there's no place like gnome.

That hairdresser I’m smitten with?  I visited Brent yesterday.  But it turned out to not be just him.  Cory washed my hair, observed the hair cut, and then helped diffuse (dry) my hair.  Cory – with gauged ears, a nose ring, and italian loafers – and I had a great conversation about Lutheranism.  Then it was the strangest to have two guys, one on either side, going at my curls with blow dryers.  Obscure.  (But also fast.  I wish I had four hands and two blow dryers each morning to dry my hair.)

I assisted at Luther Seminary’s morning chapel.  There is chapel each weekday morning at school, with Wednesday being a longer service which includes communion.  I assisted and got many compliments on my shoes.  When you have a wear a robe, one must wear fun shoes.  

I ate lunch with a group of friends and one of my Children, Youth, and Family professors.  We’re brainstorming a ‘Cooking Pastor’ cooking show.  Seriously.  Filming may begin this weekend.  I’ll keep you posted.

I submitted my ever-stressful mobility paperwork for placement within the ELCA.  (woot!)  My future is now in the hands of the bishops.

I needed groceries.  My fridge had been empty since my return from break.  Coming out of the grocery store, the bell-ringing Salvation Army man stopped singing his “Come-to-Jesus” song to wish me a merry Christmas and tell me he liked my coat.  Why, thank you.

Add confirmation and an early bedtime and that’s my Wednesday.

The top five ways I feel like a senior:

(in no particular order)

5.  The Rostered Leader Profile.  (The paperwork that will go to the powers that be to decide my placement fate for first call.)  Frankly, I’m to the point that I’d rather fill that out than do my homework.

4.  I sat in the library for an hour and a half desperately trying to complete reading for a class.  In the midst of it, I realized that I don’t think that specific reading will ever serve me in my ministry.  Not to mention I remember little of it.  I’m done reading for class.  (Really?  No … but I’m tempted to quit.)

3.  I had a paper due this morning.  I had class last night.  Instead of being the good, dedicated student and retreating straight to my apartment after class to complete the paper, I went out to the favorite seminary bar.  With my professor/academic advisor and a group of other seniors.  I was invited into the cool crowd for a night and had a blast.  (It was my first time at the seminary bar – a shock to many that I had never been.  This, however, does not mean I will go crazy and also eat the chocolate mint pudding pie served in the caf.  I’m still morally opposed to that.)

2.   I’m more focused on upcoming social events and breaks than concentrating on papers and reading.  Thanksgiving break is three days out.  Christmas break a short two and a half weeks after that.  I’ve been excitedly planning my birthday party which will hopefully include a hamball dinner with friends (I’ll be using Mary O.’s recipe if I can just find myself some ground ham in the Cities …), volunteering at Feed My Starving Children, and cake balls.  (A ball theme?  I think so.  Party hats?  Most definitely.)  A Christmas party?  Probably that too.

1.  Three weeks left in semester plus one January term and spring semester.  Pretty soon that general countdown will have a number of days attached until graduation. 

You know when you go to those restaurants and the hostess gives you the little light-beeper thing that shakes when your table is ready?  In high school when going out with friends, that sort of event required the one holding the light-beeper thing to jump up and yell, “I won!  I won!” when it started to shake.  

That story?  Very little to do with the actual purpose of this post.  

I received a mysterious check in my campus mailbox last week.  A check from the business office here at seminary.  I was utterly confused.  I mean, Luther sending me money is typically a good thing but why?  I look on the attached info sheet and it reads thus: “Honorable Mention in Intern Stewardship.”  To break that down into normal-people’s talk – 

The seminary holds a stewardship sermon contest for interns.  Interns can submit a financial stewardship sermon that they preached while on internship.  I preached and I submitted.  (With many thanks to Grace’s Summer of Stewardship preaching opportunities!)  And I won!  Well.  I won one of three honorable mentions. Not the big prize.  Or the second biggest prize.  (There are my inner jackals – the ways in which I down-talk myself.)  But hey – honorable mention! 

I accept.

I’m killing time before confirmation.  I had a few errands to run on my way to Stillwater this afternoon and arrived at church over an hour early.  It feels awkward and strange to go to the family pizza time or wander around, no longer having a role in the children’s ministry arena of Trinity.  (So now I sit on my computer, tucked away in the leader room, stalking people on facebook, maybe eventually getting to a few paragraphs of a paper.)  It is awkward but it also can be wonderful because I am in awe of how many kids remember me after my year and a half away.  One boy who consistently gave me grief and a hard time in Bible Explorers as both a third and a fourth grader, Simon, found me tonight.  He no longer wears glasses and is about a foot taller.  “Hi, Lindsay,” he said automatically.  Another couple of girls who were constantly in my cubicle, chatting about life, eating my candy, and hugging Herbert Butterfield (my giant inflatable penguin) visited me tonight and told me they had missed me in my time away.  That warms my heart – 

– like my nonfat toffee mocha warms my tummy.  I had a headache earlier and figured it was due to either a lack of water or a lack of coffee.  I went to Starbucks.  Halloween is over so, naturally, let’s jump ahead nearly two months and whip out the Christmas colors and drink flavors.  Starbucks cups are red again, their cup sleeves have snowflakes, and this phrase – “Stories are gifts.  SHARE.”  For Christmas this year, I will write down stories, wrap and deliver.  Deal? 

We talk about story a lot at seminary.  As Christians, we share the common story – that of the gospel.  But, unlike fifty or a hundred years ago, there’s competition to the story.  We can no longer assume that everyone believes or has the same story.  There was a community forum held on campus today about the challenges that the church faces – one strong challenge being that we lack identity.  Who are we as the church?  What does it mean to be Christian, to be Lutheran?  While we’re uncertain of our identity, it’s difficult to proclaim the story of Christ and what it means for our life.  The forum kinda led me to despair at the place and the ministry into which I’m going …

Starbucks tells us to share our stories.  Well, if Starbucks says so …  Share your story.  Share your life.  It’s meant to be shared with others, not kept locked inside yourself.  I think, as you share your story, you’ll also be sharing the gospel and the ways God has worked in your life.  Your story is a part of your identity – it makes up who you are.  As we share our stories, maybe the church will find the voice to its identity … I don’t think that’s quite what Starbucks has in mind but I think might move us forward to better understanding, to closer connection, and to education.  Stories are gifts.  Share.

The process goes like this – I interviewed for approval with two faculty members of Luther Seminary, one being my advisor.  From there, they write a statement, either recommending the candidate or not, and bring it to a small group of faculty.  Once the small group approves it, my name is on a list of all approval candidates and will be voted on by the entire faculty.  … yea … complicated.  (necessary?  well.  not my call.)

Where am I going?  Here.  I received an email from my advisor today with the statement of my approval which will be presented to the small group of faculty.  Despite spelling my name incorrectly – I’m forever a Lindsey – it feels wonderful to read the things that were written.  I feel that they have an accurate sense of my call to ministry and gifts, including, “Lindsey takes great joy in how justification by grace alone make us children of God.  This doctrine opens up to her the love of God she hopes to share with others in and through her ministry.”  (That’s how it currently reads.  After a follow-up email, it will hopefully begin with “Lindsay.”)

I read the statement written about me for approval – specifically focusing on those two sentences I shared above – and then I found this photo on another blog.  It fits.  Believe it for yourself and those around you.

It’s been the Center for Biblical Preaching conference at Luther these last few days.  The campus welcomed well over two hundred preachers for plenary addresses, workshops and worship opportunities to dive into preaching as a ‘matter of life and death.’  As a student, I spent my days in regular classes, unable to attend any of the plenary sessions by the accomplished professors and preachers that the conference featured.  I was, however, able to hear three of them preach in chapel.  

It’s kinda crazy how excited, how enthused, and how intrigued I was to hear these people preach.  I mean, these people have written books on preaching and are known in the preaching “field.”  After being out on internship, preaching myself, and continuing to preach in senior year preaching labs, it’s an area of great interest.  Monday chapel’s sermon called us to recognize our role as not the human race, but the human family by a passionate Episcopalian bishop from the south.  Tuesday, Karoline Lewis (my middler year preaching professor) engaged us in a lesser-known John text.  (My favorite line from Karoline’s sermon?  In listing the things that hold us back, the things that people tell us that stop us from continuing on a certain path – “You’re too pretty to be a minister.”  Funny.  “I’ve never been told such a thing,” Lindsay says in jest.)  Then today, Tom Long’s sermon literally gave me the chills and had me tearing up at one point.  It isn’t hope that’s running out of time – despair is running out of time.  It isn’t justice that running out of time – it’s injustice that will soon end.  It isn’t life that’s running out of time.  Death is running out of time.  We know how the story ends.  

I preached in my preaching lab on Monday – a wedding sermon.  I received a lot of positive feedback from my peers and the professor facilitating the group.  (According to the professor, I have a good “wedding voice.”  Huh.  Okay.)  It’s been a month since I’ve preached; I think I missed it.  Luckily, I have a preaching engagement with my home congregation approaching.  I’ll be preaching to my friends at East Koshkonong on Sunday the 17th for the first time.  It will be exciting to preach at my home stomping ground!

The preferred method of note-taking has changed a lot in my last years of post-high school education.  I’ve done the binder method and the notebook method and the loose-leaf paper in a folder method, all trying to figure out what works best for me as a learner.  After I bought my MacBook and fell in love with its sleek titanium look and function, I became a computer note-taker.  The number of computers in classes has increased a lot since my first years in seminary.  [ My fellow Office-watching friends and I always liken it to the episode where Michael goes to Ryan’s business school as a guest speaker.  He tells the students, “Real business is done on paper.  (pause)  Write that down.”  The camera scans the lecture hall where all of the students are not writing it down, but typing it on their notebook computers. ]

Forget all of those.  I’m studying hard and I’m using my magnetic doodle board.  This was given to me on my last Sunday at Grace along with other very necessary school supplies.  And a bat in a jar.  That’s me in class, surrounded by computers.  All I need to know I can fit on my doodle board.

I think I’m finally adjusting to the fact that I AM a senior.  As part of my Children, Youth and Family degree concentration, I attended the CYF retreat this past Friday into Saturday.  Suddenly, I was in the leading group that was facilitating a discussion about how to navigate graduate school.  The other seniors and I were the ones that were called upon to lead closing worship.  In our internship debriefing session last week, the academic dean called upon us – the seniors – to be leaders.  To set an example for the juniors and middlers.  I AM a senior.

I’ve been back in classes for nearly a week.  One more three hour class this evening on youth culture and consciousness and then I’ve been through each class at least once.  I’m slowly adjusting to the idea of being back in class and can say honestly that, as a senior, it’s different … in good ways.

My preaching lab group met for the first time today.  (Preaching lab is the time in which the larger preaching class is broken down into groups.  It’s in this group – this lab – that we will preach and receive feedback.)  In this first lab, we decided who was preaching when, what type of sermon we wanted to preach, and then had a chance to talk about our preaching experiences on internship.  It was helpful to exchange experiences, to talk about the way this one thing worked and see your neighbor nodding his/her head because he/she had experienced something similar.  Class is a great opportunity for us to come back together and debrief, share, and grow from each other.

It’s also great to be a senior in classes with internship behind you because you can better guide your learning.  I think I have a better lens to recognize busy work, assignments that I know won’t be helpful for me when I am out in the parish.  I can better take control of my own learning, knowing what assignments/readings I should focus on and those on which I know (err, at least think) have little value to me as a pastor.  My classes – a few of them – are more practical, more hands-on, more experiential than the theology/hypothetical classes of previous years which were hard for me to place on a grid of ultimate value/importance to ME as a learner and as a pastor.

All that being said, I think this will be okay.  I’m still not in favor of spending my nights doing homework and reading but so far, classes are going well.  I know I’ll enjoy some more than others but here’s hoping it will be – here’s hoping I make it be – an educational semester.

From this point on, it’s a new year. 

First, the blogging will continue but in a different way.  I’m no longer in Dawson (still crying about that one occasionally) and no longer on internship but in blogging throughout last year, I discovered that I like it and many people told me they like reading it.  It’s pretty darn narcissistic – hey, Lindsay, write about yourself and people will read it.  In many ways, in many posts, this blogging thing is helpful to me in processing and working through life.  It’s therapeutic (and something tells me I’ll need lots of therapeutic writing time this year).  Even if no one read it, I would continue.  So I’ll keep writing and if you want to keep reading, you are more than welcome.  

Second, a new school year.  Today was day number one.  My roommate and I decided we should take the traditional first-day-back-to-school pictures to show off our first day outfits and eager smiles.  Eager?  Well.  Something like that.  My family always took back-to-school pictures in front of the fridge; Jeanette said hers were taken in the birch tree.  We’re doing ours in the hallway because, frankly, the rest of our apartment is still unorganized and chaotic.  (Little by little the boxes are unpacked!)  It will be the last first day of school I have.   Ever.  (leap of joy)

I only had one class this afternoon – a three-hour pastoral care class in which I will learn to communicate nonviolently and take care of myself and others (because all of those go together).  In the midst of this three-hour class, I bet I heard comments start with, “When I was on internship -” or “Being a senior -” at least ten times.  That’s the kind of language I hated as a junior and middler.  But now it’s me.  That’s how I start sentences.  I’m a senior?  Whoa.  I’m a senior!