Hypersleep Update

Well, I'm deep into the internship year now here in Minnesota. It's been so long since I've posted I'll have to give a quick run-down of all the things that have happened in the last number of months before I try once again to start blogging regularly. Before I start I need to explain my rationale for trying to blog--after all, it feels like half of my posts on here are updates after months away. Whoops. Anyway, I'm not always one who is very introspective. It's easy for me to discuss high concepts and to pontificate about ideas of which I know very little. But it's not very easy for me to perform the ever important act of introspection or self-reflection. Now, I do journal pretty regularly, but I would like to learn to be introspective in a public way. I kind of feel as though it is my responsibility as a pastor to interpret my own experience for other people, to explain how and where and when I am encountered by God in the world and why in the world I believe that God is present in the human experience at all. Plus, when I journal and I know I am the only one who will be reading it, my writing gets very sloppy and I don't follow through on thoughts. The accountability of the other eyes that will see this help to change that. Besides all of this, I can get whiny and irritating if I know I'm the only one who will read what I have to say and that is tiring. I can really get on my nerves sometimes (insert comment about the importance of the external word here--thank you Dr. Paulson).

So, since I posted in May I finished the second semester of my middler year (that is seminary language for the second year). Last semester I was in what may have been some of the most influential classes for me personally and in terms of vocation and discernment. These included especially middler preaching, Lutheran confessions, and worship. I basically fell in love with Lutheranism last semester and now dorkily read the Formula of Concord in my free time.

Over the Summer I worked at the development office 10 hours every week. Even with my few hours and even though I sincerely liked my job I spent a good deal of time complaining about going to work. Pippi only worked a bit and so we got to spend a ton of time together. I watched a great deal of television and movies on netflix. Every weekend for 6 weeks in a row we were involved in weddings in Iowa and Minnesota, so that kept us pretty busy. I had the amazing privilege of delivering the homily and doing part of the liturgy at Jordan and Alisha's wedding. Really loved it. Got my wisdom teeth yanked out two weeks before internship started. Became really lazy after being in a drug induced stupor for a week and watched quite a few samurai movies. Read a bunch of good books. Pippi was offered a job at the very tail end of summer and took it. She's now a .9-time elementary music teacher.

In September I started internship at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Stillwater, MN. People often ask how it's going. Normally, my response is fumbling and bumbling. You know, church is church. It has its really wonderful things and its really terrible things. It's not a good or a bad experience. It's an experience and one that I like. The call to pastoral ministry is being affirmed, but not uniformly. There are parts that I don't particularly care for and there are certainly other things to which I may be called. Still, I'm really committed to the call, while also realistic about the fact that God may have other things in store too. I'm praying a lot for discernment, for God to guide me or lead me or help me listen or whatever so I can better come to understand what I'm called to be and do. I trust and hope that God is shaping Pippi and me through all of this. Sleep well.