Behold, for I am doing a new thing. Isaiah 43:19

This semester has been a productive one, but probably not in the way that you might imagine, especially if you read my posts last semester.  Last semester felt like a train wreck, but this semester has felt like a Sunday drive.  I can't say I exactly know what changed, but I believe it is the result of a lot of prayer and the peace of God's Holy Spirit working in my life.  Now, here I am counting down the last few weeks of my first year of seminary without panicking and not particularly stressed out.  Whatever has happened this semester, I sure hope it follows me the rest of my seminary career (or the rest of my life, for that matter).

Yes, there has been much to do.  I still have hundreds of pages of reading each week, with papers and research thrown in, too, but somehow I have also found the time to explore some of my own interests, and in the end I have truly been enjoying myself.  My book list posted here in my blog will testify to the time I have spent on my personal interests, as the "just for fun" section has more books on it than the "required readings" listed above it.  My mom might be partially to blame--she bought me an "itty bitty book light" when she visited last month, and now I can lay in bed for hours reading long after everyone else has fallen asleep.  Thanks, mom!

This time of Lent has been particularly productive for me, and has no doubt had a tremendous impact on the less frenetic feeling I have.  Just after Ask Wednesday I again visited the monastery where I, and the other first-year Berkeley Divinity School students, had our class retreat in February.  I drove up on Friday afternoon and spent the next 24 hours trying to listen to my own thoughts.  I wrote pages and pages in my journal, reflecting on my life--how I spend my time, what I enjoy doing, who I feel drawn to spend more time with.  This rumination helped me begin listening to where God is leading me right now.  If I had to describe, in one word, this experience of prayer and reflection it would be: Alive.  Alive! 

Lent has always seemed like a somber, dark, lonely time of the church year, but this year I have experienced something wholly different from that.  I wrote the following in my journal while I was at the monastery last month, and it has set the tone of my spiritual journey through this Lenten season:

This Lent has a wind about it.  It is incubating a great awakening and sweeping out the debris and dusting off the cold and forgotten things of the past.  "Wake up," it wants to say, "for I am doing a new thing." 

This Lent has been a time of preparation, not removal; of anticipation, not denial.  I am preparing my mind and my body for a new Easter, for the re-arrival of Christ's good works in my life.  In that sense, what I have taken on as Lenten practices have been about discipline, not in the sense of self-denial, but in the sense of joyful preparation and commitment.  With this small shift in perspective I feel livened in body, mind, and spirit and I am awaiting the Easter celebration as a much anticipated fulfillment of the hope that is growing within me. 

With Easter will come final papers, final exams, and tying up the last loose threads of my first year of seminary.  Like Lent, this year has been a time of contemplation, preparation, and planting.  God is indeed providing me with a rich soil out of which a Christ-centered ministry can take firm root and grow--always being nourished with God's spiritual food. Amen.

Good Enough is Better than Best

A couple of weeks ago, February 7th through the 11th, was a "reading week" at YDS--a week in which no classes are held.  The title is a bit of a misnomer, as very little reading was done for most of us who are also part of the Berkeley community. The fist year, Junior class, was on "retreat" at Holy Cross Monastery for three of those days, and the Middler class was on retreat for four days.  The retreat promised to be a time of relaxation and rejuvenation, apart from the everyday routine of being a student, wife, mother, friend, cook, errand runner, and cleaner, but as a student, wife, mother, etc., the demands of those roles did not pause for my retreat.  I was well aware of what I was not doing all the while I was gone.  Still, the monastery was beautiful and I did really enjoy myself.  However, panic set in as soon as I returned and was facing two paper deadlines the following Monday.  The feeling of impending doom that I had tried to forestall during my time away became a deluge when I got back.  I prayed for guidance, and ended up doing something I never thought I'd force myself to do--I asked for an extension from each of my professors.  And, by the grace of God and the kindness and understanding of my professors, I was given extra time to complete my papers.  I was so relieved!

I wasn't just relieved of my stressful deadlines, but a larger burden seemed to be dislodged in my small act of supplication.  I was forced to throw aside my pride and admit my need for help.  It felt a bit like ripping off a band-aid, but my relief far outweighed the image I feared I had lost.  As I have shared with you my plight with perfectionism, I thought I'd share with you my small victories as well.  I feel like everyone wants to give me a way out because I am trying to go to graduate school and raise a family, among the many other roles I fall into.  In a way, I have interpreted this as an implicit assumption that I can't possibly do everything well, and then taken it as a challenge to prove everyone wrong by excelling in every area I can.  But it's tiring.  Furthermore, it just isn't a space in which you can grow.  By definition, perfection cannot improve--it's changeless.  But I want to grow, and I want to be transformed.

While perfection is tiring, imperfection is uncomfortable.  I'm uneasy imagining doing something that's just "good enough."  But in reality, I believe that "good enough" is better than "best."  Voltaire, in his great wisdom quipped, "the best is the enemy of the good."  No matter how you put it, perfection threatens goodness in so many ways.  Perfection is always relative and subjective, but goodness is an absolute value.  Few people will agree on what is best, but many will agree on the more important quality of what is good.  Good encompasses a wide enough range that many things fall under its purview, but isn't so broad that it becomes hard to distinguish from the things that are not good.  Working hard and learning are good, but who is to say how that is measured?  Does the best grade mean you worked the hardest and learned the most?  Moreover, the best is such an illusive thing that its pursuit can sometimes lead you to chasing after white rabbits.  But I don't think God is hiding down the rabbit hole.

So where is God in all this?  I have found God in so many places--but none so meaningful as my relationships with others.  I have had some delightful, unexpected days with my kids during some of the many snow days we've had this year, and Eli and I even went out for a delicious dinner with some fabulous friends a couple of weekends ago.  And while I miss my many friends from Salt Lake City, I have met some remarkable people here that I am truly blessed to know.  We have dinner with friends regularly, and I have many fascinating and enjoyable conversations at lunch or coffee hour with many of my colleagues.  And, thanks be to God, I have a fabulous friend whom I do a lot of studying with, which makes spending an entire Saturday at the library so much more bearable.

This is what good is.  These growing friendships and special moments with family are little graces from God whose good can't be measured or graded.  God is good.  In the end, the papers that I received extensions on aren't perfect, but they are good enough.  Living life is what's really good!  Thanks be to God.

What I did for my Christmas vacation.

Yesterday, in the first class meeting of my Spiritual Writing class, the professor asked us to introduce ourselves and say what book we read over the winter break.  The first 14 students told their names and then rattled off the names of all sorts of intellectual-sounding titles about 11th century martyrdom between Franciscan monks, and sophisticated novels that I've never heard of.  I thought about reading something over the break, in fact, I was going to read The City of God, by Augustine, to get a head start in the class about Augustine I was planning to take this semester.  I went to one bookstore to find a copy, but they were out, which I took as a sign that I didn't need to read it during my free time anyway.  I've since decided to bag the class altogether, so it would have been to no end anyway.  When I first heard the professor ask us to recount our holiday read, I kind of panicked. "Oh, shit, what can I say that I read?" I thought.  My turn came.  "I'm Brin, a first-year MDiv student in the Berkeley program....ordination track.  I read the New York Times Cook Book, by Amanda Hesser, over my break, and I made salted butter caramels, lemon gumdrops, and a clementine-kumquat cordial from it, along with toasted coconut marshmallows, blueberry thumbprint cookies, chocolate chip cookies, molasses cookies, chili roasted almonds, and cranberry-almond biscotti."  I didn't read a single thing that didn't come out of a cookbook the entire recess.  My break was delicious!  I wasn't afraid to say it.

Christmas cookies and other goodies

Making cookies and candies for a couple of weeks was exactly what I needed my break to be.  The last semester flattened me like a steam-roller, and I needed a good dose of domestic bliss to re-inflate me before going back before the battering ram.  Here it is, the first week of classes, and I am ready for my beating.  After the end of last semester, especially final exam period, I felt like a shell of an individual.  I'm feeling a bit more optimistic now, but a lot has had to readjust to learn how to deal with this place, and my place in it.  I'm learning a lot about myself in the process.

I came here not knowing what to expect.  I'd heard the horror stories about seminarians' first semester melt-downs due to unrealized expectations and the like, and I was confident that since I didn't know what to expect, then my expectations couldn't be unmet, altered, or deflated.  Famous last words.  I know now what hidden expectations I had, or at least some of them, anyway.  I was especially surprised by some of them...maybe some of you who know me won't be, you be the judge.  I did know that I came here to do my best, but what I didn't realize is that I care A LOT about how other people judge me.  If you read the post prior to this one, I mentioned that I wrote a paper for my Patristics class that I didn't do as well on as I had hoped.  I obsessed over the paper, the grade, the grading system, and what ultimately became the most consuming thought was that I was really disappointed in myself for having such a negative response to this one grade.  It wasn't a bad grade, but it wasn't the best grade.  Apparently when I said I wanted to do my best, what I really meant was that I wanted to do the best.  Ouch.  This realization really stung on multiple levels.  It hurt my pride, for one thing, but it also threw me for a loop.  Why did I come here?  Did I come here to learn how to be a good priest and leader, or did I come here to stroke my ego?  Even the harsh question, as I look at it written on the screen, makes my stomach churn just a little bit.  I didn't know I had such an ego problem.  Abba Silvanus, a desert father from the 5th century said this about pride: "Woe to the person whose reputation is greater than his work."  I have worked harder here than I have ever worked in my entire life, and I have already learned more new information than I could have imagined, which is very satisfying, but apparently what I wanted wasn't just to learn, but to be recognized for it somehow.

A good friend asked me the other day what great epiphany I had had over the break.  Since the middle of the term, and my realization that I wasn't going to be the best at everything, but I was sure going to have to work myself to the bone, I have really struggled with the question of why I am here.  In my heart of hearts I believe that I am here to follow God's call to minister to His people, and to lead His church, and that going to seminary is first and foremost a requirement for the ministry to which I feel called.  Thus, I assumed that the reason I came here has been to gain some of the knowledge and skills to fulfill my call.  At a more shallow level, though, I realized that I came here thinking that this would be a lot of fun.  I love learning, and I love participating in the amazing process of acquiring and processing new knowledge--something I have done well, and for which I have been well-rewarded with accolades, scholarships, and my own satisfaction.  One of the things I learned over the break, and what I told my friends, was that I realize I am not here in order to do what I want to do, but to do what God wants me to do.  Not everything here is fun or enjoyable, but this work is important, and I have to do it, whether it makes me happy at all times or not.

I'm learning a hard lesson about pride, along with an important lesson about hard work.  No, I'm not having fun anymore, but I do still want to be here, and I am still going to try my very best even if it isn't the very best.  However, this is easier said than done, and you'll probably be hearing more about it as the semester picks up.  I have a lot of hope, though, that what I am doing here is important for me, and a definite sense that I am lucky to be here working through this challenge.  The challenges life gives us make the fabric of our lives so much richer.  My life, in all its complexities, is a good one, for which I am ever grateful.

The 5th century words of Amma Synctetica, a mother from the Egyptian desert, sum up my experience of formation here at Yale much more eloquently than I can.  She said, "In the beginning, there is struggle and a lot of work for those who come near to God.  But after that, there is indescribable joy.  It is just like building a fire: At first it's smoky and your eyes water, but later you get the desired result.  Thus we ought to light the divine fire in ourselves with tears and effort."