Smartening Up

I'm at Luther Seminary this week, my alma mater, taking a class for continuing education. The class, called Preaching Difficult Texts, has definitely been worthwhile and I know I'll have more individual posts on various consciousness-streams-thereby-produced later, but for now, just a few observations about returning to the home turf:

1. I am obviously getting old because the student who served bread at chapel communion today looked about twelve years old.

2. It is both enormously wonderful to see old professors and hear them again; it is simultaneously wistful to see them aging more quickly than I would like.

3. Although I have long been someone who scoffs heartily at those who disdain seminary professors, saying they are out of touch because they are not in the parish - and I still find that a largely unconvincing argument - there have been a few moments during this class when I have thought to myself, "well, you might be able to get away with that here, but obviously you haven't been in the parish for thirty years." This is much like my swearing up-and-down, in my teenage years, that I would NEVER EVER EVER turn into my mother. Enough said.

4. Seminary friends are still, nearly eight years after graduation and despite being scattered around the country, the very best friends of my whole life.

5. I would really like to be a professor but the truth is, I just don't want to do the work of getting a PhD. Maybe this will change someday.

6. It does the ego a bit of good to be remembered by profs. I am not above this.

7. The seminary bookstore makes me sad that all I have within striking distance of my home is Christian Supply.

8. I am really glad not to live in Minneapolis anymore. Damn, it's cold.

9. A great many pastors, when raising their hand in class, are only doing this in order to hear themselves talk. They do not have an actual question. This was true in seminary and it doesn't change. I am just going to have to find a way to stop being inordinately annoyed by this.

10. Last, but not least, my alcohol tolerance level has obviously gone way down in the parish. So have my pool-playing skills. These, too, are reasons for doing continuing ed with eight of your very best seminary friends.