“How’s seminary?” I used to cringe at this query posed by those who thought they were asking a simple, innocuous question. During my first year of seminary, the only word that I could find to accurately sum up the experience was “weird.” (It was so gratifying to hear a friend who just completed her first year of seminary use the same word just a couple of weeks ago when I asked her this same question.) It has taken me three years to figure out sufficient words to describe the rigorous exercise in academics, relationships, faith and emotion that seminary entails. Honestly, “weird” might still be the best word. Ironically enough, “weird” is the word I’d choose to use to describe how I found myself in seminary to begin with. I’m not a PK (pastor’s kid). I didn’t serve as a Young Adult Volunteer. I didn’t even start going to church until middle school. So it’s really anyone’s guess why one frigid January evening, God called me to seminary. Sensing the call I was 25, experiencing … [Read more...]

Treading carefully on a rippled and rifted sidewalk, I passed toothless pumpkins that grinned in the pre-dawn light. Once poured to provide a level and safe passage, the sidewalk now lies cracked and rolling from the pressure of unseen roots that have grown up from below. In the silence that comes to the city only on the day after Halloween, I breathed in the stillness of this neighborhood. Just moments earlier, Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” played on my commute to this out-of-the-way part of Portland, Oregon. Listening to chorus, “Woah, we’re half way there / Woah, livin’ on a prayer,” I thought to myself, “How true that is for many Christian communities in the Pacific Northwest!” And also for theological education. I paused before walking up the seven steps – passing more pumpkins and a sign extending welcome to all – to a grey brick house on the corner. At the top, I offered an anxious knock that came from one who was part pilgrim and part researcher. I entered to a fire on the … [Read more...]