It's almost over, this first quarter of mine. I can't believe it's nearly December. They said time would speed up but jeez!
I feel like I know less Greek every day. The cramming style of "firehose greek" keeps anything from sticking too long in my brain. I just have to make it through one more week, a few new concepts, get to the final next Monday, and it's over. Until Exegetical Methods next quarter.
I finally did all the homework for my other class yesterday. That consisted of writing reactions to each of my small group sessions (and yes, I had been keeping up with those), writing a "spiritual autobiography" which I suppose I'll post on here, and reading an incredibly boring book. I read every page and wrote down 100 in the "% read" thing I have to sign. But man, it was dreary. And I told my husband that I had hoped grad school would involve reading interesting things, but I fear now that I'm going to be reading a bunch of crap from the Christian bookstore. He said I was in seminary, which is different from grad school, and I should have gone to an Ivy if I wanted to read something scholarly. Ah, yes, he is probably right, but then I would have missed out on learning about, you know, God.
A professor told me that he'd heard that Yale's program in liturgy is like a museum, a study of things past with no instruction on relating it to the present. Anyone reading this have an opinion? I was considering their post-MDiv certificate in liturgical studies, but maybe it's no good?
It's raining in Los Angeles today. That is a rare enough occurrence that most people like it. It's too bad that it's mucking up the field at the Coliseum, though. Still, I expect the fighting Methodists to defeat the Irish handily. And if you got that reference, then you are a good scholar of So Cal Academic History.
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I have a question for you--did you consider the GTU seminaries in Berkeley? I attended PLTS (Lutheran) but took over 50% of my coursework at GTU member schools--Episcopal, Methodist(where I met my wife, who is a Methodist pastor), American Baptist, Franciscan, Dominican, Jesuit(my best preaching class) and Presbyterian (did I forget anyone?) The diversity was amazing--even lots of foreign students. The only thing lacking was probably a strongly conservative influence--this was, after all, Berkeley. The level of challenging academic reading was quite high- systematic theology, various approaches to exegesis, very Pomo contextual theology (GLBT, feminist, womanist, eco-theology) and all kinds of affiliated centers: Women in Religion, Science and theology, Jewish studies, and on top of this--cross registration at UC Berkeley and library access. As for your question on the Liturgy program at Yale--I don't know, but I would have to say that worship/liturgy in mainline/liberal seminaries seems to be the weakest part of the programs--my lutheran liturgy class was mostly historical,with nothing to say about current thinking in worship--emerging church, tech-driven--whatever--the prof. acted as if liturgical development stalled in the 16th century. I love the mystery of high liturgical worship--it's just that in my experience, the vast majority of churches who attempt to do it end up doing "liturgy lite" that is stripped of mystery and is nothing more that "old songs sung by old people" (the complaint of one of my youth...) As for Greek--this may not help now, but you just might find yourself actually using Greek more than you think in the parish--folks seem to be hungry for depth in Bible studies, and helping people to put Paul into context, for example, is easier when you know a bit of Greek.
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