Master of Divinity Year 1 Reflection
“Your life is your spiritual path. Don’t be quick to abandon it for bigger and better experiences. You are getting exactly the experiences you need to grow. If your growth seems to be slow or uneventful for you, it is because you have not fully embraced the situations and relationships at hand. To know the self is to allow everything, to embrace the totality of who we are—all that we think and feel, all that we fear, all that we love.”
Image by Jim Semonik from Pixabay
This semester has been difficult! And, if I were honest, 'difficult' is an understatement. I started the semester with multiple personal situations resulting in the questions of why am I in Divinity school? Why am I here? Am I doing this to prove I am a 'good gay'? Am I proving I am good enough? Am I trying to be like my father? I started to wonder if these questions were real. And for a few weeks, I really could not remember why I decided to go to divinity school. I felt like I was in the midst of a crisis, being torn, pulled, and pushed, in different directions. I reached, it seemed, the rock bottom of a pit I was tumbling down since 2017.
After my uncle died in 2017, I began a slow spiral into a very different version of myself. On the surface, it all looked well, but the closer you got to me, the more you realized Angeline was off her game. Only now after having the time and opportunities to explore, search, and talk, have I begun to realize just how much I had traded my mindset of abundance for one of lack and scarcity, faithfulness for faithlessness, joy for contentment, and emotions for apathy. My closest friend, who holds many other titles throughout our 11 years of friendship, sums it up bluntly, uncomfortably, nicely. I forgot who the 'f' I was. I guess I did. I can say that now, but I could not for the life of me see it then. Heck, I didn't even see it last month!
This semester was hard.
Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology
As I battled with these and other personal demons, I also began what I will call a personal excavation. Last semester it was as though I had stumbled upon an undisturbed site, that I could feel had historical significance. Last year I surveyed the land, learned about it and its history (Introduction to Pastoral Ministry), and began to strategize the excavation. This semester I found the tools, team, and resources to start the work. I was shocked by my findings!
I reaffirmed, uncomfortably, how much my individual and organizational activism (Quality of Citizenship Jamaica) always had the potential to be a spiritual practice if I was so inclined. I first observed this in Constructive Theology last year (and particularly after reading Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology) and confirmed it in Tools for Parish and Non-profit Administration.
The History of Global Christianity course (done alongside a New Testament course) helped me to see the evolution of this thing we call Christianity today. The academic materials helped loosen some of the soil that still remained around the Christian beliefs I thought I no longer had. Understanding the process to create this global religion helped me to realize what it meant in the beginning, what happened in the middle to make it defiant and firm, and what happened to move it from a band of Jesus followers -misfits, societal outcasts, illiterate fishermen-, to a religion claimed by Emperors and respectable people in that era, and how I could engage Christianity in these modern times.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
The New Testament was my most challenging yet rewarding course. I got into the delicate pieces of myself the further we got into the text. It was uncomfortable and, at times, bordered on the edges of traumatic memories. I realized how much I still held on to what I now consider nonsensical ideas about the Bible. I saw the devastating effects these lingering, unknown, and deeply embedded beliefs were having on my life. I was able to grasp the differences in each gospel, what it truly meant to understand and be aware of the context, and know why they (and all the New Testament) were written. I didn't have to like the Jesus I was taught about in Sunday school, but I also didn't have to throw out the whole thing. I could, in fact, like the Jesus in Mark, not care for the Jesus in Matthew, dislike the Jesus in Luke, and think the Jesus in John was too full of himself.
I could (and often in my discussion posts) reflect on the hurt and trauma that still lingered in my mind and body when I read Romans 1:18-32. I was allowed to feel that anger and yet be moved to tears by Romans 8:35-39. I could read 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, recognize it was my foundation for understanding love and relationships, and question if Paul’s explanation of love was what I wanted to model. I could turn to chapter 14:33-36, telling women to be silent at church and remember my ill feelings about Paul. Then have it challenged by the footnote (Jewish Annotated New Testament) that said Paul probably didn’t write this passage. I could say that I didn’t like Paul and be challenged with the reality that there are 7 (26%) undisputed texts from Paul in the New Testament, not 27 (50%) as originally thought.
I realized I liked James. I think it was the best ethical document for Christians of its time and may even have some value today. Then read Revelation (finally), and remember the nightmare of waking to an empty house thinking the rapture had happened and that I had been left behind because I was a lesbian. I could speak my mind about Revelation and put it in the corner of New Testament books I will not engage. God bless those who do.
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Adrienne Maree Brown, 2017
Despite no longer believing the Bible to be the infallible word of God, gift-wrapped and send down from heaven - or written by people to whom God spoke directly. I unconsciously held onto the belief that I couldn't challenge the text. Specifically, I didn't realize that I could, pull the texts out and keep the ones I liked. I could, as my atheist friends love to say, engage in a little cherry-picking. The truth of the matter is that when we read the Bible, we don't just read it in a vacuum we read it in light of our experiences and in light of what the preacher man says. We bring our hopes, dreams, and understandings to it, unlike what Proverbs 3:5-6 would have us strive for (and what my parents said I did when reading the Bible affirmatively as a lesbian). Put another way, who we are and our social location impacts how we read the Bible.
Of all the materials I explored during Social Engagement, the one that has struck me the most is Emergent Strategy. Adrianne Marie Brown’s work prevented me from escaping the work of personal reflection that I had gotten accustomed to running away from. Despite my bullheaded resistance, deep dives of reflection and the resulting awareness happened.
While unnecessary, I attempted to volunteer with the Parliament of the World’s Religions this semester. It did not receive my best effort, but I am happy with the survey we conducted.
Skittles Sour Candy
This semester was a mixed bag of candy; some sweet moments, some sour moments. Sour Skittles, that’s it! The sweet: I was elected co-president of our student advisory council and work with an amazing co-president, I was offered a congregational internship at Neighborhood UU Church, offered a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) placement at Cedars-Sinai, started therapy, continued conversations with my teaching mentor, and developed new dialogue partner relationships. The sour: because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, I applied for a student visa and was denied (other complications), I have, therefore, had to defer CPE until next summer. This situation created an opportunity for me to work through and understand some public disappointment. I'm not a sharer, I keep a lot to myself and close to my chest. This time around, I was a lot more open about the process I was going through (mainly out of necessity rather than a willingness to share) and so had more people to inform of the disappointment.
Adrianne Marie Brown in Emergent Strategy says that we have to “get really good at being intentional with where you put your energy, letting go as quickly as you can of things that aren’t part of your visionary life’s work.” This semester, I had no choice but to put this into practice. For every setback that happened, I acknowledged it and did my best to let it go because, personally, letting my disappointment linger didn’t make me feel empowered.
Image by Kei Rothblack from Pixabay
The semester is over, but year one will end on July 16, after the summer semester. I expected seminary to be a transformative experience, but I did not expect to be spinning my cocoon at this point. Yet here I am. And I am grateful that this is the process. My therapist reminds me to trust the process. That’s hard. Change is hard. Acknowledging that I am not the person I was last week, last month, last year is hard and risky. No, it’s terrifying! As a person who loves to see all the paths, all the plans, no deviations, trusting the process is an exercise of faith-fulness (being full of expectant hope). But my life can only go at the speed of trust, so I am rebuilding trust with the Universe (God), and I am rebuilding trust with and in myself.
As I spin my cocoon in anticipation of this unfoldment, diving deeper into the unknown and forgotten and facing these systemic challenges, I am also accepting that I get to change. I get to become a different person. Change, evolution, and transformation are part of what we need to grow. I feel strangely giddy with hope, standing scared and excited on the edge of my transformation.
