It took me awhile to process the first half of 2018. But here it is, including journey highlights, a feature essay on life in the mud, top book picks, wisdom learned, and queries to think about. See it all in the online magazine The Still: Spring 2018
The fall semester is just around the corner. I’m on campus now preparing to welcome the new incoming class to Columbia next week. Before the new eclipses the old, here’s a recap of last semester.
The Still: Spring 2017 Edition
Small moments, great reads, and faith on the journey…
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Think Spring
Christmas vacation in Florida gave me time to regroup from my first semester at Columbia Theological Seminary. I was so numb, dumbfounded, tired, and unsure after first semester, I don’t really remember much from the vacation. I think I just buried my head in the sand at the beach and tried to forget. I came back and did a January term class and loved it. Things were looking up for spring semester.
Seminary Itinerary
Spring Semester 2017 at Columbia Theological Seminary:
Spring Semester 2017 at Earlham School of Religion (ESR):
Travel Plans
What I thought would happen:
Travel Plans Revised
What actually happened:
Mode of Travel—Car:
I thought when I started seminary that I could just go back to being a student again like when I was in college. I told myself if I could juggle all the responsibilities of part-time work and motherhood at the whims of everyone but myself, certainly I could handle school again, especially with all three of my kids finally in school themselves.
I’ve heard it said that a car is the safest place in a storm. My first year of seminary was a perfect storm of my weaknesses colliding with accountability and expectation the likes of which I hadn’t seen for a long time. In the chaos, my car represented what I craved. My hybrid was a compact and ordered bubble. It muffled distractions and kept me within reach of sunlight’s touch. If necessary, it promised a quick getaway. And when I was ready to face the to-dos outside my teal LL Bean backpack from 1995 on the passenger seat, all I had to do was open the door.
It started as a way to warm up after Monday Scripture Reading Practicums on early, crisp fall mornings. I’d bolt to my car and crank up my heated seat. Not wanting to venture out until I had to, I stayed put and studied Hebrew vocabulary. I looked forward to my quiet bubble of calm. Eventually, I found myself other days using my car as my office. But still I struggled.
I thought it was an issue of discipline, because it was clear first semester that I hadn’t practiced that for awhile. But even in 2nd semester, Hebrew behind me, my newly polished discipline skills back in use, I struggled in ways that went beyond how I saw other first year students struggling.
My car wasn’t safe enough. So I cashed in my trip insurance.
Trip Insurance:
Shifting in my hard plastic chair in a gray-green exam room looking sheepishly at my doctor, cashing in my trip insurance sounded like this:
Me: “You know a few months ago when you asked if I was ever assessed for ADHD and I laughed at you? Well, IF I were to check into this, what would that entail?” (Because come on, I was about to turn 40! Wouldn’t I know this by now?!)
It’s taken almost six months since then to see this process through to get answers and workable interventions, and to figure out how this interacts with my anxiety/depression. I’m still wrapping my mind around those letters, ADHD, and coming to grips with what they mean for my future and me.
Pit Stop:
Where: Elijay, GA. I hosted a weekend retreat in celebration of my 40th birthday. I invited my dearest friends. Each person became my friend at a different life stage or around a different interest. As a result, my friends are all remarkably unique. Very few knew each other. I thought it would be fun to see what would happen if they all were together. I designed the weekend so they felt a little pampered: we stayed at a finely appointed Airbnb in a rustic setting with beautiful views, good food/drinks, opportunities for relaxation and fun. I was nervous. What if they all just sat and stared uncomfortably at each other?
Take-Aways: Oh my gosh. It was amazing. As uniquely challenging as it is to make close friends as an adult, this is proof that as you age, the easier it gets to connect around the things that may have divided us as eager twenty-somethings. Or, I just have awesome friends. Actually, I think both are true. I also wonder if I have a future in the women’s retreat business.
Best Reads for the Journey
The Journey by Mary Oliver This is the poem that kept me moving forward, and the one that keeps me dancing to the beat of my own drummer. That line, “The only life I can save…” goes straight to my heart every time.
Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood by Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey Read it and understand.
Martha’s Vineyard: Isle of Dreams by Susan Branch Branch is a girl after my own heart. Lives in a cabin in the woods, a writer, she was unsure of self at midlife and had to learn not to wrap her identity in her spouse’s. She’s an avid quote collector. Reminded me how much I need writing and deep prayer for my spiritual and creative health. Her accompanying art has a folksy quality that isn’t really my taste, but her writing is fresh and timeless.
Along with Susan Branch, authors Brian Doyle and Barbara Brown Taylor have helped my vision for myself as a writer take shape.
Trip Highlight
Clubbing (first time ever!) in downtown Atlanta and ubering (first time ever!) with my 20-something-year-old seminary friends.
Best Trip Guide
Google search: “40-year-old mom goes clubbing clothes”
Most Worthwhile Side Trip
Subscribing to spring season of the Atlanta Ballet (student discounts, y’all)!!! This rocked my world and blew apart my preconceived notions about this dance form. Add watching an Atlanta Ballet Co. rehearsal to my bucket list. I love to see how artists hone their craft.
Favorite Places
Aside from the nighttime view of the Atlanta cityscape, favorite places in our new home include Piedmont Park (a nature oasis in the city, awesome dog park) and Stone Mountain Park (so many trails—it’s not just about the summit).
Traffic Jam
Since our move to Decatur in 2015, my family hasn’t settled on a church home. Somewhere along the way I started wondering if I’m really Presbyterian. After all, Catholics, Unitarians, Quakers, Evangelicals, and most recently Episcopals have all been part of my journey. My first year of seminary heightened my constant struggle of
This struggle pits my steadfast belief that God’s vision dazzles with diversity with my fear that aligning myself in one denomination will make this vision less likely to be realized (as if I have that much control!).
My Intro to Worship class got me thinking about why I worship. I realized I needed to stop getting hung up on denomination. Whatever church or denomination I’m part of, that’s not the ultimate source of my identity. The more relevant question might just be WHOSE I am and what it means to live into the answer.
Not entirely surprising, this change of mindset took a weight off my shoulders. I think God breathed a sigh of relief, too, as I’m now trusting God will lead me where I need to be.
Unexpected Detour
In one of my first semester classes my small group did a project at Threshold Ministry serving people who face issues of poverty and homelessness. I didn’t want to do the project there. I wanted to work with a “flashier” ministry more in my comfort zone. But that’s not how it worked out. And I was really intrigued by what I heard and saw. I kept thinking about it. And the more I learned about my faith in seminary, the less I felt I can serve the “least” of these without ever developing relationships with the people who have this label. Thanks to the enthusiasm and willingness of my friend Rachel by my side, I volunteered. I am changed, and my outlook on ministry fundamentally changed. There are so many thoughts I have about this but they are still in the infant stage. Stay tuned.
Souvenirs
New hashtag created by my husband after he thought I’d turned our home into a hostel this summer #lifewithamanda
I say, if you have the room and ability to host several seminary graduates in transition awaiting calls, #WWJD
Said by my 11-year-old daughter when returning to a Presbyterian church to hear my friend preach: “I thought we were Episcopal now.”
Overheard in my worship class by a future pastor:
“I’m not much of church person, actually.”
Me in my journal:
What is it about me that wants to challenge everything?!
Are we there yet?
I had to laugh when I read Clementine’s words in Truly Madly Guilty by Lianne Moriarty this spring: “Everyone had another sort of life up their sleeve that might have made them happy.”
Because all school year I really wanted to quit. And write full-time. Or just be a mom. Or something.
But I had wanted this for so long, hadn’t I?
Yes. And I still do. But now I really know how much. So the time has come to focus on the life I have so I don’t need a second one up my sleeve.
Homeward Bound
“There’s always pain when a child is born.” —Marlena Graves
This has not been an easy first year of seminary. At its conclusion, I know I’m meant to be here, but I’m much less sure about what exactly I am birthing during these contractions of mind, body, and soul. For now, I breathe, before labor begins again.
Most people wouldn’t suspect it about me. I swear. A lot. And not just the occasional shit or damn-it, but fully nuked F-bombs.
I’m not proud of the fact that I was called into the pre-school principal’s office because of my son’s mimicry.
Yet neither am I concerned enough not to keep liking the Scary Mommy posts that humorously justify swearing in front of your kids.
And then I saw video footage of the interactions between racist Nazis and human and civil rights activists in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend.
Like the rivulets of sweat dripping down the faces of onlookers, barely bridled emotion coursed through tensed muscles and prickled nerves to attention. Angry shouts erupted. Voices hurled F-bombs on their counterparts.
But fuck was not enough. Anxious hands gripped weapons, fists and bodies grappled each other with the force fuck lacked.
This word is hollow, incapable of bearing the weight of history, fear, and emotion that drowns the deepest recesses of our souls and collective humanity. It mocks the gravity of the situation.
Fuck is not the word we need right now. It is not a word that will break down the walls, statues, and laws that keep justice from rolling like waters across this land.
And just like that I’m a changed mom, choosing my words carefully. Cautious now, in emotional situations, to use words that expose the core and convey the depth of the issues at hand. Not because of some tinny moral imperative not to swear. But in hopes that when justice is at stake, my kids will be able to speak truth to power. Loudly. Boldly. With the force of real change.
(formerly published on one of my retired blogs)
The small moments, great reads, and experiences on the journey….
ITINERARY
Semester 1 2016:
January Term 2017:
GETTING READY
I drew the line between the before and after, an inky delineation down the middle of my narrative. Still-tender shoots of writer-self on one side, seeds of pastor-self on the other. I laid down my pen.
TRAVEL PLANS
What I thought would happen:
TRAVEL PLANS REVISED
What actually happened:
PIT STOP:
Where: Write-In at The Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, GA, October 2016 (an integrative exercise of writing and activism, the first in Columbia Seminary’s Cultivating Courageous Communicators series)
Take-Aways: The power of the written word to affect change spoke loudly in a silent exhibit of letters and other correspondence written between Dr. King and other peacemakers “behind-the-scenes” during the civil rights movement. Change did not toll from one cacophonous bell of collective protest, but from the persistent chimes of individuals wielding small but mighty mallets of justice. Little things=big things.
BEST READS ON THE JOURNEY:
Forever changed how I look at death, resurrection, and atonement
Now I get why I pray in Jesus’ name
A beautiful call to action and work of hope and possibility:
On women’s writing and subversion of male dominated systems. Gorgeous poetic language. An anecdote for the Trump era. A gift that keeps on giving.
ROAD BUMPS
On the hard stuff: Before my depression was diagnosed and managed, parenting sucked. I wrote a piece about it. People who read it in its original form either loved it (they could identify) or hated it (they couldn’t identify). Both reactions were strong. My feelings didn’t scare me, but it scared me that my writing could make people uncomfortable. I polished the raw out of it. A member of my writer’s group recommended I revisit it at some point. The time for that has come.
On optimism: In my PCUSA tradition people pursuing a call to ministry undergo a battery of psychological testing to identify areas of potential strength and weakness well before you move on through the process to ordination. I did this during this past summer. Not surprisingly, I’m an optimist! As with anything, taken to an extreme, optimism can be negative. Since my results came back, several people made some assumptions that don’t ring true with how I feel, process, and share the hard stuff. This experience forced me to examine my optimism critically. Interestingly, others sometimes are rattled by things relatively low on my “hard feelings” meter and skate over others I’d rate as more critical in the “hard things” rink. A Letter to a Pessimist from an Optimist is in the works.
On failure: Never have I earned a B-, let alone been overjoyed about it. Oh, Hebrew. Oh, first semester. Everyone told me how good it is for me to experience failure. I have some things to say about that, about when failure slides the slippery slope from an earned measure of aptitude to an arbitrary construct where an idealized rite of passage reigns supreme. I have some things to say about making failure a goal, and its potential implications for one who will pastor people for whom passing or failing a class is a cake walk compared to the hard stuff they face every day.
SCENIC DIVERSIONS:
Binge-watched the first season of Designated Survivor with my mom and I finished Parenthood. My husband and I finished The Good Wife (what a disappointing series finale!). Movies Stork and Trolls good wholesome fun with kids. Lion the best kind of thinker movie I love.
DETOUR
Destination: 2016 Writer’s Colloquium at Earlham School of Religion, Richmond, IN
Highlight: Writer Marlena Graves spilled water on my manuscript. That inky line down the middle bled all directions, blurring the “before” and “after”, the “was” and “to be”, the “done” and “to do”, the “writer” and the “pastor”. The burgeoning mark of the now, the is, the doing, the preacher in all its vibrant multiplicity stares back, ready for me to pick up my pen and turn the page.
A NEW YEAR’S LAYOVER
Celebration: The “First” of my first year in seminary is over. The “First” chiseled my intentions and attention into pointed focus. The “First” whittled away layers of stagnation and preoccupation. The “First” revealed potential.
Found in my dirty laundry: Excess. Too much eating out, too much diet pop, too little quality interactions with family. Hoping 2nd Semester has a laundromat.
Best thing I DIDN’T do to pass the time: Installing Facebook on my new phone.
Best Luggage Tag Logo: STEWARDSHIP. This is so going to be my word of the year. Stewardship of mind, body, and resources or bust, baby!
SIGHT-SEEING NOW!
Post-modernism philosophy. Absolutely breathtaking and life-giving for tumultuous times. So many allusions to the Christian narrative. It is rocking my world. Hélène Cixous is my travel companion from now on.
SOUVENIRS:
Written on my faith statement paper in the class Imagination and Resilience:
“You”ll probably have to make some substantial changes (and, sadly, be less creative) to get through the ordination process.”
A favorite quote from the book What Would Jesus De-Construct? by James K.A. Smith:
“When is faith really faith? Not when it is looking more and more like we are right, but when the situation is beginning to look impossible, in the darkest night of the soul. The more credible things are, the less faith is needed, but the more incredible things seem, the more faith is required, the faith that is said to move mountains.”
A conversation:
OTHERS (WITH COMPASSION) “It’s okay to admit you’re struggling. We’ll support you, that’s what we’re here for.”
AMANDA: Shares struggles.
OTHERS (WITH PANIC): You do know that will happen as a pastor. How do you plan to handle that!
A conversation about my background and maybe returning to camp someday:
LISTENER: So how does one with a heart for Quakers and who considers a Unitarian Universalist camp for her kids end up Presbyterian? Isn’t there something in between?
ME: That is the million dollar question.
From my new travel companion, Hélène:
“I, too, overflow; my desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard-of songs. Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst-burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn’t open my mouth, I didn’t repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad! What’s the meaning of these waves, these floods, these outbursts? Where is the ebullient infinite woman who…hasn’t been ashamed of her strength? Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a …divine composure), hasn’t accused herself of being a monster? Who, feeling a funny desire stirring inside her (to sing, to write, to dare to speak, in short, to bring out something new), hasn’t thought that she was sick? Well, her shameful sickness is that she resists death, that she makes trouble.” Hélène Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa
A hopeful reminder:
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. –NRSV 1 Cor 13:12
Amanda Edwards 