Tag / Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary

by Michael

Ending Another Semester

They trickled into the room and eventually we gathered as a group.  For most of the semester we started at 9am, but the clock ticked across several more minutes before our start.  By then, the tables were filled and dressed with treats.  Two pans of some casserole of sausage and bread and eggs or broccoli and onions for us meatless eaters, a bowl of sugary goodness a pastor’s wife provided, a box of buttered sweet cakes.

Their eyes and heads were heavy with every unfinished paper and all those unwritten words scrambling in their heads like thoughts waiting.  Their anxiety was normal as was their exhaustion.

We talked about things.  We wrote affirmation cards and ate and talked about the unseen days ahead.  Their would be jobs over the summer, breaks from seminary, no one taking classes.  One of them was starting a business, one serving at a camp.  There were hugs and written prayers, and as in previous times, I was so thankful for the chance I have to do this work.

by Michael

My Hopes For You, Dr. Lallene Rector

Last week I heard about your appointment, and I was thrilled.  I wanted to write to congratulate you and to offer prayerful words as you transition to your next post.

Someone I love and trust told me that transitions can feel like walking on shifting grounds, like nothing is as familiar.  You once said in a class that it takes the brain up to three years to adjust to major life changes.

I hope that as you change roles, as you assume your next set of responsibilities, that your feet will find sure ground, that what’s under your feet will be steady grace and hope-filled promise that comes from God.

I hope that you will feel ready for your new role and that everyone around you, those you really listen to, will reflect that readiness, will encourage you for your journey, and will become supporters of you on that path.

I hope that your habits, your spiritual disciplines, will train you toward a nourishing faith so that you can sense how large God is in the face of daunting challenges and uncertain tomorrows.

I hope that all of your yesterdays with the Seminary will combine to give you real space to see a splendid future.

I hope that your work with the Board, the faculty, and the students will be more and more fruitful, increasingly powerful, and meaningful for the world, for the church, for the Chicago area, and the community of Evanston.

I hope you will be able to accomplish the goals that you and the community determines is best for you as an administrator, that the next academic dean will support the same, and that, because of all your good work, GETS will be a stronger, more focused, more invitational school for people making sense of their faith, for people making sense of God’s call upon them, and for people searching for how to put themselves into their own vocations in ministry.

I hope that you love your job and that it makes you a better woman, a better teacher, a better scholar, and a better follower of Christ.

I hope that you meet people whose lives you can still personally enhance the way you have throughout your career as a professor and therapist.

I hope that you will have fun, stay creative, lead with patience, grieve with hope, feel a sense of life, feel.

Finally, I hope these words in Philippians, from the Message translation, and words like them, will anchor and strengthen you, the GETS community, and the extended communities you serve:

I am so pleased that you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God’s message, from the day you heard it right up to the present.  There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.  It’s not at all fanciful for me to think this way about you.  My prayers and hopes have deep roots in reality.

by Michael

Pictures of Common Things

When people take pictures of common things, it makes you stop and wonder.  It makes me stop and wonder.  It happened to me today. 

I was leaving school late this afternoon.  We ended class in a small chapel on campus.  As we left the chapel, a group of 20-30 young people were making way into the one-room sanctuary.  They were pressing pictures, nodding and bowing and saying hello.  They were smiling and staring through the little screens on their cameras.  When I got by them, more of their friends were outside.  They, too, were taking pictures.  They were capturing the exterior of the chapel, taking in the trees at the side, and snapping pictures of the main seminary building.

A memory came to me.  I made a tiny commitment when I first entered Garrett-Evangelical as a student in 2002.  I had received a great deal of support to come to seminary, personal and institutional support.  I promised myself and God that I would find a way every time I came to the campus to express gratitude.  It eventuated into me bowing my head as I approached the door.  It was a small gesture of thanks.  It would go unnoticed by everybody except me and God.  I would know and God would know; that was enough.  I’m happy that I still observe the practice.  Even though the glass casing with Garrett-Evangelical in white letters is gone, I still, before I open the main doors, express my gratitude in the same mostly unnoticed way.

But when I saw that group and all their cameras, it brought me back to something.  It’s easy to forget that first experience of not knowing a building or a campus or a group.  Every new experience is new.  People are strange and unfamiliar and, therefore, interesting.  Little is boring.  Little is common.

One of the marks of life–whether it’s the writing life or the spiritual life or life in relationship to others–is noticing.  Living means noticing.  Seeing things that are usual and normal and finding something beautiful in them.  Things get old.  We pass by buildings with windows that tell stories.  We rush conversations because they lose our interest.  We conclude that a person is less significant because we’ve seen them so much or heard all their stories.  We move beyond people so quickly down the street, going from one place to another, that we miss the remarkable because it is simply in plain view.

I didn’t have my camera today.  But I took another picture in my head before leaving campus.