This past year has been a roller coaster. I've gotten engaged to my wonderful fiancée Laura (whom I love most deeply!), my financial aid has been good, then bad, then worse, and now back to good. I'm still working at the Fondren Library at SMU, and I'm still an M. Div. grad student at Perkins School of Theology. I'm now living with Thomas Wesley Moore, a gentleman, scholar, and Master of Sacred Music student. As of now, I'm working late nights at Fondren, and am looking forward to homecoming at Texas State tomorrow (Go Bobcats!).
Whew. That was a lot, in a nutshell.
I feel like my life has been in between slow motion and, fast forward, lurching inevitably to a distant date that seems to never come, and then goes by all too fast. My patience and my faith has been tested all too many times to count in Seminary, and while I feel like I've benefited, I have to ask whether or not we really have to go through as much as we do to become pastors. 4 years of school, plus a rigorous ordination track within the United Methodist church, and not to mention trying to work and have some semblance of a personal life thrown in there... It's enough to make you go bald. Which I am. I'm going bald. I don't want to go bald, but I am, and that's just one more thing to worry about.
I was talking to my Word and Worship professor, Dr. Mark Stamm, and we got to talking about ordination. He said that it has all too many overtones of baptism, which is a good thing; it is a matter of initiation after all. It even follows a similar educational track and timeline to early baptismal preparation ceremonies. I wonder if we would have as many Christians today if we upheld a 3 year initiation process for baptism! We would certainly take the call to being a Christian more seriously, I would tell you that.
Anyways, thanks for indulging my ranting.
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