Books, Birthdays, and Bonding

Ah, winter break. Probably my favorite part about being in college and graduate school (aside from, you know, learning). Fully reminds me that I do not in fact participate in "real life" yet, since I do get three weeks off in between semesters, during which time I don't have to do anything. It's a brilliant idea, really. I've read some books (highly recommend Ellen DeGeneres' book "Seriously, I'm kidding"- it literally made me laugh out loud on almost every page). I'm currently reading "Quiet- The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking"- so good. And I've watched entirely too much [football and] Big Bang Theory. hehe.

I've been home in Framingham since mid-December, and it has been a wonderfully relaxing time, for the most part. There was one-too-many times the ambulance came to my house (because once is really too many...), and my uncle had to spend four days in the hospital (during which time things were stressful at home), and my grammy was sick on Christmas which got us all very sad and worried. But everyone is doing much better now, which is good. I have gotten very used to having a lot of people in our house since everyone is always here to see Grams, but it does make life a lot more stressful when family members get sick, and we don't know how everyone will be taken care of. Luckily, my parents are amazing and are really good at taking care of my grandmother and my uncle. It makes me wonder if I'll ever be able to do what they do if in the future I'm in a similar situation. The way my mother took care of Grams on Christmas... well let's all hope and pray I never have to do that for my mom :-) ha.

Here's a picture of my lovely house all decorated for Christmas!

Other than spending lots and lots of time with my family, I also got to spend wonderful quality time with my friends in MA! It was so nice to see Rachel, Erica, Caroline, Michelle and Hannah, going out for margaritas, or going to trivia, or getting a casual coffee. Seriously, these are the wonderful friends who will in all likelihood be friends forever, who I love seeing (even if it's only for a few weeks a year!) I was also able to see a great friend from HWS- Kazia! We just became friends last year, and what a coincidence that she lives a half hour away in Maynard! Perfect! So we went out to lunch and then created a dinosaur masterpiece.

We named it Charlie.

AND! I got to spend time with Lesley! Seriously, could this break have been any better? I went to Cambridge to her mom's house, and I was able to look through her dad's books. I came home with the entire Anchor Bible series and a few other series/books... hehe

I may have gone a little bit overboard... haha

I cleared out the shelf in my closet, and now all of these books will hang out there until I'm ready to start my real library. Wabam! But it was also so nice to catch up with Lesley. :-) Wonderful.

I also celebrated a birthday! I am now 24 years old, and proud of it! I can tell this year is going to be great. Strangely enough, my age doesn't make me feel like an adult as much as taking care of my own finances does... haha. Either way, I feel like an adult. :-) I spent my birthday with my family (more bonding). We went to go see Les Miserables, and I LOVED it. I may have actually liked it more than the stage version. I will gladly see it again if any Durham friends are reading this and want to go soon! After seeing the movie, we went out to eat at Legal Seafood- so yummy. Then, more yummy food because we had cupcakes from Crumbs. (I'll let you in on a secret, I much prefer cupcakes to an actual cake. I don't know why, but I do! haha)

Happy birthday to me!!

So all in all, it was a lovely break. Christmas was nice, my birthday was awesome, and spending time with friends filled me with joy! Tonight I am ringing in the New Year with Kazia as we have a pajama party and watch Sherlock. (low key is the way to go! haha) As far as resolutions go, I tend not to make them because I know I will break them. But I would like to try and keep in touch with my friends a little bit more, and to try and be generally more healthy. I think I can do those two things pretty well!

I'm flying back to Durham on Thursday, and I'll have a few days to myself before the roomies come back on Monday. Looking forward to being back in my own space :-)

Also, I wanted to give a shout out to people who have told me recently that they read my blog! Thanks wonderful cousin Marybeth! And Peter and Suzy- it was so nice to read your Christmas card!! Miss you terribly! There was also someone else... Well thank you Someone! (Thank you all, really)

And since Jenna doesn't read this blog, here are some videos of her singing to me on my birthday. hehehehe

Happy Birthday, and Soft Kitty. :-)

And just for fun, some epic fail pictures that we tried to take in the snow

Peace, Love, and Smiles y'all
Christa

One Down, Five to Go!

Well, I have finished my first semester of seminary school! It was a great semester, and whenever people ask me about Duke Div, I am all smiles. I learned so much, was challenged in so many ways, and I think I've finally proven to myself that I am able to be at this prestigious institution and hold my own. I'm proud of myself for what I have accomplished, and I'm very much looking forward to next semester!

While driving to campus for a friend's birthday celebration on Thursday, I reflected on the differences between this M.Div program and my MAT program. I remember my first semester of my MAT like it was yesterday (in fact I've been thinking a lot about my kiddos the past couple of days...). Student teaching was an experience like none other. My brain has never worked so hard- from 7am until 3pm my brain never rested. It was mentally exhausting because I had to constantly think about what I was going to do next. I had 7th and 8th graders for 74-minute periods. I had to keep it interesting or they may have revolted :-) Hence why there was always lots of singing (in French and Spanish you can do that!), lots of hands on activities, and lots of different shorter lessons within the bigger period. I loved student teaching, and I loved my kids. I had so much fun with all of them. 

My experiences student teaching and writing up my MAT project were incredibly challenging for me. I was stretched further than I thought was possible, and yet came out of it ok. ;-) But when I compare my studies at HWS with the ones at Duke, I find myself thinking that my MAT was easier. Then I wondered... why? Community is very important to me. I often need to be surrounded with people I love in order to feel fully comfortable in a place (or degree program). The fact that I was able to stay at HWS for my MAT made that transition so much easier. The fact that I lived with my "college mom" Lesley, made my living situation ideal. I was able to stay with my church family at St. Peter's, and my professors were all there supporting me. I didn't have to start from scratch with friends, professors, and "extended family." This, above all else, is why I think I consider my MAT to be "easier."

My M.Div so far has been a very very different graduate school experience. There was a lot more reading and writing about subjects that I had never encountered before. With my MAT, I had been preparing for it for a couple years by taking various teaching classes. I knew what I was getting myself into. Not so with the M.Div. I struggled with understanding the various theologians and biblical scholars we learned about. I struggled with finding that community that is so important to who I am. It can be hard at Duke to find this community- I've heard this from upper-class students too. If you don't want the community-feel, you can easily avoid it. I have heard people say they are not here to make friends, they are here to learn. To each his own, but I could never do that. Learning and community go hand in hand for me, especially when ultimately what we're learning about is how to be leaders in the Body of Christ; learning how to create meaningful community in our future churches. I feel like you have to participate in this type of community in order to try and foster it in the future.

By the end of the semester, I felt like I was surrounded with people with whom I felt a mutual support and love. The epitome of this feeling was right before our first (and notoriously hardest) final- Early and Medieval Church History. The first-years had just come out of the Eucharist service ("to remember why we're here"), and on our way down to our classroom, so many of our second- and third-year friends where there cheering us on. Legitimately cheering. I was toward the end of the line of first-years, and people were still clapping for us, high-fiving us, and hugging us. I was brought to tears because of the outpouring of love and support that I felt in that moment. Being able to see upper-class friends from Bridge, the Anglican/Episcopal House, and Choir right before the exam, knowing that they were praying for me, feeling that community; it was the best thing for me in that moment. It was beautiful, and I can't wait to do it next year for the newbies. (Well, I can wait, I don't want this next year to go by too fast!) It was such a great way to start off finals week.

These past few days I have been particularly grateful for my friends. Grateful for my study buddies, my prayer buddies, my party-ing buddies ;-)  Friday was a tough day for many people, myself included, and the best way to end the day was to have my close friends over and to give them gifts that I knit them with love. I was grateful to be surrounded by them and be able to begin break with their company.

Here are some pictures (because what would a blog post be without pictures??) 

The "tree" I made, with awesome home-made ornaments from Ashley and Clara!!

Tree with gifts underneath :-)

Brent enjoying his washcloth with his lovely wife Natalie

I think T.J. likes his hat!

Kat with fingerless gloves and Michelle with the washcloth!

Andrew and Rachel with their washcloths

With that, I will stop writing. I could write a lot more about my thoughts right now, but I will spare you :-) I am so happy to have one semester of Div School under my belt, but I do hope time slows down just a tad, or else I'll be done before I know it! I'm looking forward to spending the next few weeks with my family in Framingham, and I hope the time will be rejuvenating and refreshing. 

Here is a song for y'all. I got to see Pentatonix in concert a few weekends ago- they are incredible. This is a nice Advent song from their PTXmas cd. Enjoy :-)

 

Peace, Love, Smiles, and Hugs (because I want to hug y'all)
Christa

Labyrinth

In my future backyard, I would love to have a labyrinth. If you've never walked one, I would highly suggest it. Today, I went on an Advent Retreat where I walked a pretty awesome labyrinth. I will admit the driving factor in going on this retreat was the fact that my idol the Rev. Dr. Lauren Winner was leading it, :-) however it really was a great day. 

For the first half, we chose two out of three stations: Meditative Prayer (led by Lauren Winner); silent time outside reflecting on scripture and walking the labyrinth; and meditative baking. Shocking I know, but I did skip Lauren Winner's session and did labyrinth and baking. I'll tell you briefly why. Jesus and I have had sort of a love/hate relationship the past few months. Don't worry, I won't go into all of my seminarian-worries-about-what-I-actually-believe story here in this blog, but if you want to talk about it with me I'd be happy to. But let's just say it was good for me to take that intentional time with scripture and force myself to think about questions/ideas that have been intriguing/bothering me this semester. I sat outside on a dock overlooking a lake at the conference center on a warm, beautiful, sun-filled morning. After taking some reflection time I walked this labyrinth (I got the picture off the website, I didn't actually take any):

 It was in the middle of the woods and made out of broken glass and the white stones. It was beautiful and meditative. 

From the moment I entered the labyrinth, I knew where I would eventually end up. It's not a maze- it isn't intended to trick us. It winds in and out, but only goes to one place. I knew I was walking toward a goal. But the path to the goal was long and winding and it took me places I didn't expect it to. I kept following knowing that I would at some point make it to the middle. It took way longer than I expected (I was 20 minutes late for the next session... oops!). At times I got distracted, but always tried to bring myself back to the line from the liturgy I was meditating on (Into your hands O Lord, I commend my spirit). I was walking with Kat- we would pass each other, going different directions, but knowing that we were walking the same path. A silent support along the way. Other people started walking with us- people we didn't know who were in different stages of life, but who also silently walked with us. 

The meditation on scripture and this labyrinth helped me come to terms with some of my spiritual issues right now (basically, although I want everything to be figured out now, it's going to take lots of time and quite possibly a long journey before the answers to my questions make sense). 


Then, we baked pretzels. Did you know that pretzels were originally made to imitate a prayer position from medieval times? The prayer position this adorable little girl is making: 

So, we baked. It was good to work with my hands and kneed the dough. Since I've been baking all semester, I thought it would be good to think about baking as a meditative act (even though it pretty much already acts as one for me). We ate the pretzels as part of lunch (quite yummy, if I do say so myself), and during the closing Eucharist. Wabam. 

We also had a great session on Praying in Color. I love this type of prayer, so I had a lot of fun with it. It really was a great day :-)

Other fun things that happened this week:

I was a lector for Lessons and Carols, and Dr. Warren Smith (our Church History professor who I LOVE) was presiding, so I got to officially introduce myself. He knew where I sat in class and everything (which is impressive considering there are like 160 people in that class). Made me smile. :-) 

My classes are officially done! I still have finals, so I will still be quite busy the next two weeks, but it will be nice to just be able to focus on studying. This past week I had a big Hebrew exam, and I still have a translation final for that class. I have a pastoral context paper and a big ol' final exam for Church History. I have a final exam for Old Testament, and I have a 20-page final paper for Episcopal Polity (due the same day as the CH final). It's going to be a fun week. I'm happy I had today to retreat and rejuvenate. 

Last night I went to see (and hear) Handel's Messiah performed at Duke Chapel by the Duke Choir. It. Was. Amazing. I've never sat through the entirety of the Messiah, but it was just incredible. They brought in legitimate soloists- I was just expecting some seniors from Duke to be singing the solos, but nope! Real professionals who were spot on. The soprano- sigh- she had a beautiful voice, and the best part was that you could tell she believed everything she was singing. I realized I've sung a lot of music from the Messiah- I think four of the choral pieces- with various church choirs. My favorite is still the Hallelujah chorus :-)  Last night was also great because I hung out with a different group of people than I normally do. One person even said to me "Christa, I'm so happy you're here. I've wanted to be friends with you but I didn't know how!" That made my night. 

So between the Messiah and the retreat today, I think I'm ready for the wonderful season of Advent to begin tomorrow. 


And now, for your enjoyment: my polity presentation that I did with Brad a couple of weeks ago finally made it on YouTube. Yes, I still continue to make a fool of myself, even at seminary. Love life. 

Peace, peace, and more peace, 
Christa