13 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment

by Janine Schenone
in Uncategorized

Sometimes, seminary studies can seem a bit arcane. I remember one of my favorite Biblical Studies professors, Carolyn Sharp, jokingly saying in a sermon, “We Bible professors like to tell ourselves that what we do is relevant.” [It is. We just forget to thank them for it as we are poring over their commentaries while working up a sermon.] And I frequently hear fellow seminarians disparaging the study of theology for being too intellectual, too detached from the world, its problems, and ministry in our communities.

But I love theology, and study it somewhat addictively, and I also love ministry and practice that too (I hope). I like to think that the two are related, and that theology is relevant to life, ministry, our relationships with one another and with God, peacemaking, etc.

I had proof of that (a theologian would throw in words here about epistemology, etc., but I will refrain) in these past few weeks, when I was doing theology for a very practical purpose. In one case, I was asked to help with the research for a sermon at a wedding. The groom had chosen very particular Bible passages for the wedding, and the preacher knew what concepts he wanted to convey, but he asked me to do some theological research to add depth and some interesting, classic sources to it. Afterwards, he said that the couple was delighted with the sources in the sermon.

And that gave me delight. Really? A little theological research brought delight to a couple, and perhaps others, on their wedding day?

In another case, I was asked to provide theological research to bolster a lecture being presented to people interested in youth ministry. I love theology, and I have worked as a youth group leader for several years, and it seemed like a perfect fit for me. I was amazed, as I scrolled through journal article after journal article about theology in the Psalms, what I gleaned when I looked at the Psalms, God, and us through the lens of the lecturer’s framework and my own past experiences working with teenagers. Amazed.

And I was also thrilled that a highly experienced pastor wanted to employ me to do this: to explore deeply and theologically in the immediate service of a deep human need.

This research was different from purely scholarly research, which starts with questions and considers many paths before the scholar decides what to present. This research was more targeted in terms of purpose and content. But still, the experience gives me confidence that all research serves some deep human need beyond the addictive hunger of the researcher.

And now, back to some theological research for my next sermon for 2nd Epiphany Sunday!

Article source: http://janineatyale.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/theology-for-hire/

02 Jan 2012 2 Comments

by Janine Schenone
in Uncategorized

This is me, literally wandering in the Saudi Arabian desert in 2010, and experiencing a brief moment of liberation from a hot head scarf on a very hot day.

Much is made of the fact that the ancient Israelites, once freed from their enslavement in Egypt, wandered in the desert for forty years before reaching Canaan. Forty years? Big deal. I have been waiting even longer for what I believe God intended for me.

It is big news among people interested in religion that the Pope has just named a former Episcopal bishop, a married man, to be the U.S. leader of Episcopalians in the U.S. who wish to join the Catholic Church while retaining some of their married clergy and some of their cherished liturgies (the language used at church services). The (very few) people leaving the church object to, among other things, the ordination of women and openly gay clergy in committed relationships.

When the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S., Katharine Jefferts Schori, was asked about a similar pronouncement in England in 2009, she said, “The road between Rome and England is well travelled,” by which she means that Roman Catholics have been becoming Anglicans/Episcopalians, and vice versa, since the English Reformation.

Indeed, I have travelled that road myself, leaving the Roman Catholic Church and joyfully embracing the Episcopal Church and with it, my vocation to the priesthood. I felt reborn in 2003 when that happened.

It has been over forty years since I first experienced this priestly vocation. Like many other people called to the priesthood, I played priest when I was a child, saying the Eucharistic prayer with outstretched hands in front of my sisters’ full-length mirrors and making communion wafers out of white bread to give to my siblings and neighbors. My father found this disconcerting. That was when I was 8.

When I was 10, I wanted very badly to be an altar server but was told only boys could do it. For weeks after I was denied this opportunity, I kept looking at the priest behind the altar at church and thinking, “I want to be up there.” I asked why I couldn’t, and the answer was that only men could be priests because Jesus chose male disciples.

When I was 15, a Jesuit priest saying a Mass for my catechism class asked who wanted to be altar servers, and my friend and I, both girls, raised our hands. He said, “Come on up!” and he showed us what to do. I was ecstatic, but incredibly frustrated that that night would be my only opportunity.

When I was 17, I took a vocational assessment during my senior year of high school, and the results said that I was vocationally suited to be a priest, editorial cartoonist, or writer.

When I was 23, I kept reading the vocational brochures for the priesthood in the narthex of the Roman Catholic church I attended while I was in graduate school the first time. I looked at those smiling faces of young men in collars, and I could not figure out why I kept looking at the brochures. The brochures asked, “Do you feel called?” and I kept thinking, “Yes.” But called to what?

When I was 24, I researched religious orders, not knowing why I was doing this. I was a married Catholic woman, so no religious orders were possible. Instead, I served churches as a choir member, cantor, and choir director.

At 28, pregnant with my child, I took a vocation and values seminar through my Catholic church and found that my overarching vocation was The Word. I asked the (Episcopal!) priest leading the seminar what that meant, and he said, “Teaching, writing, speaking, studying–learning and conveying the Gospel.”

By 29, I was divorced, the single mother of an infant girl, and life became a matter of survival and doing what the world would pay me enough to do so that my daughter could have a safe home and a good education. But I always felt that I had missed some boat, and I felt spiritually lost and unfulfilled in the Catholic Church. I drifted in and out of church, wanting to give my daughter a spiritual upbringing but feeling somehow erased–invisible.

By my late 30s, I started exploring nondenominational Christian churches and just didn’t find a fit. Fortunately for me, after I had resumed attending a Catholic Church in El Dorado Hills, I kept driving by a sign advertising an Episcopal church being built nearby, and finally, in the summer of 2003, I went to it for the first time.

And during that one service, when I realized that I was in a church that did ordain women, that cherished the Eucharist and a liturgy full of Scripture, that deeply honored tradition but sought to interpret the Gospel within its contemporary contexts, I was set free. I no longer felt weird for playing priest, or reading vocational brochures supposedly meant for men, or feeling inexplicably but powerfully drawn to the altar and the consecration that happens there.

I acknowledged this vocation. And now, it is the eve of the 4-day General Ordination Examination, and I find myself waiting again. I have been thinking a lot about this long wait–waiting for me to figure it out, waiting for my daughter to grow up, waiting for the church approval processes to move along. It has been over forty years of waiting, and that’s longer than the Israelites waited. It has created a paradoxical combination of both patience and urgency in me. There is an element of NOW in vocation, as my last spiritual director in California once told me. And he is definitely right about that. There is also an element of waiting in any religious work because the fact is, we are working toward a future not our own, as Archbishop Oscar Romero said.

But this waiting is very hard at times, and sometimes just plain wrong, as liberation theologian James Cone has pointed out. To tell people who have been denied justice to wait for it, perhaps when Jesus comes again, is to endorse the injustice that is oppressing them.

So I have waited and waited and waited for over 40 years, trying to be useful at whatever I am given to do at any given moment. But I am waiting like the prophet in the cave, fierce and poised, ready to spring into action when I get the word. There is work to do.

Turn, O LORD! How long?
Have compassion on your servants!
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us,
and as many years as we have seen evil.
Let your work be manifest to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and prosper for us the work of our hands—
O prosper the work of our hands!

Psalm 90:13-17.

This Taize version of “Wait for the Lord” says it all… at a very, very, very slow tempo:

Article source: http://janineatyale.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/over-40-years-of-waiting/

29 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment

by Janine Schenone
in Uncategorized

I have decided to approach the General Ordination Examination the same way I approached childbirth. I remember being in my ninth month of pregnancy, thinking to myself, “Wait a minute… maybe this isn’t a good idea….” Too late!  I comforted myself by telling myself, “Billions and billions of women have done this before me with mom and baby turning out fine, so I will be fine.”

That is how I am (ahem!) attempting to face this mega-test of all mega-tests. The General Ordination Examination is yet another rite of passage for Episcopal seminarians. It is the test required of all those seeking ordination in the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. It consists of 7 tests, each 3.5 hours in length, spread out over 4 days. On Jan. 3, we have two 3.5-hour exams separated by lunch; on Jan. 4, we have the same thing. Then we get a one-day break to reconsider our career options. (Just kidding.) Then we have two more tests on Jan. 6. On Saturday, Jan. 7, we have the final 3.5-hour exam. Or maybe they are 3-hour exams. What’s the diff?

We are tested in 7 areas prescribed by our national church’s canons: Holy Scriptures (the Bible); church history; Christian ethics and moral theology; Christian theology and missiology; liturgy and church music; theory and practice of ministry; and contemporary society.

Have I taken classes and studied hard in all these areas? Yes, I have. Should I be expected to be conversant and competent in these topics before I become an ordained leader in a Christian church? Yes. Do I feel prepared? No, I don’t. And that’s because there is so much to cover in all of these areas that one can’t feel really prepared.

The board of examining chaplains advises us not to cram for this exam, but to feel confident in relying on our seminary studies and our life and ministry experiences to guide us. That sounds good. It even sounds like pastoral advice. But then I followed their advice and looked at past questions, and OMG, OMG, OMG. I am praying, not taking the Lord’s name in vain. Yes, I could answer some of them. I feel competent to do Biblical exegesis in a variety of ways and apply it to various situations. I feel competent in planning some liturgies. But explaining the differences in church architecture and altar placements in Christian history? Trust me, I never covered this in 2.5 years of courses at Yale Divinity School. Those courses were there, sure, but I was taking courses on all the other topics in this list of 7 areas.

For each question, we are told what kind of resources we may use, and you probably will not be surprised to hear that Wikipedia is not one of the allowed resources (no electronic resources allowed). For most questions, we are allowed a Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, a liturgical and prayer resource in the Episcopal Church. Sometimes we are allowed a hymnal. And this year, we will be allowed open resources for the Theology and Missiology question. Hoo, boy. That is about the the biggest and broadest topical area, so it will be impossible to figure out what subset of books to bring from home for THAT question. I guess I will park myself in the library on that day.

The Board of Examining Chaplains’ web site, my dean, and my Dean of Anglican Studies have advised us not to try to cram for this exam–just rely on what we know.

Okay. Right. Will do. Breathe deeply. All is well. Many before me have done this and survived.

But I just want to point out that, in fact, I never actually went through with regular childbirth. Due to a sudden drop in her heart rate in utero after 12 hours of labor, my daughter was born by emergency C-section. I was rapidly put under general anaesthesia, and when I woke up, they handed my daughter to me, fully born and very healthy. Presto!*

So… what I’m thinking is, if someone could just put me under and hand me a completed GOE when it’s all over, that would be great.

_______

*Actually, the recovery from a C-section is much longer and more painful than recovery from regular childbirth, and major surgery is always a risk, so it wasn’t SO presto.

Article source: http://janineatyale.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/omg-its-the-goe/

18 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment

by Janine Schenone
in Uncategorized

Harvard Divinity School on the border, surrounded by science

A couple of weeks ago, I visited some people at Harvard Divinity School, and I was reading the web site directions for finding the Divinity School as I walked alongside Harvard Yard. (You can’t walk inside now without a Harvard ID. They are keeping out Occupy Harvard protesters.)

The directions said that the Divinity School is on the northern edge of campus, just past the science center. And I thought to myself, “That’s funny. The Yale Divinity School is on the northern edge of campus, just past ‘Science Hill,’ a huge complex of science buildings.” There is so much symbolism in this coincidence.

1. Both venerable divinity schools are on the edge of major secular universities, renowned for their many fields of research, their wealth of resources, their reputation, their international influence. Is “divinity,” the study of religion, on the far border of all this secular wonder and esteem?

2. Both divinity schools are right next to major science complexes. At Yale, it borders a huge science complex that looks like a high tech campus in Silicon Valley (and it is, in some cases). At Harvard, the original Divinity School building is actually surrounded by a large red brick biological lab that has all sorts of animals engraved into the upper edges of the building. What does it say when divinity is literally surrounded by science?

I noted the border location of both divinity schools because of all the talk I have heard recently around seminary about Christianity becoming less and less relevant to Americans. It is on the margins now, on the border, with fewer people going to church or considering them Christian. This fact is meant to strike fear in the hearts of seminarians. I can just hear Scarlett O’Hara: “Where shall I go? What shall I do?”

But actually, the border is a good place for the Church to be. It’s where the apostles often stand, it’s where the prophets always stand, and it’s where Jesus usually was. It’s where the women have been for 2,000 years, where non-white Christians have often been, where Christians surrounded by non-Christians find themselves. And those people often inspire the greatest explosions of growth in the Church and in innovations. Look at Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, and Dorothy Day. Look at Desmond Tutu, Gustavo Gutierrez, and  Mercy Amba Oduyoye. Look at the Church in South Sudan, Korea, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Los Angeles. The border is where we do our best work.

I noted the proximity of the science complexes because people like to say that science and religion are, at worst, diametrically opposed to one another, or, at best, strange bedbellows. But I don’t personally know any Christians who actually think this. Science applies the faculty of reason given to us by God, Christians believe, to help us understand the world, devise solutions, heal the sick, and so on. And the things that scientists study are instances of the amazing, awe-filled glory of God’s creation (according to believers). I delighted in the fact that Harvard Divinity School looks out on pseudo-hieroglyphs of amazing animals.

But before I had these wonderful thoughts about the border being a great place, wondering whether divinity was getting pushed to the edges, I read that the Harvard Divinity School was actually the first school at Harvard. And Yale, founded soon afterward, was also founded first by clergymen to train new clergy.

So I guess what I’m saying is: we got there first. And theology? It was considered a science once upon a time….

Article source: http://janineatyale.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/divinity-on-the-border/

27 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment

by Janine Schenone
in Uncategorized

There seem to be two favorite pastimes of seminarians at the beginning of Advent: 1) expressing disdain for all the materialistic people and corporations who are misappropriating the birth of Christ and creating a strife-ridden, idolatrous, sacrilegious mess of Christmas; 2) stressing out about all the papers, exams, and various applications we have to complete during Advent.

I had a slightly different perspective on #1 (disdain for the shopping craze) this year. My daughter has a retail job at a mall and was required to work from 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving to 8 a.m. on “Black Friday.” So I drove her to the mall and saw some cars already parked there, an hour before the stores were supposed to open. And then I picked her up at 8 a.m. and watched shoppers coming out of the store. This was the first time I have ever been to a mall on Black Friday.

What I saw were not stressed out suburbanites laden with bags upon bags of Christmas purchases. What I did see were people coming out of the mall with one or two bags: a man in his thirties came out with a box of work boots. A mother with three teenaged girls came out, each of them carrying one small bag from a lingerie store. Three women who look like they do physical work during the week stood at the curb with two bags each from J.C. Penney’s, waiting for their friend or family member to pick them up. Two women walked out of Macy’s, each of them carrying one packaged down quilt in her arms.

And I was chastened. These were people coming to the mall on the biggest shopping day of the year because they need a pair of shoes for work, and Black Friday may be the only day they can afford the shoes. These are people making minimal purchases. (If you have ever shopped for lingerie for teenagers, you know that one item can be expensive.) These are people who are probably buying underwear and socks in bulk for their kids at J.C. Penney’s. These are people looking for a deal on bedding for their family members as the winter approaches; with down quilts, they can turn the heat down at night. They all needed to save money in this difficult economy.

These are the people that Jesus came for: people who need work boots and a steady job, people who need warm clothing and bedding in the winter. He came for teenaged girls who want one piece of fancy lingerie (and their ambivalent mothers). He came for my daughter, limping out of the store at 8 a.m. after 8 hours on her feet because she wants to make enough money to buy her mother something special for her ordination. He came for the stressed out suburbanites who did yell at my daughter and her coworkers at 5 a.m. when the shop girls couldn’t find shopping bags big enough for all the purchases.

This is exactly what I look like right now except that I have a cup of coffee next to me, and I don’t have her great hair.

He came for me and other seminarians who gripe about papers and exams and internship tasks due during Advent, perhaps to remind us that we are not wasting our time reading books written by holy people who cared a lot about Jesus. He came for me and other seminarians who want this to be a holy time but feel that other people–the shoppers, the seminaries, the admissions committees, the CPE program administrators, employers–are the ones making it an unholy time.

The more I think about it, Jesus only took a little time now and then for quiet prayer as he waited for his important day to approach. It’s not as if he had four weeks of work-free bliss at any time in his ministry. And as any woman in her last month of pregnancy knows, there is still work to do while the parents wait with joyful expectation and wonderment for the great arrival. The trick is to work joyfully while we wait, and to take frequent, small moments for rest and prayer.

With that said, I need to get back to work on two papers, some Ph.D. applications, and a sink full of pots and pans. (It’s amazing how clean my apartment gets when I have a dreaded paper to write.) But I promise not to complain–anymore–about these, uh, blessed tasks.

In the meantime, may God richly bless all those, poor and rich, who seek to make Christmas for themselves and others this year. And may God give all of us who are called to preach the good news about Advent charitable hearts toward the rest of the sheep.

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Article source: http://janineatyale.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/venting-about-advent/

04 Nov 2011 1 Comment

by Janine Schenone
in Uncategorized

Singing at a young adults’ VOCARE retreat with Marcia, the Rev. John Mangels, and Dennis Engblom in 2006.

Singing Hebrew songs in a conservative synagogue in Boston only hours after learning of the death of my friend, mentor, spiritual director, and sponsoring rector Marcia (Mar-SEE-ya) Engblom might seem like a strange way to grieve.

And it was.

But I had planned to visit my good friend’s synagogue with her for a while, partly because I am a major supporter of interfaith anything, and partly because I am in a liturgical music class and need to write papers on musical traditions different from my own. And then, the day that I was to leave for Boston, I received the news that Marcia had fallen at home after major heart surgery and hit her head, and she had not recovered. After several tortured phone calls with people in the Diocese of Northern California, my sponsoring diocese, I realized I did not want to sit in my apartment alone. So I got on the train to Boston to spend the weekend with my friend.

And in the morning, my friend took me to her conservative synagogue, which is in the rabbi’s home, and we had a long Shabbat service with a 13-year-old’s bat mitzvah. Although I don’t know any Hebrew words beyond “Adonai” and “Elohim” and “Shalom,” I managed to join in the singing quite easily. Sometimes the songs are in a call-and-response imitation style. And sometimes the songs were fairly repetitive, so I could follow. I did what I could.

At one point in the service, worshippers sing Psalms 116 through 120 in a sequence, and that was a very hard part for me because Psalm 116 is my favorite. It speaks to me of periods of grief in my life as well as periods of joy. It speaks to me of vocation (“I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord, I will fulfill my vows in the house of the Lord”). And on last Saturday morning, it spoke to me of Marcia. “Grievous in the Lord’s sight is the death of his faithful ones.”

That is when my grief over Marcia’s sudden death overwhelmed me, and I thought I might need to leave the service. This was my first Shabbat service ever, and I noted the unrelenting theme of the 4-hour-long series of chants and songs: Praise God, Praise God, Praise God. I thought that weeping might not look like praise, and I didn’t want to ruin the mood in the room.

But I felt Marcia right in front of me, egging me on to sing with an encouraging smile and a pumped fist, a gusto for life and for God that was absolutely unflagging despite whatever ugliness might be around her. There is an element of Hebrew worship singing that is like play. It’s called nigun, and one sings “la la la” or “lie lie lie” to a tune that the rabbi starts. The idea is to let go of words and simply let the Spirit come, and it is fun and easy to do and inviting. Marcia would have loved it, not only because she loved singing, but also because she loved to be playful. She would have loved that the bat mitzvah girl and her little brother set the final hymn of the whole service, typically led by children, to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.” She would say, “Keep on singing.”

With the Rev. Marcia Engblom and Dennis Engblom at the Diocese of Northern California Convention in November, 2009

That is why she was so endearing to teens at Camp Noel Porter and at SEARCH retreats and to young adults at VOCARE retreats. She believed in letting the Spirit lead. She believed in seeing what would happen. She believed in tapping into the play of our lives in God and one another. So for those of us who like to play in the fields of the Lord, she was a wonderful example and encourager. To me, she was the one who smiled and said over and over, “Keep going!” whenever I had doubts about where I was headed and the obstacles I faced. Seminarians need people like that in their lives. I can’t speak for other seminarians’ relationships with their sponsoring rectors, but she was the one who got me through a lot.

She was also doggedly faithful to her duties when I worked closely with her from 2006 to 2009; she believed it was important to show up in faith and do what was expected. From her online journal entries, I discovered that she apparently had been experiencing a decrease in physical energy the past year and a half. That must have been very hard for her because she loved the work of the Church.

So I take some comfort in the fact that Marcia’s labors are over, and I take tremendous comfort in the fact that Marcia is  surrounded by a huge Gospel choir of heavenly hosts right now. She told me more than once that she wanted Gospel music at her funeral. I have no idea whether the choir at Trinity Cathedral in Sacramento is going to sing Gospel music for Marcia today, but I am absolutely sure that the angels sing whatever makes us feel joy, and for Marcia, that would undoubtedly be Gospel.

So Marcia, just in case there is no Gospel music at your funeral today, I’m sending you some Gospel music from YouTube. I hope the Internet connection in heaven is better than it is at airports. Here you go.

(Okay, that last one is not Gospel, but it would have been great for a youth group meeting.)

Article source: http://janineatyale.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/how-can-i-keep-from-singing/

11 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment

by Janine Schenone
in Uncategorized

I have had a topsy-turvy start to my third and last year of seminary, and here’s why: I was returning from Northern California to New Haven, thinking about how much I missed California and how much I wished I could be back there, in that place and with the many communities of people I know there. Then I landed back in New Haven, and I felt excited about this third year of seminary starting, and all my fellow seminarians coming back to New Haven. I have my favorite haunts in New Haven, my favorite subway stops in New York, my favorite quiet corners of the Yale Divinity School Library.  This too is home, and I know it well. I am a senior! I know the ropes! I know who I am, I know what I want, I know what I need to do!

That lasted for about two weeks. And then, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, started asking me, “So, Janine, where do you think you’re headed after seminary?”

And I started babbling. I mean, I do have plans. I am applying to seven or eight Ph.D. programs in theology after preparing arduously for this field of work for the past two years. And I am excited about that prospect and have all sorts of questions I want to explore, works I want to read, and topics I want to write about. But I can’t say if or where I will be accepted. In addition, I also feel very much called to church work, and so I have attended the session in which Berkeley (Episcopal seminary) students were shown how to put their church resume online so that recruiters can find us. I also find this prospect exciting. Preaching, pastoral care, evangelism in cities, urban ministry to the poor–let me at it!

However, I have absolutely NO idea where I will end up. In the academy? In the church? On the East Coast?  On the West Coast? In the South or Midwest? And so, after about two weeks of people asking me, “So, Janine, where do you think you’ll go after this?”, I just wanted to say, “Don’t ask!”

Because I don’t know. All of a sudden, that sure-footed senior year feeling turned into a walk in deep, hot sand: there’s sure ground beneath me, but I’m sliding around a lot at the moment. It doesn’t feel all that secure. I would prefer that solid feel of wet, smooth sand beneath me, where my footprints behind me are clearly discernible, leading in a nice, straight line somewhere, and if I just follow that trajectory, I will be further along somewhere–somewhere predictable and sure.

However, predictable and sure are just illusions. If there’s anything I have learned from the twists and turns of my life, it is that there is no simple, straight trajectory in this life. In my own life, there have been so many strange twists and turns of fate, apparent detours, sudden and delightful surprises, etc., that I have come to recognize this as the rhythm of life, at least in a life that is open to change. I experienced a clear call to priesthood just after changing vocations from Silicon Valley business development manager and director to English instructor at a community college. At the time, it seemed impossible to me that God would call me only a year into a new career–one that I liked. Why not let me know before I changed careers?

C’est la vie, as my mother loved to say with a big, encouraging smile on her face. I have learned a great deal about unpredictability of life, not only from my own life, but from the lives of the poor and the sick that I meet at a local food pantry and at the hospital where I serve occasionally as a chaplain. Peoples’ lives change suddenly when both parents lose their jobs in the same week, or when someone receives a diagnosis of stage 4 cancer, or when a child dies suddenly.

In comparison to these things, the slippery sands beneath a senior seminarian are nothing, really, but a warm walk upon the beach of a loving God. Or so I keep telling myself.

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Article source: http://janineatyale.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/dont-ask-or-coming-home-part-deux/

24 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment

by Janine Schenone
in Uncategorized

Laura Simkins, who spearheaded the fundraising drive for my textbooks, gets ready to present me with a check for book costs. Thank you, Laura!

Out of the many wonderful experiences I have had back home in California, one of the most touching was my home church’s presentation of a check to me to buy textbooks for next year.

Seminarians, like other students in professional programs, need to buy a lot of textbooks, and as anyone funding a college education knows, the cost of textbooks have been skyrocketing the past ten years. It can cost well over $1,000 per year for texts, especially during the first year when people may be buying Bibles, prayer books, concordances, commentaries, and so on. These are pricey books.

To my delight, my Church Commission on Ministry decided to ask our church to help me buy books. So one member of the group, who has shared many happy evenings of Bible study group meetings with me, asked me for a list (or at least the best guess at a list) of the books I need for the coming year and their prices. Then she put up a poster with all of the book titles and prices and asked people to sign up to buy one or more books.

Happy reading, indeed! Some of these books will remain on my shelves and be referred to many times over the coming years.

I asked her how this effort went. Did people signed up for the first free slot, or did they want to buy very particular books? She said that my fellow parishioners were very interested in buying particular titles. The titles for “Mass Class,” for example, such as The Priest’s Handbook, were hot books during this fundraising drive. Nearly all the titles have been covered at this point, and that is a great, great relief to me. I am deeply grateful to the people of St. Francis Episcopal Church in Fair Oaks, California for their generous help.

But this whole experience also got me thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could appeal to all the seminarians’ churches to buy a book for a seminarian?” It will pay the church back tenfold in priests educated in Bible, church history, doctrine, ethics and theology and trained in preaching, pastoral care, and liturgical practices.

Buy a book for a seminarian. It’s a good thing.

Article source: http://janineatyale.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/buy-a-book-for-a-seminarian/

23 Aug 2011 2 Comments

by Janine Schenone
in Uncategorized

With another very supportive group, some of my fellow Education for Ministry students from St. Michael’s of Carmichael, CA

I have spent this past week in one of the rites of passage for Episcopal seminarians: meeting with diocesan committees who are considering whether to recommend me for candidacy, a stage in the discernment process of people preparing for the Episcopal priesthood. (I have been a postulant for two and a half years.)

This meant going back to Northern California, my place of birth and where I have lived nearly all of my life, after spending the summer in New Haven working a variety of part-time jobs. So vacation was on my mind, but first, I had two meetings to attend: the first with my Diocesan Commission on Ministry in Davis, CA, and the second with my Standing Committee at the bishop’s office in Sacramento.

It’s hard to capture for those who haven’t experienced this what these meetings are like. (I should say here that I have no idea what these meetings are like in other dioceses; I can only comment on my own.) They are not at all like a job interview, where the interviewers are looking for a certain type of person and background, and the person is looking for a good fit with the interviewers and their organization. The interviewee may even wish to present herself as someone fit for the job. Rather, in my experience, these meetings have been occasions for my committees to ask me how I am doing at seminary and what my current thinking is about my progress and my sense of vocation.They spend most of their time listening.

They ask fairly open-ended questions and let me wander around them for a while. (Or maybe that’s just how it goes in my meetings….) In any case, the upshot of my two meetings is that the committees recommended to my bishop that I be made a candidate for Holy Orders, and he agreed, and so now I am a candidate.

Seminarians frequently like to post on Facebook, “I’m a postulant now!” or “I’m a candidate!” or “I’m getting ordained this Friday!” And all of these are very good things. But for me, the reaction to these milestones has been very similar to the way I feel when someone hands me a cup of Gu or Gatorade during a marathon: I have a sense of feeling supported and encouraged, even patted on the back, and then urged on. I don’t exactly feel elated because I haven’t arrived at the end of the race yet. (And while, at the moment, ordination to the priesthood feels like the end of the race, I am betting that if that day comes, I will still have that feeling of being at the watering table and needing to go on.)

Don’t get me wrong: I am very glad, just as I am very glad when I reach the Gu table during a marathon. Reaching a stage like this does motivate me to go on. It is also an incredibly positive experience to receive encouragement and support from these committees. Perhaps I am lucky that my diocese considers these committees to be pastoral, listening, discerning bodies. I understand that some seminarians have a very different experience. But how many professions can you think of in which people check in on you every so often to see how you’re progressing?

The thing is, candidacy is not exactly an achievement, especially since candidacy is still considered a stage of discernment about one’s call to ordained life. It’s a confirmation of the work I have done so far to fulfill requirements and to discern my call, but it’s not a prize, an award, a singling out for one’s performance.

And I like that, actually. I like that the church doesn’t act so much like the rest of the world in this matter. It reminds me so much of the way Jesus interacted with his disciples, urging them on, supporting them, but not applauding them for their efforts. I think his final words to his disciples could be summarized as, “Keep going. Later you may eat and drink.” (Luke 17:7-10).

Article source: http://janineatyale.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/coming-home-part-1/

06 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment

by Janine Schenone
in Uncategorized

I find biomechanics fascinating. They are more fascinating to me when someone else is having a biomechanical problem, not me, but the fact is that I have become intimately acquainted this summer with the biomechanics of my right knee.

You might be wondering what the heck this has to do with seminary, etc. I will get to that, I promise. But before I do, let me just explain that I was all jazzed this summer about ramping up my running for some half-marathons and the Hartford Marathon in October, 2011. I have run these types of races before and have loved them.

But I had tapered back my running at seminary the past two years because 1) I didn’t have much free time; 2) it can get really, really cold in Connecticut; 3) the roads are slippery when there is ice and snow on them; and 4) I don’t have a beautiful, nature-filled place to run at the moment. So I was doing short “maintenance” runs. But I really missed training for long races, and I wanted to have an interesting goal to shoot for during a mundane summer.

So this late spring, I started slowly building up my miles and speed, taking great care not to overdo anything as I prepared to reenter long distance running events.

And then, my right knee said, “No.” “What do you mean, ‘no’?” I asked. “Of course you can do this! We’re only at 6 miles! That is a ridiculously short training run. Do it!” But suddenly, I started to get sharp, stabbing pains in my knee, and then, I couldn’t even walk or go up or down stairs without a lot of pain. Eventually, sitting on the sofa hurt.

I rushed to the doctor and said I needed to be back in marathon-training mode NOW. She looked sadly at my limping self and said that running was very hard on the knees, and maybe I should take up swimming or walking. Anyone who has seen me swimming knows that it will never be a real sport for me. And walking is not exercise! Please! Walking is just what one does when one doesn’t have running shoes on. And actually, I have been known to run down hallways in one-inch heel pumps because, well, it’s faster, and that’s what my legs were meant to do.

Anyone, my doctor ordered a regular bone x-ray and an MRI, which entailed a two-week wait to get on the MRI schedule. Then I had to wait another two weeks to get an orthopedist to interpret the results. Meanwhile, the doctor was saying, “Don’t run.” The orthopedist said I did not have a meniscus tear or an ACL tear or even any bone problems, but what I did have was a kneecap that pulled the wrong way when I contracted my quadriceps muscle. “What kind of conditioning do you do?”

Conditioning? Huh? I said, “Well, I run. Or I used to.”

“You don’t do any weight training or strengthening exercises?” he asked.

Not really. Why should I? The truth is, I have always been somewhat proud of my running-only regimen. It worked for me. I was a running purist. Speed workouts? Give it to me. Hills? Love’em. Distance? Anything up to 26.2 miles was fine with me. And I was doing fine. Who needs conditioning or cross-training?

He ordered physical therapy, and at my first physical therapy appointment, I learned the problem: I have a weak VMO (vastus medialis obliquus–part of the quadriceps) on my right leg, which causes my kneecap to pull to the side when I contract my quadriceps, which causes the kneecap to dig into the femur cartilage, and thus… pain and inflammation. It probably got weakened by a ski injury years ago, when a snowboarder slammed into me from behind, and my right leg was ripped out of the ski binding.

The reason I found this fascinating is that during all of my long-distance running the past few years, I would get a tight piriformis muscle (lower gluteal region) on my left side, and my sports massage therapist used to say, “This is probably compensating for some weakness on your right side.”

So the solution is easy, really. I need to work the VMO muscle until it is strong enough to keep my kneecap in alignment, and then return slowly to running.

I have learned something about the foolishness of avoiding other types of exercise because running is the one I like, the one I do all the time, the one that never fails me. It’s time for some conditioning.

Did I mention that running has also been a spiritual practice for me? The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, was profiled in Runner’s World magazine as saying that she uses running as body prayer, and I know exactly what she means. Not only do I pray (as in offering up thoughts of thanksgiving, praise, petition, contrition, and just plain “Hey, how ya doing?”) while I run, but my whole body moving through space is a prayer in itself.

Other people feel this way about singing, or breastfeeding a child, or harvesting vegetables, or building something from materials.

So imagine having that taken away from you. I was not a happy camper for a while. I even uttered some kind of prayer like, “Hey, God, if I can’t run, and you’re not going to fix my knee in my hoped-for time frame, then how can I be expected to pray?”

Readers wiser than I will recognize the stupidity and spiritual immaturity of that prayer. Quid pro quo reasoning is a really bad way to approach God, given the fact that we are not on equal footing with God.

This got me to thinking about spiritual exercises (other than running). I have a few, and my religious order (the Third Order Franciscans) stipulates several different ones. Some I love, and some I hate. And so… the ones I hate tend to slip off the spiritual workout schedule, and the ones that are easy and effortless remain.

Ironically, in seminary, my list of spiritual practices has actually contracted rather than expanded due to the many demands upon my time. Things I used to do more often have seriously declined or disappeared. I stuck with the ones I liked, the ones that were easy. And that was fine with me! I’m a runner! Who needs conditioning?

But after this whole knee debacle, I have begun to wonder what happens to our spirits when we avoid spiritual therapy–practices that stretch us in ways that hurt a little, but ultimately strengthen our spirit’s ability to reach out to God and the people around us.

Is it obvious when we are limping spiritually, when there is some weakness due to our unwillingness to face the unpleasant exercises? What tightens up in us and becomes rigid to compensate for that weakness? What past injury has caused us enough pain to make us unwilling to use certain spiritual muscles or stretch ourselves?

Alas, in my case, I know exactly what spiritual practices I am avoiding. Because I hate them. Because I am no good at them. Because I have been injured spiritually in the past by others and don’t wish to risk that injury again. Because I feel like an idiot. Because, because, because.

Interestingly, I had a similar list of excuses about swimming for two doctors, but now, lo and behold, I swim laps three times a week. Although I will never be a great swimmer, I am starting to look forward a little bit to a swim workout and to value the sleek feeling of gliding through water and getting just a little bit stronger in my ridiculously weak upper body.

So maybe the same could be true for our spiritual lives in bodies. What would happen if we could get a spiritual diagnosis and force ourselves to do (or return to) those spiritual exercises that stretch or strengthen the weak and injured parts of our spirits?

I am afraid I am overdue for some stretching.

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Article source: http://janineatyale.wordpress.com/2011/08/06/working-out-spiritual-glitches/