Why we're here...

As much as I love Sewanee, it is really wonderful to be over half way through with seminary and moving on towards parish ministry.

For one thing, I have learned to relax and enjoy myself in class and around our faculty. This is saying a lot, because the academic environment can be really intimidating - the professors are super smart and the work is tough, plus you still have to do things like feed the kids and wash the dog.

Another cool thing about this point in seminary is that you are good friends with seniors who will soon graduate. Of course they will be dearly missed (and the weight of that fact hasn't been felt yet), but it is awesome to be there during ordinations, to learn about the priests and dioceses that they interview with, and to watch as they leave and are welcomed into new church homes.

Finally, by the middle of the second year of seminary you begin to recover from the first year. Going to seminary is kind of like joining the military - first they break you down... and then they build you back up into a new you. My classmates and I are now in this rebuilding process and it is fun. Unlike the first year, we get to preach in chapel and do field work in local parishes. It is such a blessing to apply what we learn in the classroom to the everyday practice of ministering to and with God's people. It's why we're here!

Episco-Presbyterian Ash Wednesday

Last night I lead the Ash Wednesday service at the Presbyterian church where I am working. This was only the second time that I've been the one to impose ashes on a congregation (the first time was at San Jose Episcopal, where I did an internship a few years ago). The simple act of forming a cross in ashes on the forehead of people who you know and love is powerful and emotional. It is one of the best reminders we Christians have of our human mortality. It also makes our resurrection hopes seem incredibly personal and desperately immediate. "Remember that you are but dust, and that to dust you shall return," is a painful statement to make as you look into someone's eyes and really see them; really see their humanity, their steely strength and their profound frailty.

I've also been pondering the ashes we use, which come from the dried husks of last year's Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday, Jesus' triumphal march into Jerusalem as the king and Messiah, reads differently for me each year. Sometimes it is a real triumph, like the Lord of the Rings; a king from a lost, ancient lineage returns to rescue his people from obscurity and oblivion. Sometimes it reads like a farce, the sad story of a weary hero, going through the motions to let his people know how things might have been... how it might have looked if he had come to earthly power, to reign in peace and tranquility over Zion - over a new Eden.

And so the cycle goes; each year we gather up our King's palms and let them dry in a dusty corner, waiting for that time when we'll look into each other's eyes and say that, like our Savior before us, we too will die dreaming of the peaceable kingdom.