[Magdalen] Whoops. We've got the Southern slavers' battle flag in the Nat...

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

I was responding to Ann's thoughtful post a while back, and my post
contained a url that caused some of the internet elves to be upset, so my
post was repeatedly shut out.

Here it is, now that I know, thanks to guru Brain Read, to remove the url:

The faculty coming from different backgrounds is great, of course, but what
cannot be achieved any other way is the variances and differences among
your peers.  Those side conversations, incidental to the degree work, will
be the part you remember years later. We would discuss some aspect of
worship, and after I had commented, I often got a look from a colleague
that essentially said, now I see why you treasure liturgy so much.
Similarly, I would hear a comment that made me understand a very different
approach in a very real and true way.  We had a great deal of respect and
admiration for one another.

One incident that I will never forget was the day John's partner died of
AIDS. He was from the MCC tradition.
[ M.C.C. -- Metropolitan Community Church -- is a denomination set up for
the purpose of providing a place for gay Christians where they would
participate in worship and not be targets of homophobic pseudochristians.] John
was not proclaiming his gay lifestyle, but neither was he concealing it.
He was just a really nice, quiet guy.
We were gathering for a class in Church history, and Dale Irvin (now the
seminary president) must have been guest lecturing, because I am pretty
sure he was there.
John was there, but obviously something was very wrong.  Soon the word got
around that his partner had died earlier that day.
To comprehend the setting fully, you must remember that this seminary
exists for preparation of ministers in The City. Its students are typically
people working a full time job who want to learn a bit more about the
ministry they are already doing.  More often than not, our students tended
to be African-American, and these tended toward the views of literalism and
inerrancy, and, as is typical of this group, they are not -- generally --
capable of seeing how God's love transcends gender lifestyle.
At any rate, here we all were in the beginning of this class, and there was
John, obviously spiritually maimed.
There was no discussion of what we should do; we did what we always did
when someone in the class was hurting: we surrounded John in a huge hug, a
huge spontaneous prayer meeting.  We crowded in, placing loving hands on
John, or on the closest shoulder to him, pouring out a prayer that God hold
John in his love, that God give John solace in this moment of loss.  Most
of us were weeping openly.  I remember one young man who cried out (I
cannot do this jsutice, but I try my best to recall something of what he
said), "O Lord, we know what we're taught, but today, we call on you to
uphold our classmate, our friend in this his hour of loss and pain!"
Several prayed aloud, many of them essentially saying that they didn't know
how to reconcile their beliefs with this situation of John's loss, but
insisting that God pour down his blessings on John and grant him some
comfort. It was the Spirit speaking through us in groans when words failed.

I think that, just as God intends us to sin, and made us so that we would
sin, as part of his plan for us, God also plants bogus religious views so
that we can triumph over them.  That day, a lot of us learned that God's
love trumps all of our imperfect trivial little interpretations of
virtually everything we try to pretend the Church might stand for. I don't
think anyone went away saying to him/herself, "Gosh, I am homophobic, and
that is so wrong; I have to fix that."  But the groundwork for renewal was
certainly laid, and I doubt that anyone there would ever be quite as sure
of themselves about their opinions as they had been.  It was a moment in
which the Spirit broke down the walls that separate us.

Whatever our theoretical notions about gender lifestyle, John was a child
of God, and he was in terrible pain, and that trumped all of that other
stuff. As Amos suggests, when the Spirit moves, right or wrong, who can but
prophesy (as best we can).

Some had quietly been asking whether a member of MCC belonged at our
seminary -- whether such a person was actually a Christian.  John's status
was never questioned again.

I did not fully process that moment, and perhaps I never will.  It seems to
me now as I think back, that John must have been wondering how safe he
would be in this group of literalists, having to bear his recent pain along
with everything else.  I wonder if he did not come to class that day
because the Spirit truly WANTED him to be there as an instrument of Her
peace. Attending must have taken supreme courage, but I've always gotten
the vibe that John was one I'd want next to me in a foxhole or any other
crisis.

My theology has always been one of unknowns, and this will remain one of
those places where we don't truly know what happened. I know all of us got
a lesson in how pathetically inadequate our theology is when the rubber
meets the road. We just have to let Love win.  I am changed because of that
day, and I think John and the rest of the class was too.

Sorry this is late, and everybody will have forgotten what we were talking
about....

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 8:07 PM, Ann Markle <ann.markle at aya.yale.edu> wrote:

> As someone from a sacramental tradition, I'm really glad I took liturgy
> from a Roman Catholic, not a Pentecostal (do they even have sacraments?).
> On the other hand, I guess generic liturgy classes could also be sorted out
> by denomination.  And I took a preaching class with a Pentecostal in the
> class, and her way of preaching was so foreign, that I couldn't even offer
> feedback.  Was she bad?  Or was she just faithful to her tradition?  It
> sounded really, really bad to me, but I was in no position to have an
> opinion.  On the other hand, a lot of my Yale Div School classes were
> nondenominational, and I loved it.
>
> Ann
>
> The Rev. Ann Markle
> Buffalo, NY
> ann.markle at aya.yale.edu
> blog:  www.onewildandpreciouslife.typepad.com
>
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 5:37 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford <
> oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Even better is an end to denominational seminaries.  You can certainly
> have
> > classes on the polity stuff you think you ought to want to know, but a
> lot
> > of great learning happens at a seminary that does not happen in a school
> > run by one church just for its own kids.
> >
> > I had lots of friends who were from a fundamentalist background and hence
> > we had conversations in our seminary you just could not even have the
> > vaguest chance of having at a denominational-centered school.
> >
> > James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
> > *“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
> > except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 3:16 PM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
> > magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > In a message dated 6/30/2015 2:11:55 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> > > jguthrie at pipeline.com writes:
> > >
> > >
> > > I  think all TEC seminarians should attend a service in as many other
> > > denominations as they can during their studies so as to both broaden
> > their
> > > horizons and to learn "What the competition is up to."  <g>>>>>
> > >
> > > But most of them have already "been there, done that."
> > >
> > > I don't know whether statistics have changed, but about the time
> > > I came into the Church (1958) a large majority of seminarians
> > > were said to be converts from another Christian denomination.
> > >
> > > I certainly experienced all sorts of worship styles in various
> > > denominations before (and since) my confirmation in 1958.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > David Strang.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>