the finish line is in sight. i am officially done with the double-whammy, two-day History of Christian Thought midterm. Old Testament exam, also done. tomorrow is Friday. I have a Hebrew quiz. then, a week of freedom. and even better, a week of freedom that I get to spend in Chicago with KWood! it's so close i can taste it. and it's been a hard-fought, exhausting battle to get here.
thankfully, though, in the midst of this stressful week, the two hours of class time that i typically detest the most (con ed reflection) were spent in a much more useful, enjoyable, even cathartic manner this past wednesday. a little background: this reflection group is a 2 hour weekly meeting that i have with my fellow classmates and MUST volunteers. we are a pretty tight group because we met every week last semester as well and are obviously sharing a lot of the same experiences. however, this reflection time has become a source of extreme frustration for a lot of us (and i would put myself at the top of that list) because we feel like nothing much is being accomplished within those 2 hours. we haven't been able to process our experiences at the shelter, we haven't been able to honestly share our feelings, and sometimes we haven't even been able to make our voices heard. so some of us (again, myself included) have chosen to silence our own voices entirely and sit there stewing contemptously instead.
this week, our faculty advisor, Dr. B, led the group solo (usually we have three ministry leaders/mentors for the class). we knew Dr. B in a different capacity last semester, but she has become a part of this reflection group as a leader in conjunction with our two supervisors from MUST. throughout the semester, we each take a turn to lead an opening devotional, and it was Dr. B's turn to lead this week. she did two things well to get us started off on the right foot: one intentionally, the other less so but which proved fruitful for the rest of the session. at the end of her personal sharing around a Scripture passage that she had selected (Phil. 2), she turned and directed her topic--vulnerability--at us in relation to our experiences at MUST. one of our chief frustrations as a group has been that we have not had the space to talk through our experiences at the shelter, and she created the perfect space to talk about MUST in a way that was common to all of us: how do you feel vulnerable there? this was a question that allowed each of us to open up, and we were able to understand one another's vulnerabilities because of the common context, but at the same time, the discussion wasn't limited to any one person's specific experience at the shelter that usually only serves to alienate everyone else who wasn't a part of the conversation. we had a beautiful, honest time of sharing.
the unintentional fruit of this discussion was the blossoming of that safe space for honesty and vulnerability. i actually had the task for this session of leading the next segment of our time--the 'theological discussion,' as we call it, which is essentially a conversation around our assigned reading for the week. these, too, have become rather dry, not for the fault of any of my classmates, but for the de-contextualization of the readings, the repetition of the thematic discussion, and for the way the conversations always turn into armchair theological musings (or, for the pejoratively-inclined, we sit around and shoot the theological s--t: which is all well and good, except that is something one should do on one's own time with friends over coffee or beer, not during a required two hour class that has the capacity for much more intentional and productive discussion). last week, the girl who led us started us off with a movement exercise (we did the salsa!), and in the vein of her innovativeness, i decided to create a mini-liturgical service instead of just tossing out questions to the group. i started with two Scripture readings reflective of the spirit of the assigned reading, then i had planned a time of confession, a song of response, a time of prayer, a "homily" (this would be our discussion), and a benediction. we read the Scripture together, then i read an excerpt from Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz with which you may be familiar: the confession booth experience Miller and his friends created on his college campus. if you haven't read Miller, the catch of this confessional that they set up was that the Christians would be apologizing to the people coming in to confess their sins--the sins of the Church and the Christian community would be confessed. so i offered that as a framework for our time of confession as a group: the chance to communally, if anyone was willing, confess how we've fallen short in our service work at MUST, followed by a time of silent confession.
i wasn't sure how open people would be about confessing communally, but i wanted to allow the space for it since they would likely be shared 'sins' in relation to our site work at MUST. people began to take the floor, sharing deeply and honestly about how volunteering at MUST has become a burden, another check on the to-do list, etc. the conversation also morphed into larger communal confessions about our experiences at Candler in general. we really started rolling around in it, seconding one another, supporting one another. everyone spoke. i was moved to near tears at several moments. at some point during the space of this conversation, i realized that we had hit on just what we needed. i had several other things planned for my discussion, but i realized that they weren't at all important. this was the place that God wanted us to be for that time. we needed to hear each others' confessions--we needed to say our own. we needed to remember that we can trust one another and trust our shared experiences and trust in our communal humanity and brokenness. we needed to just talk and say that we don't have it all together, no matter how much we are forced to pretend that we do. it was such a sweet, sacred space. i got God-bumps (some alternately call them goosebumps)--when you can feel the tangible spirit of God in the room and know that God is working among you, that together we had stumbled upon the place where God wanted to bring each of us. it was nice to toss out an agenda for once. it was raw and poignant and real--vulnerable, just like Dr. B had unintentionally prepared us to be.
after we all confessed, i left those couple of minutes for silence before God, then played Bethany Dillon's "You are on Our Side" by way of absolution. her chorus says, "when You could just be silent and leave us here to die/still You sent Your son for us/You are on our side."
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and now, i have another confession of sorts. this morning in OT, the always-innovative Professor Strawn led the class in an excursus on the Bible and the modern media. our lecture had been on Proverbs, and he wanted us to examine what kind of things we as a culture are teaching our children these days. Exhibit 'A' for our consideration: the music video for Pussycat Dolls' "Buttons." my confession is this: i wanted to vomit after watching it. it was sex on overdrive, women being grossly objectified. i was literally squirming in my seat (the gist of the video is this--nearly naked women dancing around provocatively and groping themselves as they ask an intended male listener to "loosen up [their] buttons"). the myriad of issues surrounding this video was overwhelming in itself--Prof. Strawn had hit his mark. this is the moral instruction of our generation? i was made doubly uncomfortable by the fact that i was sitting next to the guy i've been dating for about a month now (you'll have to call me for that confession!). clearly this video was going to be perceived in very different ways by men vs. women. i recognized that all the men in our class, while hopefully being intellectually and moralistically repulsed by these images, were still certainly more susceptible to being turned on by them as well. so this stream of questions whirled through my head as i sat next to him throughout the video: does he think those girls are pretty? is this kind of whoring still somehow attractive to him? is this making him wish that i looked like those girls? does he realize that i will never look like those girls? am i still attractive to him despite the fact that i don't look like them?
you never know what you'll get in an Old Testament survey course these days, huh? self-worth and anger and disgust all rolled into one big knot in the stomach. you best believe i got myself straight up to chapel once class let out. both the experiences i have described here definitely ended in the worship of God through my desperate need of coming into a place where i can meet grace, a place that i know is safe, a place that equips me to walk back into the brokenness and the sin where i can continue to both hear and give confessions.
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