Author Archives: Jen

About Jen

Jen isn't quite sure when she lost her mind, but it is probably documented here on Meditatio. She blogs because the world needs her snark at all hours of the night... and she probably can't sleep anyway.

Quiet Weekend… Maybe

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Jon is going canoeing this weekend so I have the apartment to myself. I’m going to go see a friend’s new kitten tonight. (I know…. Jen will get to pet a kiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttttyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!) I’ll also debate over whether to go to the retreat tomorrow.

If I don’t go on the retreat tomorrow, I’ll probably do things I need to do, such as go grocery-shopping (how I wish I lived within walking distance of a good organic market…) and mail my cell phone, wedding album, and other things to my mom. I should also do some meal planning so I can gauge what I need and how to arrange it so that I don’t end up having to go to Four Bakers for lunch like I did today. (Although my lunch was probably the only meal I’ll eat today. For $5, they give you a sandwich, chips, fruit, pickle, and cookies.)

New Testament I has been fun lately as we’ve been just going over the Gospels one at a time. We’ve done Luke and Acts this last week and it’s been beneficial. We looked at the emphases in Luke and found some to be: food as a metaphor for inclusion in the kingdom, the role of women in ministry, persistence in prayer, and rich vs. poor issues. We’re also discussing sacraments in my Systematic Theology class and debating the pluses and minuses of infant baptism.

Oh yes… and a link for you cat people. (Thanks Tina!)

Wiccan Sermon and Blessing

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I might be wrong… but I’m pretty sure that this is a LUTHERAN seminary and not a Wiccan circle. If this is indeed a seminary, why was I and quite a few other people subjected to a sermon this morning that was like a New Age blessing rite except with random verses thrown in? The people who read were good readers, but that’s the only praise this “sermon” deserved. L was preaching on a text from Revelation which parallels the Isaiah 55 passage where the prophet calls for all to come. I was expecting a bona fide sermon which might actually say something about God, not a bunch of New Age chanting!!!!

The worship music was good this morning (probably because the person organizing the band wasn’t there). They managed to do the music some justice. (Incidentally, the person who organizes the music this week was being arraigned on trespassing charges. He was arrested at a sit-in at Senator DeWine’s office regarding issues of the School of the Americas and the issues going on in Colombia.) The anthem we did (“Come to the Waters” by John Foley SJ) was really good and I sang soprano to balance things out because we would have had 2 sopranos, 5 altos, and 3 men otherwise.

The benediction was this:
And now as you go, may God go with you.
May she go before you to guide you,
behind you to encourage you,
and beside you to be your friend.
May she go above you to watch over and care for you,
and beneath you to catch you when you fall.
And may she be forever in your heart;
filling you with her peace, her joy, and her love.

The last time I checked, “she” was a gendered pronoun. If we’re forbidden to use “he” because it is a gendered pronoun, shouldn’t the same rules apply to “she”??????? Maybe some people at this seminary have a problem with matriarchy and would prefer not to have it shoved in their face!!! It just seems like there is a double standard: I use “he” and have people jumping down my throat, gossiping about how “un-enlightened” I am, and ripping on me in class; but L can get away with using “she”.

I would have walked out this morning but I’m too much of a coward to stand alone and protest it. I didn’t have my cell phone on me so I couldn’t blame my walking out on that. I basically just said “he” under my breath when all the “she” instances arose and substituted “him” under my breath for “her”.

Why does this irritate me so much? These people actually think this will work in the parish. I wish I could be a fly on the wall during the meeting after her first sermon when her church council objects. When I supply-preached, I asked the pastor what would be appropriate and his response: if you use any pronoun other than “he”, you will lose the congregation and NEVER be invited back again.

How I wish the seminary could actually be in touch with the real world…

Bad Worship

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If you’re from Trinity Lutheran Seminary and you stumble across this entry, please leave promptly, especially if you’re part of the “Jesus Posse” that perpetrated one of the worst worship experiences in my life this morning.

The I-Group doing worship this week decided to do a week of contemporary worship. This would be fine… if they knew how to do it well!!!! Yesterday, they started off well and got people into it but then chose to add a keyboard and put some really nasty and cheesy synthesizer sounds into it. The synthesizer was distracting. They also have about 10 people up there with only two vocalists, meaning that you can’t hear the two people who are supposed to be LEADING.

Today was one of the top five worst worship experiences of my life. They started off with “Shout to the Lord” which is a beautiful song — except that they did it at speed metal pace and started at a strange place. Normally you give an introduction of a few bars. They gave ONE bar of introduction and then went at it like bats out of hell. You also could not hear the singers over the guitars and bass, meaning that the repeats were useless. The middle song was done pretty well. The last song employed the use of that odious synthesizer. If this is what their idea of contemporary worship is, the rest of this week is going to be awful for me since I have to be in chapel both Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday, I’m ushering and on Thursday, I volunteered to help with a song (which is NOT part of what the “Jesus Posse” is doing thankfully).

Maybe I’m just jealous because they didn’t ask me to do it (even though I’ve led worship on REAL worship teams since I was 17) and this could be a large part of it. It could also be that nothing irritates me more than badly done contemporary worship. I would NEVER attend a church that did it as badly as it was done this morning. If you do it at a church, you usually get professional musicians or at least people who play extraordinarily well. If you don’t, it sounds like badly done campfire worship. We used to have to *try out* for the worship team for Intervarsity. The worship team at High Street had professionals doing the music and these were people who had worked together for a long time. The singers were from the congregation but all of us had at least some experience.

If any of you have suggestions for how to make it through the rest of the week, please let me know. I left chapel today in a panic attack because I felt so uncomfortable there.

Jen has a kkkkkiiiiiiittttttttttttttttyyyyyyyy!!!

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Jon and I are catsitting a beautiful white cat named Lily while her owner and another classmate put some furniture together. She is such a funny cat. She was playing “jungle cat” for a while and then stretched out with Jon for a little while and is now playing “jungle cat” again. I can’t wait until we can get a cat in September.

We’ve decided re: churches to just worship at the local church. I’m fluent in French so Montréal should not be a problem for me. Jon however is limited to just doing a bad French accent. 🙂 It would be interesting to go to a French Vineyard congregation…

Honeymoon Plans

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I just finished making the honeymoon plans on Orbitz.Com and we are going to…. [massive drumroll]

CANADA!!!!

We’re spending two weeks hanging out in cities in eastern Canada. (Sorry Brianna — I really want to go back to Victoria some day but that isn’t gonna happen this summer!) We will spend 4 days in Toronto, 5 days in Ottawa, and 4 days in Montréal, before we take the train back to Toronto for our flight out the next day. I was in Toronto five years ago with my mom and I enjoyed it immensely.

Megachurches as Minicities

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In Glendale, Ariz., the 12,000-member Community Church of Joy, which has a school, conference center, bookstore and mortuary on its 187-acre property, has embarked on a $100 million campaign to build a housing development, a hotel, convention center, skate park and water-slide park, transforming itself into what Dr. Walt Kallestad, the senior pastor, calls a ‘destination center.’ (Hvala Ellen!)

Question: if this is the kind of Jesus the members see on a daily basis, what is going to happen when they move out of the community to another church in that denomination (in this case an ELCA church) and find that churches are not like this normally.

All that money spent on convention centers, skate parks, water-slide parks, and stuff like that could be put to better use as funding for missions and homeless programs. Or, it could be used to help the Native Americans in that area.

I’m all good with building Christian communities but the churches mentioned here seem more concerned with sheltering their members from the *gasp* thought of living within their means and building communities where the highly capitalist lifestyle can perpetuate itself. Maybe I’m really mistaken, but didn’t Jesus preach against such shows of wealth in the Gospels (especially Luke)?

Worship is another thing that I wonder about. It’s all about Powerpoint and contemporary music. Maybe it’s just me… but wasn’t it the hymns and old-school type songs that kept Lutheranism going for the last 500 years? Could we maybe function as a Lutheran church and not a wannabe Baptist church?

Jon just told me that they’re probably gonna withdraw from the ELCA. I wonder why…

TGIF!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Chapel this morning was TaizÃ? prayer and it was beautiful. I was sitting with my friends Mark and Chris. On the Laudate Dominum, I started singing the alto part and then Mark decided to copy me and start singing the bass part. Chris then starts singing tenor. It was cool to have the harmonies going. I also sang the French on some of them which sounded prettier than the English. I love TaizÃ? prayer and wish I had the time to go to the ones held here in Cols but they’re usually on nights when I’m busy. I also wish we’d done it during our I-Group week.

I’ve been reading through the Gospels for my NT class and I’m starting to understand all the theories about their redaction. There is always the question of why the Pharisees had to go to the garden to get Jesus when they could have just arrested Him in person. Did they want to avoid the crowds mobbing them? Did they really think He was that dangerous? I am also reading The Meaning of Jesus by Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright, which is interesting but Borg is driving me up the wall. He wants to claim himself as a Christian but he doesn’t commit to Christ being the Son of God exactly. His argument is “no and yes”. He thinks that Jesus didn’t know that He was the Son of God until after Easter, which is preposterous to me. Do you think that God would send Jesus to earth, let Him die, and then reveal “Hey dude! You’re the Son of God!” He commented on Jesus’ words that “[He] is the Bread of Life” and “[He] is the Light of the World”, saying that “we have psychological diagnoses for people who talk about themselves like that.” (p. 149) At least Wright is orthodox.

Tonight I’m going out with other seminary spouses to say “buh bye” to the Senior Spouses. It should be a really nice dinner. It’s Italian so I might have to indulge in some chicken marsala.