Three is a Magic Number

  Since I’m nearly done with seminary, I often get asked, “So what are you up to?   What’s next?”     The best way I can respond is by saying, “I’m on this super weird journey.” For a couple of months, I’ve wanted to write this post to explain what’s going on in my life, but this has been a hard post to get out.   Writing about my current life journey makes things really real.   As I sat down to type today, I realized I finally got enough confidence to make things really real.   So here is where the seminary ride has brought me… For as long as I can remember, my own spirituality could not be best expressed in existing versions of church.   When we were moving around early in our marriage, finding a church in which I felt connected to God was a frustrating task.   Throughout the years, I’ve had countless conversations with others in the same boat, and I’ve felt drawn to people like this, wanting to walk with them as we worked on this ...

Each semester of seminary, I post a reflection.   I’m grateful for those who have followed these posts and offered encouragement along the way.   I’m 7/8ths done, so this is my second to last post! I had two classes this semester—Senior Capstone and Social Ethics (which I took at Bethel Seminary).  This pic of line dancing in the café is so illustrative of my seminary experience. Senior Capstone was a journey down seminary-lane with people who have become incredible traveling friends.   During this class I realized that seminary has been an incredible gift to me, a gift which many people have contributed to (some knowingly and some unknowingly): the WI Conference of the United Methodist Church, the Dayton family, the alumni of United, UMC Board of Higher Ed, Paul Christensen, Patt Christensen, Jane Souhrada, and Cheryl and Rick Lamon.   I certainly got an education/training, but the greater gift was the blessing of my seminary friendships.   Every t...

August 10th - 23rd Family Vacation.  A simple listing of what we did on our lovely vacation with a reflective afterword by Paul.  Note: If you click on the pictures, they get bigger.  This is likely the cause of Paul's enlarged belly in several of the photos. Day 1- Travel and settling in Big Sky and Buck's T-4 Lodge.  (No photos, but had we taken any it would have been the somewhat outside concourse we walked through in Salt Lake City to get to our connecting flight to Butte.)   Day 2- Paul, Samuel, and Faith did ropes course in morning.  Em and Kelly shopped.  Whitewater rafting on the Gallatin in the afternoon (awesome fun!).  Farmer's and Art Market in evening in Big Sky. Day 3- Ousel Falls hike in Big Sky.  Drive to West Yellowstone.  Smokejumpers School, Earthquake Lake and Memorial.     Day 4- Yellowstone: Early morning to look for wolves in Hayden Valley (only...

We often met at The Center for Changing Lives in Minneapolis.  Part of the sign was captured above our heads.  How appropriate for this group! Tomorrow is my last day of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) internship.  Since mid-May I've been serving The Recovery Church and Mounds Park United Methodist, both in St. Paul. CPE is a funny thing... In my case, I worked in addiction and recovery ministries.  Then in addition, I spent 8 hours per week doing interpersonal processing with a supervisor and 8 other colleagues who were placed at other community-based settings--refuge services, homeless shelter, hospice care, inner-city programming for kids, etc....       Recovery coin that was presented to me and my aunt's ring.  Both important to me this summer. One goal of interpersonal processing is to predict what it would be like to work as colleagues in the future.  And then we help each othe...

Each semester I blog about my major learnings. My spring classes ended in May.  It's August now, and I’m finally getting around to my post.  Blame it on senor-itis. In the spring, I had a full schedule: Worship, Methodist Polity and History, Social Justice and Scripture, and the second half of internship at Solomon's Porch.  While these classes seem really disconnected, I had three really interesting integrations occur in me. Low and High I spent a lot of time thinking about “low” and “high.”   In the religion world, we use these words in cool ways. For example, “low Christology” emphasizes Jesus’ humanness/ministry first and then moves to the mystery of incarnation and divinity.   “High Christology,” on the other hand, emphasizes Christ’s divinity first and then moves to his humanness and ministry. And another example, “high liturgy” or “high church” describes worship that is highly scripted and prescribed, often formal in nature.   “Non-li...

I think Progressive Christianity has a problem.   Progressive Christians like to talk about social justice, learn about justice, and complain about injustice a whole bunch, but when it comes to “doing justice”… well, in my opinion, some of us stink.   Preferring to keep our heads in books and griping about all that’s bad in the world, we avoid building relationship or doing anything about injustices. This issue became clear to me in a course I took this semester.   In order to fulfill my seminary’s global justice requirement, I needed to complete a field experience which confronted global justice issues.   Most students at my seminary meet this requirement by going on a global justice trip, studying justice issues in other parts of the world—like poverty in South America made worse by the US market or apartheid in South Africa.   My understanding of these trips is that students study, do advocacy, build relationships, and confront how their own privilege neg...

It happened again.   I have a stack of papers to correct and several papers to write.   ‘Tis the season in the teaching and learning semester.   While these papers pile up, I find myself in the midst of Holy Week angst.   Like last year , my mind keeps churning away on the cross.   Ugh! What does it mean? Here’s what God has challenged me with this year: The cross is not about the need for violence , but instead about the need for understanding. So much of current Christianity is obsessed with violence.   This week, we will hear how our sins nailed Jesus to the cross.   We will hear how our sins need violent punishment and how Jesus took the punishment for us so we don’t have to experience it.   We apparently are so bad that violence is required to be used against us.   On Friday, we will be urged to think about how the nails were made for us. But what if violence isn’t required to conquer that which keeps me separated from God? ...