Sunday Morning Sabbath: Red Peppers and a Cat Named Lionel

Lionel, though certainly more photogenic, was also rather more camera-shy

Of all the sages most commonly called upon at Candler, Barbara Brown Taylor and Howard Thurman easily take the cake.  Whether it’s in the form of assigned readings, classroom discussions, campus lectures, or your casual, everyday conversations, these are two voices I am learning to expect to surface just about any second.  Since I gave you a snippet of B.B.T. last time, we'll go with some Howard Thurman today: 
 

              Waiting in the quiet experience of worship I seek the courage, the push of God,

              to see the true thing in everything with which I am involved…I seek courage to

              do the true thing that my own life may not be double talk.  Here, in the

              quietness of worshipful waiting I seek courage to do the true thing.

                                                                                         Meditations of Worship, 166-167

 

Beautiful, right?  Though goodness, how often I catch myself slipping into patterns of “double talk” living!  Here, in this place where I am prone to define myself in a rather reactionary fashion, where I am often far too keen on locating myself within the social justice pool rather than the ordination track.  “Oh no,” I insist again and again, “it’s graduate school I’m here for, not really seminary!”  And yet, one quick glance at my track record reveals just how wide is the gap between my saying that I’m here because I care about social justice and my actually seeing and doing “the true thing” when it comes to real-life issues!  We talk about “growing edges” in class a lot, and I sometimes wonder if it’s possible to be just one entire, giant “growing edge.”  When I think on all the areas of life that I need to be more conscientious about/ faithful in— everything from food issues, environmental concerns, finances, current events, and the list goes on and on!— well, I see that it’s not only courage that I need, but also more carved-out time in my day, increased patience with myself, and heaping doses of humility as I learn from my peers (both "ordination-track" and not!) in these realms and more.

 

This morning, a friend and I tried to check out a church over in Doraville, only to be greeted by a sign on the door saying that all were welcome to join them for worship…as long as you didn't mind making the 80 mile trek out to where they were having their fall retreat!  After much debate over whether/ which church we ought to try out instead, we somehow ended up agreeing that a trip to the DeKalb Farmer’s Market might make for good church as well.  To be sure, I truly am excited to uncover and become enmeshed in a worshipping community of faith, and hopefully sooner rather than later!  However, as we wandered the aisles of local and international produce and as my friend shared more about her personal commitments to shop at places like this one— places where fresh food is affordable and accessible and where fair wages for those involved in every stage of the process are supported— well, somehow her joke that we might find God among the vegetables didn’t feel that far off!  We rounded out the morning with a visit to Lionel, the beautiful cat I’ve had the honor of feeding while a friend of ours is out of town, and then it was back to the house to unload the miscellaneous items I accumulated at the market (red peppers, herbes de provence, sweet potatoes, and more).  For the record, I have no clue as to what on earth I'm actually going to do with these mismatched items, but it should be fun motivation to work on yet another one of my "growing edges," developing a few basic competencies in the kitchen!

 

Looking back over this post, I realize that the whole Howard Thurman quote and farmer’s market experience might feel entirely unrelated, and who knows, maybe they are.  After all, in my Pastoral Care class, we’ve repeatedly discussed the concept of “good crazy,” a concept I couldn’t help but strongly identifying with!  But maybe, just maybe, in moments like these there really is an element of “seeing truly,” a way of looking for God in all things and finding reasons for reverence in all places...and yes, that just might include the produce aisle!  (Veggie Tales, anyone??)

 

Until Next Time,

Janelle

 

Lost and Found

 

So, I took this picture because lately I have truly been losing my marbles.  Ok, so not literally—as you can see my marble collection is still going strong!  However, I have been misplacing things this week at quite an extraordinary rate!  For example, in one day alone I lost my purse (found, thank goodness, on a couch I barely remembered sitting on); I lost my keys (which may or may not have turned up in my refrigerator, but let’s not even go there!); and then, returning home that night after a loooong day, discovered that I had also managed to lose the key to my apartment.  After 45 minutes of unproductive flashlight-hunting outside, I called my parents in sheer frustration, who (quite wisely and tactfully) pointed out that it really might make more sense to continue my search come daylight.  Being, at this point, in a rather dramatic mood, I heaved a giant sigh and plopped down right smack in the middle of the leaf-strewn parking lot to signal my defeat.  And, lo and behold, there was my key— only 2 inches away from where I had randomly sprawled out!  Now, I know there’s been a lot of pushback against diminishing the meaning of the word “miracle” by applying it to all sorts of trivial things, and I completely get that, but, suffice it say, statistically speaking that just shouldn’t have happened!

This week I’ve experienced moments of real “lost-ness” on a more metaphorical level as well.  Perhaps more so than I expected, I’ve been struggling recently with thinking through just exactly who I am/ what my role or even purpose is, this far removed from the Rhodes College and Memphis communities in which my identity was, in so many ways, clearly defined.  Reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, An Altar in the World, for my Pastoral Care class, I ran full-force into a quote that crystallized the sense of displacement I’d been feeling recently, as she exhorts readers to “press beyond being good to being good for something” (120).  Now, that might not strike a chord with anyone else, but for me, sheesh, that was rough stuff.  Because, in more ways than I care to admit, I think I still place a high priority on being good.  In fact, I can be quite good, excellent even, at being good!  But being good for something?  Well, that’s another matter entirely and something I haven’t figured out in the slightest!

At the same time, I’ve also recently had some delicious moments of feeling “found.”  One of those moments came in an unexpected venue— a “Vocational Discernment Seminar” for non-Methodists that, let’s be real, I attended solely because it was a pain-free way to knock out one of our first-year advising requirements.  About half-way through the seminar, the professor leading it offhandedly said something along the lines of, “After this program, you may very well go do other—sometimes very other—things.  But in the eyes of the world, you will be seen as a minister because, hey, you’ll be credentialed to be one!”  As someone emphatically not on the ordination track (that is, not today, at least), you’d think that comment might have made me squirm.  Instead, however, the idea swirled around in my mind for a moment before spiraling down and settling softly somewhere right in my very center, whispering in a way, “yes, this feels right.”  (Weird, I know!) 

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are definitely moments in my Old Testament class when I utterly fail to find connections between real life and, say, the study of toledat genealogical structures.  And certainly there are many topics in my History of the Early Church class that, though often mildly interesting, just don’t quite get my heart stirring and mind racing!  But I’m ok with that.  Because, truth be told, I do at some level still enjoy them, and even more significantly, do feel as though I’m learning things that I want and need to know in classes like Health as Social Justice, Skills in Conflict Transformation, and Pastoral Care.  These past few days, I have been feeling more and more that here is a place where imagination, collaboration, communication, and passion can be developed and stretched, and that, surely, is not such a bad place to be.

So I guess that’s ultimately why I went with the lost and found theme for today: in literal and figurative ways, there are many parts of me that are pretty dadgum lost.  But there are also bits and pieces that are found, or are in the process of being found.  And, while this in-between stage can at times be most uncomfortable, I’m coming to find that it can also be growing, revealing, good.

Hoping to have lost slightly less things next time we meet—

Truly,

Janelle

A Week in the Life of Your Very Own M.Div. Student

Preface:
So, it’s officially official (I think): I am now repurposing this blog to ramble away not only about my trips to and from Senegal but also about my experience working towards a Master’s in Divinity at Candler School of Theology (i.e., seminary, and hence the blog name tack-on).  Kind of weird for me, I know, considering how reticent I was to even open this blog two years ago, doing so only because it was required by my study abroad program.  And yet, I now find myself warming up to this space, a space that seems suitable for drawing lines from what I’m learning in the classroom (and in my travels) back to life in general, a space for making connections between experiences, reading, conversations, and faith.  And that task simply feels worth doing, at least for now, in this moment…

My favorite part of my new place

But Enough about That:

The past week or so has been filled with the unexpected, in ways both wonderful and woeful (ok, so maybe “woeful” is a slight exaggeration).  Undoubtedly the funniest moment that falls to the first category was when a friend and I went to grab Lebanese food at a local joint and came out with lessons in the art of belly-dancing from the restaurant owner himself!  We have since decided to form Candler’s first ever belly-dancing troupe as a way of staying flexible and maybe even financing our textbooks purchases (I'm joking, well mostly).  Other moments this week that I loved include checking out the nation’s second-largest independent book festival with new friends, spending my first evening at my family’s home since moving to Decatur and cooking with my sister (and by “cooking” I more mean watching her cook and of course eating); annnnnnnnd, drumroll please, finding out that I got into the Health as Social Justice course I so badly wanted over at the Public School of Health…and subsequently happily dancing around the apartment for a good five minutes!  The most frustrating example of the latter category was discovering that my email account had somehow been compromised (whatever that means) and as a result receiving over 500 truly nasty emails from complete strangers, replete with expletives and threats—I definitely went through a few days of just closing my eyes whenever I opened my email account, which, yes, might have been slightly counterproductive, but thank goodness, that issue has now been more or less resolved.  I also didn’t so much love having class on Friday evening and Saturday morning this weekend (the class itself I actually did love—it was the waking up at 7:00 am on a Saturday that I resented); and losing my car on Friday night after class the first time I parked on campus and wandering around in the parking deck for about 35 minutes before realizing I was in the wrong parking deck wasn’t so fun either.  The cumulative result of all of these moments?  Well, all in all, a pretty great week, albeit more than a little exhausting!

Food for Thought (and by that I mean for me; definitely not telling you what to think, reader-friends):

Meet Oatmeal, my kind-of cat! (ie, actually my roommate's)

Early this week, my site supervisor and Contextual Education teacher asked our class what steps we as individuals are ready and able to take in order to better welcome the stranger/ the Other into our hearts and lives. (Side note: our contextual education class is a 90 minute reflection period designed specifically around each of our site placements.  My placement is with Lutheran Refugee Services teaching a computer literacy class, but more on that next time!)  This question was really a hard one for me, as the concept of hospitality is one that I recently spent a lot of time exploring in more abstract terms for research but yet is something I often forget to think about in terms of what it looks like lived out in my own life.  Two things I arrived at: first, that I really and truly do need to get better at slowing down and resting, at making room for “interruptions” in my life till I can learn to see these moments as opportunities for learning, friendship, and growth instead.  Second, that I have simply got to start being more informed about the world around me.  After all, here I am, friends with refugees, reading about refugees, writing about refugees, and yet often failing to actively seek a deeper understanding of the forces that bring these friends here!  Eeeeep, definitely convicting!  So, I just might have found yet another reason for keeping up with this blog—to those of you family and close friends willing to wade through this whole post (I promise I’m going to work on conciseness, that is, one of these days), well, I hope you’ll call me out on this.  Or, rather, I pray you’ll help to call me into living more faithfully in these areas of my life! 


But for now, I’m off to enjoy a lazy, sunny Sabbath afternoon of Piedmont Park wandering and then having a cooking/ movie night with a friend— for the record, we’re making cornbread, and kale, and greens, oh my! 

Thanks for reading,

Janelle