Samuel Seabury

This week we remember the consecration of Samuel Seabury.
The portion of the gospel of Matthew appointed for the commemoration of the consecration of Samuel Seabury is familiar to us:

Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and
proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every
sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were
harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Every year at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Samuel Seabury’s day is celebrated by the Boar’s Head Dinner, held one week after the General Ordination Exam (GOE) is finished. If you don’t know about it, the GOE is a four-day written exam of 7 substantial essay questions covering the 7 canonical areas of study required of all seminary students for ordination. To say the least, it is a grueling ordeal, especially for some of us older, less physically-resilient students. The Boar’s Head Dinner, a take-off on medieval baronial feasts, complete with Elizabethan liturgy beforehand, was therefore a time of raucous partying for students.

During the exam we certainly felt “harassed and helpless.” However, at the dinner, we garnered the support and compassion of the entire seminary community, as all of the seminary community, faculty and students alike, we expected to attend the liturgy and dinner following. First and second-year students would watch us closely, and begin their own time of anxiety about the exam. Faculty would commiserate with us about unfair questions asked in their areas of expertise. We knew we were not alone, that compassion abounded for us, like the compassion of Jesus for the crowds.

We are all like the crowds Jesus encountered, harassed and helpless in some area of life, all in need of the compassion of our communities. When you remember the compassion you have received, you become more able to pass that compassion on to others in your midst. I hope this week you can be part of a compassionate presence in your own workplace/dorm/classroom of the “harassed and helpless.”

Thoughts on the beginning of the fall term

Every September for nearly half my life, I have gone to the store to buy pencils, paper, notebooks and binders, then, more recently, printer paper and ink, diskettes, and, every four years or so, a new laptop. From 2003-06 I was in seminary in Evanston, IL, the first northern suburb of Chicago, and learned very quickly how much the prices of books had risen since I was last in graduate school.

Why do all this expensive schooling? I know my dad, a very down-to-earth farmer (pun intended), was very skeptical of any schooling that did not have a direct bearing on your ability to get a good, steady job. He grew up during the Great Depression, not having the opportunity for higher education, except for one quarter, before finances kept him from continuing. I think he would have been an accountant had he been able to continue, but instead, he took up the work on his father's farm, where days were long, and work was physical and tiring. Where the weather and the farm markets controlled his life in many ways.

But I have expended lots of money for my several degrees (bachelors, two terminal masters degrees and a doctorate), and spent half my life, counting elementary and secondary schools, in educational institutions. In many ways, the preparation to be a priest was the least mentally challenging, but certainly the most emotionally and spiritually challenging. My dad would have understood this education in the sense that it prepared me for a new career, but he would have been baffled why I chose to leave a lucrative career in health policy scholarship to prepare for a profession that pays much less.

If my dad were here, I could only say this to him: God led me to this profession. The priesthood is a calling and vocation, not a program of job training that you necessarily choose out of a list at the career counselor's office.

In fact, if your choice of career is more about money and ego, it probably has little to do with God. God calls us to vocation, while we call ourselves into a career. That doesn't mean we can't be in a lucrative career that is also our calling. I think of any of the human services professions as vocations. And many other professions can be vocations, depending on how we approach them, what we are hoping to do with our life.

Vocation can be hard, for several reasons. Vocation requires listening closely to where God is calling. Our listening can be assisted, however, with the help of close friends, confidantes, counselors, and spiritual advisors. Marriage can be a vocation. Being a lay person is a vocation just as much as being a priest. Both vocations are called to specific ways to be a minister for the gospel and the spread of the word of God. Vocation is responding to where God is calling you to be, using your desires, your positive qualitites, your talents, your very being.

May God's call to you be your heart's desire this day and for the rest of your life.

May this fall term be all that you are seeking.

Fall is Coming!

Many activities about to begin--
MSU on Sundays and Wednesdays. Dinner on Sunday at 6 followed by a meeting. Wednesdays meeting at 8 followed by contemplative worship experiences at 9:15. Click on the link to keep up with the current calendar.

On Tuesday mornings I will be at KSU having coffee at a table for "chat with the chaplain", open to anyone who wants to stop by in the student center.

On Thursdays there will be a noon contemporary eucharist at St. Augustine's on the UK campus, primarily for faculty and staff to be able to attend, but open to all.

On August 26, I will be at Holy Trinity Georgetown to have a eucharist and barbecue with Georgetown College students and parishioners from the church there. That is the same night that there will be a U2Charist in Versailles.

Hope to see you at one or more of these opportunities for young adults and college students in our diocese.

Blessings on your school year!

5 practices for adaptive leadership

The speaker at our chaplains' conference writes on adaptive leadership, an idea that Heifitz has developed, to make our leadership less personality oriented and technical, and more responsive to complex problems of organizations. Parks presented her concept of 5 practices to put into motion leadership when we are faced with complexity:

1. The practice of acknowlegement--seeing what is, and what we might become, getting out of cultural comfort zone to include more students/faculty/administrators and diverse opinions and contexts in our campus ministry.

2. The practice of discernment--helping students and young adults to use critical thought processes to ponder: what is; what is needed; what should be shed; what we need to atune ourselves to; exploring possibilities; incorporating new patterns; then embodying our new knowlege.

3. The practice of the hearth--incorporating both motion and stability, Sabbath in time and space; contemplation and action in renovating ourselves and our organizations.

4, The practice of the table--based on the fact that we become a group when someone brings food; sharing at the table, both receiving and giving (Benedictine type of hospitality).

5. The practice of the commons--helping our students to connect to the fabric of life through service in community, helping their initiation into suffering and wonder.

As you can tell these are fascinating topics and I have not been able to flesh them out very well in this short blog. Sharon Daloz Parks is a Quaker who is very spiritually grounded in her concepts of learning and leadership. It was wonderful to have her presentations at his conference. She reminds me of my therapist in Lexington--centered and wise. Her book Leadership Can Be Taught, I highly recommend. She has a couple of others that are good as well.

Jazz Mass July 13

 

The Feast of St. Benedict (transferred) will be celebrated at Mission House (203 East 4th St in Lexington) with a Jazz Eucharist on July 13. Come join the young adult musicians and bring a picnic and your lawn chair at 6 pm.

Why this blog?

So, check out this little blog about pastors blogging. It is a small list of the pros and cons for ministry when church leaders blog. You and I could come up with the same list on our own, I think, but it's helpful when others are thinking of some the good reasons for church leaders, like me, to have a blog.

The reason I started this blog was to be able to reach the young adults and college students (and faculty and staff) of the Diocese of Lexington on a regular basis, to:

• allow myself and my theology to be better known by diocesan young adults and others
• publicize and encourage young adult participation in diocesan events and college ministries
• get comments from those I am ministering with, about the world today, different opinions on Christian engagement with our world, and whatever may be in the hearts of young adults in our diocese
• and, hopefully, not last, to have some fun contacting friends and other campus ministers

As time goes on, I am adding and subtracting items from the blog. I need your feedback.

What works for you on this site?

What would you like to see, to assist the ministry of, by and for campus students/faculty/staff and young adults in the Diocese of Lexington??

If you're out there and you're reading this, get back to me!

Pentecost, Pizza, Canterbury Pub

Lots happening for young adults in our Diocese this summer. The Young Adult Commission decided on Friday (before Pizza at Pazzo's) that they would sponsor the July Jazz Eucharist for the entire diocese to come--whoa! We are excited.

Also, we are beginning Theology on Tap on 4 Tuesdays in July, starting the 10th. Diocesan leaders will discuss the topic, "What Do Episcopalians Believe?" We are calling our ToT "Canterbury Pub."

All right, so some would say it will not take long to discuss what we believe, because...

But actually, there is a lot in our heritage as Anglicans--

• the three-legged stool of theological sources,
• the "via media",
• the Elizabethan Settlement,
• the Scottish Prayer Book,
• Anglican sacramental theology,
• Anglican liturgy and hymnology,
• Anglican saints,
• Anglican spirituality...

well you get the picture, we could go on quite a while.

What are your questions? What do you want to know about your Anglican heritage, and your Episcopal roots? Email the Young Adult Commission at yac-diolex@googlegroups.com or reply to this blog.

I hope you will come to this venue for age-appropriate beverages in July! We are working on a place that will be announced maybe as soon as later this week.

Pizza at Pazzo's Tonight//Canterbury Pub in July!

Tonight 7 pm.

The young adult commissioners will be talking about Theology on Tap, better known for us at Canterbury Pub.
What would you like to have presented for discussion?
Let us know...

Canterbury Fellowship at Morehead State

Morehead is getting going. I met today with the dean of Students to begin the process of formalizing a group for Episcopal/Lutheran students and others interested in a more theologically open religious student group. There are a few steps involved and more students than we currently have, so it will take a few months before we are a formal organization on the MSU campus.
However, it is exciting to be meeting with students and faculty already and have many who seem to be hungry for this ministry.

I ask your prayers for the Canterbury Fellowship at MSU.