What have I learned in my first year of divinity school?

To Prophesy and To Praise

As we wrap up our community studies class, we've been making connections between brokenness and worship. What do we do as ministers to address what is broken in the world while holding up that which is praiseworthy? Is there really any difference or distinction between what's broken and what's worthy of praise?

Mary Oliver, in a recent O interview with Maria Shriver, says something interesting about being a "praise poet":

Mary Oliver: I like to think of myself as a praise poet.
Maria Shriver: What does that mean?

MO: That I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world and whoever made all these things . . . Wendell Berry is a wonderful poet, and he talks about this coming devastation a great deal. I just happen to think you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. So I try to do more of the "Have you noticed this wonderful thing? Do you remember this?"

MS: You try to praise.

MO: Yes, I try to praise.

So, on one hand, we have Wendell Berry as the prophet/poet who holds up a mirror in which we see the havoc unfolding on our planet. And, on the other hand, we have Mary Oliver as the praise poet who holds up a mirror in which we see the beauty that is manifest in the world. In some ways, of course, this dichotomy is false. Certainly, Berry has praised and still praises, and Oliver has pointed out brokenness in small and large ways.

But I want us to remember that, whether we are prophesying or praising, we are still holding up the same mirror. In it, you can see both the beautiful and the broken. In fact, you cannot see the beautiful without seeing the broken. And you cannot address the brokenness until you have started to appreciate the beauty of everything--whole, broken, remembered, suddenly realized, healed, rent and scattered.

All of it praiseworthy and all of it broken. All of it made holy by the sacred "and" that allows us to hold apparently disparate visions simultaneously.

The world is additive. Reductive logic works in small ways for small tasks, but it does not reflect the nature of the universe.


It's always "and." Again and always "and." The greatest songs of praise emerge from the cracks in the world. And the only chance we have for healing and wholeness is to remember that these songs must be sung.

Intensive Classes as Baptism by Complete Immersion

Since Meadville has migrated to its new educational model, weekly, residential, semester-long classes are a thing of the past--rather like afternoon tea at the parsonage. And in their place are these absolutely crazy things called intensive classes, in which a whole semester's worth of learning is crammed into one week (more or less).

For the typical intensive course at Meadville, you do most of your required reading ahead of time, then attend one week, 6-8 hours each day, of lectures, discussions and various other learning activities. And after that, you have a few weeks to a couple of months to write a paper (or several papers) or produce some other artifact that demonstrates what you have learned.

Just to make things a bit more interesting, you are also doing some intense socializing/bonding with your classmates during the intensive week--oh, and attending whatever other extracurricular activities the school cooks up.

These classes are better than traditional classes because, at least for one week, you have to be pretty much totally invested in the class you are taking. You're forced to eat, breathe and think the material--waking, sleeping and everything in between. This baptism by total immersion in the material ensures that you get soaked to the bone in whatever you are studying.

Traditional classes, by contrast, are more like baptism by aspersion. You do have to show up for a couple of hours every week while a few drops of wisdom are sprinkled about your scalp, but there's no guarantee that you'll remember the experience at all. And memory of the actual experience is key, I think. It's difficult for me to imagine that I will ever forget sitting in a room with my classmates all day, every day for a week and laughing, crying and moaning together as we try to get a handle on whatever it is we are studying/experiencing.

There is value added in the emotional intensity that gets attached to the otherwise somewhat dry intellectual matter. Mixing some sweat and tears with the dust of the intellect results in something sticky that stays with you longer than the kind of learning you experience in a more traditional class.

What's harder about intensive classes is that they are exhausting. They are exhausting for everyone, but especially, I think, for those of us who tend toward introversion and really need a certain amount of alone time in order to process and regain some energy. But such is the life we are called to--a life of daily full immersion.

And for seminarians, it seems entirely appropriate that each class involves a kind of intensity that is something like a religious experience.