The final frontier of seminary

Sorry for the Star Trek reference...it's really about graduation

I started seminary in 2020, at the same time the pandemic erupted. We took more than average precautions because one of our boys is medically fragile, so my exterior life screeched to a halt. As we confined ourselves to the couple of acres where we lived—and the country road that dead-ended at a cemetery and the mostly empty elementary school playground around the corner—my interior life grew. I was determined to make something beautiful for my children (and we had the resources with which to do so) and I worked hard at it. That work cultivated something within me. It also might have driven me crazy without the complementary work of graduate school. The days were full and often over-stimulating, but did not provide an outlet or a workout for my mind. Seminary moved me inward and outward, and made nourishing my mind and soul a requirement. Fuller puts an emphasis on formation and because I engaged in the work, God and I moved inward, exploring my inner life and reshaping some of the paths. I put names to parts of my heart that were unnamed. I learned new habits of silence and listening, welcoming nuance and complexity. But I also moved outward.

When I looked at seminaries, I had three main criteria: an interdenominational school, a school that affirmed women in ministry, and a school that was diverse in staff, students, and resources. As a result, Fuller’s classes broadened my world. I had professors from differing denominations, classmates from all over the world. I read books written by people with diverging perspectives. Seminary ignited my curiosity about what it looked like to follow Jesus in Africa two thousand years ago or in Asia today. I might not have been going anywhere in my physical body, but I traveled the world in my mind. 

Last weekend, I flew to California for my seminary graduation. Yes, please, cue the confetti! Our plane landed in Los Angeles and everything was different from my East Coast life. I stared out the window at the plants, wishing I could get close enough to use my Seek app to identify them. I used to think that Dr. Suess had made up all of his plants; now I believe some of them just grow in California. I craned my neck to look at the architecture, the Spanish tile, the way the buildings were crammed into the hillsides. When we stopped at a red light, my husband observed that it was strange to think that a person lived in that house, right there out of the car window, and we would never know their name or their story or anything about them.

On Sunday night, we left DisneyLand at 9:30 and while the interstate was not crowded, it was full. Where were all those people going? I imagined small text bubbles popping up above the cars announcing their destination, as if it were a cartoon. “Home.” “Work.” “The hospital.” “My friend’s house.” “A bar.” “Walgreens. I ran out of toothpaste.” But I also bet answers that I couldn’t imagine would pop up as well. Wouldn’t it be fun to pretend to be a journalist when traveling? How did you end up here? What grief are you carrying that you never name? What tiny joy makes your eyes light up? Traveling ignites my curiosity; it does not always satisfy it. 

Kristin Young is my seminary best friend. We met our first quarter at Fuller and have been fast friends ever since. I was so glad we got to share graduation. It was pure gift.

Campus is tiny and beautiful. I loved being there! I grinned the whole weekend.

It was in seminary that I practiced naming my place. Before I felt broadly unconnected to the world. In seminary, I learned that I was not just a “white person.” I was a white Appalachian person which is vastly different from being a white person from Boston or a white person from Florida. Cultures are different; norms are different; perspectives are different.¹ Seminary taught me to appreciate my place and perspective, but also to grow beyond it. We constantly had to name our context and then respond to other people in light of their contexts. There were no cookie cutter formulas or equations. The work of the Spirit is not math in that sense. In a circular fashion, the more I could name the context of different places and appreciate what they offered, the more I could name and appreciate and live in my own context.² 

Home is my favorite place and visiting other places is good for me. I expand when I travel: with wonder, with curiosity, with discomfort. Travel also sends me home more grounded, more appreciative of what I have and where I am. Seminary and traveling both teach me to put my hands to my work and be glad that it is mine. I left California with simmering excitement for the future of the church. The graduation ceremony at Fuller was beautifully reflective of Christ’s work in the world.³ The trip and the work of seminary made me glad for the work in other places and glad for my own. 

I’m so glad I was able to go to seminary. And I’m ecstatic to be finished.

• I read African American Readings of Paul on the flight to California. I’d been waiting to read it and I was finally free to do so and it was worth the wait. It will end up on my list of favorite books from this year.

• A very wonderful couple from our church who will be planting a church in New Hampshire next year stayed with our boys while we were in California. It was such a gift. We need people and people need us. There’s a whole sermon in there somewhere.

1. More on this is a story for another time.

2. Justo Gonzalez talks about people from different places reading the Bible in different ways just as people could stay in different places in a landscape and describe the geography in different ways. See his book Santa Biblia for more.

3. There’s a video by a Mdiv student from Chad at minute marker 2:40:49 of graduation. You should watch it if you’re curious.