meek,
leave your second place: listen, think, and speak!
Come and join the song, women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again! (A verse probably about Mary and Martha)

Woman on the road, welcomed and restored,
travel far and wide; witness to the Lord!
Come and join the song, women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again! (The many women who traveled with Jesus from town to town)

Women on the hill, stand when men have fled!
Christ needs loving still, though your hope is dead.
Come and join the song, women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again! (The women left at the foot of the cross when Jesus died)

Women in the dawn, care and spices bring;
earliest to mourn; earliest to sing!
Come and join the song, women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again! (The women at the tomb on Easter morning)