Another interesting observation.

I am a truly gifted and talented person! I rock! Thanks be to God.

Mid-week, I confess to having accomplished the following:

- Painted a new painting in the Chapel during a service. And have a sale pending!
- Led a worship service without a Presider
- Got a great affirmation of vocation from a professor in the form of Midterm comments.
- Handed in a paper early!!!
- Proved to myself that I can get homework done during the week-days
- Created a second service to be co-led at the end of the week
- Learned that a CPE unit in Halifax is indeed a great idea

I also must admit that I haven't accomplished the following:

- Caught up in all of my classes yet. In fact, am badly falling behind in one of them.
- Worked on my "journal" painting since I started it
- Managed to split myself in parts to handle all of the Chair positions I am on ( I think I may have bitten off more that I ought to have)
- Slept decently at least one night this week
- Sent the mail that I wrote two weeks ago (Augh!)
- Filled out paperwork for medical returns... need to do that.
~--------------------------------~~~~~~~-------------------------------------~

All in all, I am finding that I am getting into a swing of handling the end of the semester fairly well.

Life is good. Life is truly a blessing. Thank you God for supporting me in this place, at this time.

Peace.

A general question for Academia

What is it that makes professors conspire to have all of your classwork due in and around the same time?

I think if I ran a class, I would either have random assignments that didn't fall on or near midterm or end of class. Like maybe a 5 - 10 page paper in the second or third week and a take home exam handed out on the last day of class, due by the second-to-last exam day. That would certainly make my life easier.

I really enjoyed the first 6 weeks of classes - applying all of that knowledge to final papers... not so much.

I could use another "Reading Week".

An overdue update.

So I guess that the lesson here is this:

Seminary is hard work.

I apologize to all the wonderful people who have been reading and waiting for me to post another update.

I am at a point in the semester where there are four weeks left! Ack! And then I have a week or so off until I am off to Ethiopia! Ack again! So, now I discover that the last 4 weeks of a seminarian's semester is bogged down in writing papers. And there are so many - I look at my to-do list and panic a little more with every passing day. I know that it's really only a matter of doing one thing at a time, but believe me when I say that this semester's end is coming both too quickly and not quickly enough!

Some of you know that I have the additional difficulty of having been down with the flu and bronchitis this past week. It was not easy to "simply rest". Nor has it been easy to pace myself back up to my usual energy levels, but I think I am truly on the way to some "normalcy". This semester really seems to have been a strange lesson in how much work is too much work.

Here is another comment on life:

I find myself frequently returning to the question of: "Why am I here?"

It's not that I doubt my call or that I feel that my time is being wasted here. I find almost every day a gift in learning more about myself, my faith, and my future vocation. I am quite literally absorbing every moment here. However, I often feel like I am an impostor. Some days I don't think I could convince anyone that I am going to be a pastor. Strange really that I can feel so inadequate to the task. That I am living some kind of farce that will end in another statement that once again Zsófi is on the wrong path for life. And then the moment passes, and I am concerned about the next reading assignment, contemplating the very well chosen piece of music in the last chapel service, deliberately examining the Book of Concord in order to better understand why Luther said the things he did and how it can apply to a life as a contemporary Christian, thinking about what needs to get done for the next meeting that is just around the corner, wondering with awe about how I am going to be inspired by the Holy Spirit to create a sermon... and the list goes on.

I have started painting again. Nothing terribly elaborate, but definitely full of symbol. It's a journal of sorts for my Spiritual Formation class. I am trying to encapsulate my spirituality in one 12" x 24" painting. It will be interesting to see the final result. The work in progress has generated some interesting dialogue. I am going to be painting during a worship service next week too. Another seminarian, who is also an artist, and I have been asked to "create" during the service until the sermon. It will be an amazing practice. I have always enjoyed this process (when I have done it for Mysterium) and I am looking forward to attempting it again. It means a lot to me to be able to stretch my art-wings every now and then in a liturgically rich setting. And I haven't really been making any art lately, so I think it's a really good thing.

I will be back again with more to say, but for now: it's an early night for me.

Bliss!