So much for once a week...

So, I guess there goes my grand plan for once a week updates. I'd like to say school has bested me once again...and that's mostly the case.

Anyway, school's good. Life's better. That's good.

I spent all last weekend being completely unproductive from schoolwork...board of directors meeting, fancy dinners, schmoozing, boystown, more board meetings, etc. It was a good weekend, now I'm catching up on work.

Today we talked in Pentateuch class about proverbs...and went around our class telling the most meaningful one to us.

Anxiety weighs down the human heart, but a good word cheers it up (Proverbs 12:25)

That's pretty much were every single one of my classmates is with school right now. For a while we talked about it openly, about how overwhelmed we were, and how school was hard. Then we just sort of stopped. No one said anything and everyone was 'fine' or 'good' when we talked about school and classes. It's starting to be more vocalized, at least in a small group I'm in for my Intro to Pastoral Care class where we have to talk, and give, pastoral care to our classmates. It's getting to be the end of the semester, we're anxious. One seminarian put a facebook post up that said "hug every seminarian you see today...they probably need it."

That's not to say we're all depressed, or in need of thousands of hugs...it's just to say that we're all in the midst of transition, still. And that transition is complicated when you start questioning your call. Which I've been assured is normal. So that gives me hope.

Speaking of hope, it's still my mantra in life...and on my business card a quote from Luther: everything done in the world is done by hope. We're reading about pastoral care models in Intro to Pastoral Care and one of the possibilities is the Agent of Hope. I'll spare you the essay I wrote on it, but needless to say, I've found my niche in the pastoral care world. That's a good feeling, up till now none of the analogies have seemed to fit me.

In a broader scope, we're running headlong into Advent, perhaps my favorite season in the church year. It's all about hope. Hope in a birth, hope in a king, hope in a savior.

hope.

I liked the word before Obama started using it.

so there.


Anyway, yeah...Advent. Because of that, we've started using common cup communion at the Eucharist service on Wednesdays at LSTC. I've never used common cup till last Wednesday, I've always either used the little cups, or the intinction cup. It was a little unnerving, not gonna lie. There's all sorts of theology behind using the common cup, and after lots of careful and calculated consideration of that theology (and also medical science...it's WAY cleaner than intinction) I think it's a good idea.