Orientated

OK, I am now two weeks into seminary and my first official week is over. Week one was orientation, so we spent a lot of time sitting in Scott 101 listening to people tell us about signing up for classes, health insurance, call, etc... It was a pretty long week, and I stayed fairly busy. I should have been blogging daily because there will be a lot left out of this post because I just won't remember it.

On our first day of orientation we started off with breakfast at the Butin's house (SFTS president and his wife). The president gave a nice little speech, and one of the important items he hit on was to give yourself a day for sabbath. This was kind of reassuring to hear as Tim's sermon at my commissioning service was on just this. My sabbath days will involve a whole lot of riding my bike, climbing, and playing guitar. After breakfast we had our first chapel service (monday's are a traditional service). After chapel we headed to Scott Hall for a discussion about planning our classes, and discussion of Tofu with Polly Coote. Tofu is the basic classes we need to take to obtain our Masters of Divinity. They are called Tofu because they are the basics we need to survive in seminary, but are a little bland, and need other classes to add flavor to our seminary experience. At lunch I sat with my roommate Sam and neighbor Charles. Charles is from the Santa Barbara Presbytery, and is out. It turns out Santa Barbara is the second most conservative presbytery int he church (right behind San Diego), so his ordination process sounds like it will be along arduous process. Sam was trying to convince him to change presbyteries to one of the more liberal Northern Cal Presbyteries like Redwood or San Francisco, but Charles thinks he was put in the Santa Barbara Presbytery for a reason and is looking to blaze the trail and cary the cross for seminary students who are openly gay. This made me realize how easy my life is being a white heterosexual male, and also started me wondering why God makes people so closed minded especially when he puts them a position of authority in the church. If a person is called to serve God, who are they to decide whether they can do it or not? After lunch the PCUSA students met for a discussion of the ordination process in our denomination and the care process. It turns out Mike Wilson and I were the only seminarians currently in the inquirer stage, and Charles is close. That night about 9 of us went to dinner at a chinese restaurant on the main drag of this section of Marin County (Sir Francis Drake Blvd.). We had two students from North Carolina; Tom and Ian (Ian is a Marine Corps Vet waiting on the GI Bill to pay for seminary), Laura a UCC with interest in femenism from Colorado, Gavin from Hawaii, Terra a former Med student who has been living in the bay area for a few years, Faith from TX (displaced from La due to Hurricane Katrina), Julie from Alaska, Charles my neighbor from down by LA, and myself. The food was pretty good, and the Butins showed up to the same restaurant as we were being served. We are quite the crew with diverse backgrounds, and one common interest.

Tuesday started with a "form filling out fiesta" in Scott Hall, which I expected (after the Marine Corps) to fill the full two hours with signing our names over, and over, and over, and over... but it ended up only being about 5 things to sign. WE also had an opportunity to sign up for classes during this time, so I logged on (love Wifi in the buildings) and made sure all my classes were registered. After the forms we headed down to Montgomery chapel for Tuesday Chapel which is a contemplative chapel. We then headed back to Scott for a study skills lesson ( I felt like I was back in high school, they realize we are masters students right?), and we got to meet our advisors. Lunch for Tuesday I sat at the table with our new Dean who is Catholic... I love how ecumenical this place is! We talked a lot about the spirituality classes offered on Wednesdays and this semesters is on Lectio Devina, if you haven't heard of this, check it out, I first learned about it at my inquirers weekend in 2008, and love it. I signed up for the class Tuesday night brining the grand total of my classes to 6 for 16 credits (4 tofu classes: Hebrew, OT 1, HIstory 1, and intro to Ministry; 1 class at the Unitarian seminary at he GTU in Berkley called "The sacred and substance [or Jesus and Drugs as my classmates have coined it, there are 6 or 7 of us taking this so we will be nearly half the class which should be interesting!], and the spirituality class).

More to come covering Wednesday through Saturday soon...