Julie’s News from Maryland

matriculate: to enroll as a member of a body and especially of a college or university

Today was the Matriculation Ceremony at school.  It was a very fancy ceremony. All of the faculty processed into the chapel wearing their academic robes.  It was EvenSong (which is just Evening Prayer but with lots of singing), so we sang a lot of Psalms and Canticles and Hymns.  The New Testament Professor read the names of each of the new students and we stood as she read our name.  Then, one by one, we went forward and signed the Matriculation Book.  Every student that has attended since 1822 has signed the book.

When I first heard about it, I thought it sounded a little silly.  But, it turned out to be very moving.  It was great to do it this week, now that we’ve all had a chance to get to know each other a bit.  It was really profound to watch my classmates sign the book now that I know more about them and something about what has brought them here.  I think that we all felt a little more united as a class when we were finished.

The ceremony was followed by a really nice dinner with our families, the faculty, and other community members.  The Middler class provided wine for us which made it lots more fun.  Various people gave toasts all evening long - some very serious and heartfelt, some just silly and fun.  It was a great evening.

This week has been hard for us as a family.  We are all feeling lonely and homesick.  Nicholas has had tantrums and we’ve been frustrated and worn down by that.   The Matriculation Ceremony helped me see the big picture.  It reminded me that my class is full of people, some of whom will be close friends, hopefully for a long time, if not a lifetime.  I’m still homesick, but I’m feeling hopeful that we’ll find our place here.

I attended the coolest event last night at Columbia university.  A group of interfaith students - Jewish, Muslim, and Christian - have formed an organization called ‘Amen’.  Their mission is to connect people through the arts.  The event last night was a dance performance entitled ‘Ester’ about a woman grieving the death of her son.  After the performance, a panel consisting of a Rabbi, a female Islamic theologan, and an Episcopal priest discussed each faith’s traditions about death and grieving. 

It was really really interesting.  The audience asked really thoughtful questions and the panel gave very articulate answers.  I was particularly impressed by the ability of the Islamic theologan to give very thoughtful and concise answers about how her faith traditions views death and dying.  I feel like I learned a lot.

As a bonus, I spent some time chatting with the Episcopal priest after the event.  Her family is from India and she was raised in Texas.  She attended Union Theological Seminary here in New York and worked as a chaplain at UCLA for a while. She’s working as a chaplain at Columbia University now.  She is really smart and really down to earth and we had a great conversation.  She reminded me that I have good instincts and that I’m not the only person that has found seminary frustrating.

…to my Grandma Nini.  She passed away today around noon in Santa Maria.  My mother and her cousin were with her when she slipped away.  She has been in the hospital for a little more than a week after falling and breaking her hip. She has been slowing fading away for the past several years.  She has been living in an assisted living facility and has been as comfortable as one can be when they are in their 80s.

May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen

Believe it or not, there is a farm in Queens.  (If you don’t believe me you can see for yourself at http://www.queensfarm.org ).  And, every year they host the Queens County Fair.  I found it on an event listing this morning and we decided to take the trip out there.  (For those that care, we took the E train to the Kew Gardens/Union Tpke Station, then took the Q46 bus about 100 blocks east across Queens).

It was a cute little fair.  They had rides for the kids, a petting zoo, a real-live Native American tee-pee that the kids could play in and learn about, tractors to climb on, a magic show, a frog jumping contest, the whole deal.  It wasn’t a huge place and there weren’t tons of people, so that was even better.  Ella wore her cowboy boots with a little skirt and looked as cute a button.  Nicholas went on “The Scramber” all by himself - I guess he’s not so little anymore.

We really had a fun day.  We were pooped when we got home - just like you should be after a day at the fair.

Well, it’s happened.  I have a paper due next week and I’ve started to procrastinate.  Here it is, the week before my very first paper is due and I’m already finding ways to avoid getting it done.  So far today I’ve written a letter to my bishop, played with the children, answered email, taken a walk, and now I’m posting to my blog.  I wonder how many other things I’ll do before I start to write the paper.

Actually, I started to work on the paper yesterday.  It is only a reflective paper that is designed to give us some practice with critical thinking.  We all read a novel, Silence by Shusaku Endo, and now we have to write about a theme that emerged from the text during our reading and conversations about it.  I can write on any topic that I choose, either from a list they provided or my own.

I started brainstorming some ideas yesterday and discovered that I have a number of interesting ideas, but not a lot of focus.  I put a lot of jumbled thoughts on the page, but didn’t get much further than that.  I keep hoping that I’ll be inspired to choose one, but that hasn’t happened yet.  Sort of makes me wonder how the gospel writers found their inspiration.  Did they sit around procrastinating or did the words just jump off the page at them?  Things that make you go hmmmmm.

The Junior (first year students) and Middler (second year students) classes went on retreat together this weekend.  I got a little homesick on the ride on the bus to Connecticut.  As I surveyed the landscape, I noticed the striking difference between the northeast and California.  In the city, I don’t feel so far away from home.  It’s just a city - big buildings, lots of people, not all that different from San Francisco.  But, out in the woods, the differences are profound: the trees are different, the grass is green, there are standing bodies of water everywhere.  It just reminded me of how far away from home that I really am.

The first activity scheduled for Friday night started with a “stump the Middler” game where Juniors asked questions of the Middlers about campus, classes, professors, etc.  It was all very tongue-in-cheek and quite fun.  After that, the leader pointed out that by virtue of the fact that we are all in seminary we are automatically nerds.  But, he noted that we all have a little something else that makes us nerds.  He asked each person in the room to name their little nerdy thing.  It was hilarious and lots of fun.  It took me out of my funk and really got me into the weekend.

On Saturday afternoon, the Junior class got together as a group with a spiritual director and discussed our feelings about the transition to seminary.  As one of my classmates commented later, “It started out as a very superficial, ‘when is this going to be over’ kind of event.”  Finally, though, one person mentioned how frustrated she was and how she almost moved home last week.  I then spoke about the profound loneliness that I’ve felt over the past few weeks.  The conversation just broke open from there.  People talked about their frustrations with their difficulties learning how to do worship here.  They talked about how hard it is to be here - so removed from our parishes and our ministries. It was an great session.  Immediately following, the quality of our conversations improved so much.  We spent the afternoon and evening having very authentic and real conversations about our ideas, thoughts, feelings, and fears.  I finally feel like we’ve broken through our exteriors and can really start to get to know each other.

On top of all that stuff, the retreat center was very swanky.  The food was posh - just like a fancy hotel.  They even had people to clear the plates when we finished eating.  And, the Middler class were amazing hosts.  Each night they hosted a party with lots of beer, wine, cocktails, cheese, crackers, desserts, and even live music.  It was so fun to have that down-time together as a group.

This semester I have four required classes and am allowed to take one elective.  Though taking an ancient language (Greek or Hebrew) is not required to graduate, many of my classmates have chosen to take Greek - many being urged by their advisors or even required by their bishops to do so.

On the counsel of many people I trust, I chose not to take Greek.  Truthfully, how much can one really learn in just a semester? Plus, any good concordance would be able to supply me with what I need to know for a sermon or research purposes - especially the software concordances.

So, I searched the course catalog for an alternative elective.  I found Ethics 113: Individuals and Communities. The course description is as follows:

This seemed like a dream come true!  A practical course that deals with a real world problem. And, not just a real world problem, but one of the biggest problems facing the church today.  Ok, so maybe that’s my opinion, but still!

Here’s the bad news: THE CLASS WAS CANCELLED due to LACK of ENROLLMENT.  We only needed 6 (yes, six) people in the class for it to go, but we couldn’t get that many.  Can you believe that?!?!  I have an entire class full of people taking an ancient language that they’ll never learn in one semester and will only be able to use on the rare occasion that they want to quote the Greek in a sermon.  So maybe they get a richer reading of the New Testament because they can read some of it in its original Greek, but how on earth does that affect their ability to lead a congregation? 

How is it that the Individuals and Communities class isn’t a REQUIRED class? Shouldn’t everyone leaving seminary have a good understanding of how individualism affects communities?  Don’t we want our clergy to have practical skills for combating the individualism that is threatening the demise of the church?

The real bummer is that the class is taught by an adjunct professor, so it is unlikely that it will be offered again anytime soon. Drat.

This afternoon the seminary hosted a Gala Celebration to honor the Most Rev. Desmond Tutu and to launch the Leaders for the Church capital campaign.  The seminary is gutting the building that sits along 10th Ave and is creating the Desmond Tutu Education Center.  The Center will include a 59 room inn and conference facility.

Attending the Gala Celebration were students, faculty, benefactors, alumni, and of course Desmond Tutu.  He spoke at the reception and then he preached at worship.  He is an amazing man and had wonderful things to say.  I was very humbled to be in his presence and for a moment felt very unworthy to be there.  He is really remarkable and has accomplished so much in his ministry.

Also in attendance was Sam Waterston.  You know, the prosecutor from the original Law & Order series.  The series is filmed a few blocks away from the seminary.  Sam is, as the Dean described him, “An Episcopalian, a friend of the seminary, and the Honorary Chair of the capital campaign.”

The Dean introduced Sam just after Archbishop Tutu had concluded his speech.  Sam stepped up to the microphone and said, “I thought you were going to say, ‘And the most historic anticlimax…’”  It was very funny.  I suppose no matter how famous you are, you really just can’t follow Archbishop Tutu.

It has become clear to me that I have been very very spoiled in the last few years.  Working for Sun, I was rarely required to arrive at work at any particular time.  Occasionally, I’d have a 9:00 or at 10:00 meeting, but I certainly never had any obligations earlier than that.  In fact, I learned that if I got to work too early, there was no one else there if I needed a resource.

Having to get up and be at class by 8:40am four mornings a week is quite a change.  And, Nicholas needs to be at school by 8:30, so we all have to be up and getting ready. 

Naturally, none of us are yet accustomed to falling asleep early enough so that we get a good night’s sleep, so every morning begins with the crushing sound of the alarm.  There are no country music stations in New York (the closest is in Philidelphia!), so we are stuck with some other random sound that comes out of the alarm.  Rick and I manage to drag our crabby butts out of bed so that we can go wake the crabby children.  And man are they crabby.  Lots of shouting about not wanting to go to school, crying over wardrobe choices, etc. etc.  It is like a 3-ring circus around here.

Those of you with school age children are probably thinking to yourselves, “Rookies!” Yes, we are rookies.  I’m sure that this will get better.  Geez, I hope this gets better.  In the meantime, we are quite a site to behold in the mornings.

The upside is that all of that craziness, so far at least, has given me a legitimate excuse not to go to the dreadful Morning Prayer service that begins at the ungodly hour of 8:00am.  Lucky for me Eucharist is at 11:45 when I am much chipper and quite a bit calmer. 

Nicholas started kindergarten today.  In typical Nicholas fashion, he was very dramatic about not wanting to go this morning.  He was whiny and angry and said a number of times that he didn’t want to go.

But, also in typical Nicholas fashion, his attitude changed in an instant.  On the walk to school, I asked him which character he’d like to take his picture with at school (the outside wall of the school has various characters painted on it).  He said that he knew just which one.  When we got there, he found the astronaut and we took a picture.

As we waited to enter the school, he saw a couple of kids he knows from seminary.  He shouted, “Kindergarten! Yay!” and thrust his fist in the air.  By the time we got to his classrom he was all smiles for his teacher.  They had a cute exchange about where to put his nametag and then he was off to find his cubby.  After that he made a friend and found something to play with. 

Of course, he maintains that the day was “boring” and shared very little about what he did.  But, he seems happy about going back tomorrow so it must not have been too bad.

As a side note, as we were waiting to enter the school, I looked next to me and saw a mother wearing a t-shirt that said Masterbation is not a Crime.  I thought to myself, “You know, I bet none of the mothers at the kindergarten in Los Altos were wearing a t-shirt that said that on the first day of school.”  Gotta love New York!