a quite semester...sort of.

I see most of us have re-introduced ourselves heading in to this new year. I'm Tim and I'm a second year masters of arts student in the congregational mission & leadership program. My course of study is largely at the intersection of theology and culture -- with special attention to ecclesiology (theology of church). I am not sure where this journey leads but I'm beginning to hear a call to some combination of teaching/creative ministry/networking.

We'll it's been a quite semester for me as a blogger. This has been true not only here but on my personal blog also where in the past I've often blogged 3-5 times a week. I've not blogged on either in months now. I always have times like these where my blogging/journal needs to take a break. But mostly this time around its because the semester has been an intense season of academic reading and writing. This season has been my biggest foray into being an "academic" yet. I'm learning a lot about the discipline it takes, but I'm also finding it really transformative for me.


In many ways this semester has been the culmination of many years. I've spent the last year and a half trying to understand (make meaning) out of the three years I spent starting a church in Austin, Texas. I realize most people go to seminary and then start churches. I never was good at doing things in the right order. I'm also growing a lot in my sense of call, though I'm still working hard to NOT figure out what is next after graduation this spring. For now I'm trying to let the now lead simply to what's next and leave the master plan to the Master.

This week is a big week for me as I head to Boston, MA. I'm presenting a paper at Boston 2010 part of a global collection of conferences re-imagining mission in the 21st century. I'm presenting a paper on alt. worship in the UK and presenting it on a panel called "Changing Contours of Christian Unity." This is a pretty big deal for me since the conference is international and part of the historic centennial celebration of Edinburgh 1910. Hopefully I'll post updates from the road. Until then, I've got to get to bed here so I can start this week on track.

My "semester" so far.

As you may know from reading my previous post, checking my bio on the right, or knowing me in person--I am on internship. This year, the idea of "semesters," "classes" and "campus" only have importance when thinking about some of my friends and fellow classmates at Luther, or my sister in college. It's a strange feeling, but I love internship.

These past two months at Holy Cross have been incredible. The best part about internship so far is that I've felt more welcomed and supported here than I ever could have imagined. As a result, I've been free to try new things, fail miserably, learn a lot, and have a great time doing it.

I began internship by shadowing my supervising pastor and easing into worship leadership. Less than two months in, I'm beginning to do my own thing and find my own way--supported and challenged by my supervisor. I'm preaching every other week and the weeks I don't preach, I do just about all the liturgy. I am doing all my pastoral care visits with my supervising pastor, but that will change in the next few weeks. I look forward to cultivating my relationship with Holy Cross and figuring out how I can not just learn from them, but serve them.

I will most definitely post more specific stories and whatnot about my internship, but even though there are definitely some challenges, I couldn't help but share how much my internship has already been a blessing to me. It's been quite fulfilling to witness and participate in the understanding of and responding to God's grace in this church family.

Okay, fine. One story...during the first week of my time at Holy Cross, my wife and I were invited (along with my supervising pastor and his wife) to a parishioner's house for...a pickle party. Sounds strange, right? Well, it was glorious. This woman, along with her daughter, had a surplus of pickling cucumbers, and needed to put them to good use. She ended up getting swept away into the world of pickling, creating 21 different varieties! There was everything from bread & butter slices, to pickled green beans, and your standard kosher dill pickles. Throw in a little meat and cheese, and a few glasses of wine--and you've got a night my wife and I will never forget.

It Goes By Fast…

I’m with Scott—it’s hard to believe that we’re past the halfway point in the semester already. It seems like yesterday that we were going around the classroom introducing ourselves, and I still get confused about which room a couple of my classes are in (2^nd floor, Northwestern Hall—they all look the same!). And with the beautiful Minnesota fall we were having until yesterday, I hardly noticed that summer had ended. Now I’m looking ahead to finals!

One thing that really makes time seem to fly is having a six-week class. By the time you get adjusted, it’s halfway over and you are working on your final project. I finished one a couple of weeks ago, and saw my grade posted yesterday. At least for goal-oriented people like me, it’s satisfying to be halfway through the semester and already have a class completed, and to know that it turned out ok. It’s also nice that I’m not picking up another six-week class, so I can focus on my other three courses for the rest of the semester.

I’ll officially be a Middler after this semester ends. With the amount of time I have been dedicating to ministry, I have not been taking a really full load, meaning five classes at once. Honestly, I don’t think I could cram that many subjects into my head at once and dig deep into any one of them. I’m much happier with 3 or 4 classes each semester!

At the rate I’m going, I will graduate after a total of 3.5 or 4 years at Luther. My denomination doesn’t require me to do an internship, so I could have done the academic work in 3 years, but I’ve chosen to have other learning experiences along the way that I wouldn’t want to trade in. It’s been nice to be able to take things at my own pace, but the achiever in me is often trying to speed things up and plan ahead and move things around…

Perhaps the most valuable thing I can learn from this season of preparing for winter is to be content where I am, and not be focused on always trying to get to the next step. Winter in Minnesota is almost half of the year, so if you wish time away, you will be miserable very quickly. As I settle in for winter and think about my seminary career, I don’t want to see it as something just to get through to get on to the next phase, but as an experience to be enjoyed for however long it lasts. And when I do get to the “next step” (hopefully being a pastor), I’ll probably look back at being a Middler at Luther as the “good old days” when life was simpler. There’s no need to rush. Life goes by fast enough as it is.

The half way point...on many levels

Week 8? How the heck did we get here already?

As I sat down last night, opened up the laptop, pulled up Luthernet and started working out the week’s assignments, I realized that the semester is past the half way point already. This coincided with another halfway point for me. Yesterday in CPE we discussed our mid-unit evaluations which will be on the docket to be discussed at next week’s session. That’s another thing that’s right about half way done already.

I thought some more, and realized that with the upcoming move to the Twin Cities, and speeding up school, I’m coming up on another halfway point. At the end of this school year, I’ll be right about half way through seminary. Granted, this still leaves a lot of ground to cover, and that being said, there’s a lot of ground to cover between now and the end of the school year as well, but…

HOLY COW!!!!

Somehow, the prospect of approaching the halfway point of this whole deal is daunting. The DL program is wonderful, but it is so long. I’ve already been at it for almost two and half years, and until this upcoming move, I was a long way from finishing. I was only half way to internship. That’s obviously changed.

As I ponder on the speedier track that I’m about to embark on, I realize that I have a LOT of work to get done asap. I need to write my endorsement essay as well as start the process of getting ready for internship, which I’m now expecting to occur next fall.

I think about all these steps that I need to get done, and I realize, I’m nowhere near half way done with all of that stuff. I better get moving…because time is flying whether I keep up or not.

The Next Great Novel

This has been a very busy semester. I’m only taking one class this term, but it is a very brain-intensive class (Lutheran Confessional Writings). Lot’s of memorizing and processing concepts that I’m not very familiar with. I’ve also got three very busy children, a husband and two part-time jobs (which both seem to be extra busy this fall, as well).

Needless to say, when I have free time, I’m usually asleep. While sleep is a necessary part of one’s healthy lifestyle, it’s not really personally fulfilling. I still find a little time to read non-school books (a habit I will never give up), knit and keep up-to-date on pop culture, but it’s like I’m in a rut. So what does one do when she is in a rut? Why try something she’s always wanted to do but never has: write the next great fiction novel.

I just found out yesterday that November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It’s a challenge to write 50,000 words by Nov. 30. If you finish and post the novel online in time, you win a certificate and a Web banner. No publishing rights, no money… a Web banner. And I want that banner!

It starts next Monday and I have exactly no plot, no characters and no ideas. I most certainly don’t have time to write the 1,700 words a day needed to reach the goal. This is out of my comfort zone even though writing is not new to me (my first job out of college was as a newspaper reporter/editor in North Dakota and I used to love writing short stories as a teenager).

Do I have time in my life for this right now? Absolutely not. But I have spent so much of my time of late with my nose in thick academic books that I need to do something out of the ordinary to make me stop, look up and see God’s amazing creation at work around me (and maybe write about it in the process).

Making Theology Practical?

Maybe I’m alone in this, but sometimes it feels like the longer I’m at seminary, the farther removed I become from how the “average” church member approaches their life of faith. Theology is necessary, but the question we all eventually face is how to apply it to life and integrate it into our ministries.

I suppose this is why Luther has us serve in “Teaching Congregations” while going through the Master of Divinity program. I just started at a new church a couple of weeks ago—a wonderful place in St. Paul called Woodland Hills (actually, this was my home church before I left to work with a Spanish-speaking church). My first assignment is to address the question of making theology practical. The church hosts a weekly “Discover Jesus” class for people new to the church or to Christianity to find out more about our faith. My task is to listen to the classes and read the materials to discern if they are accessible to people of different cultural and social backgrounds, levels of education, etc.

This week’s topic was, “Why did Jesus have to die?” Participants were asked to discuss what they thought a random person on the street would answer. The responses were varied, and we realized that it is not easy to sum up and communicate to others such a basic tenant of our faith. Personally, I struggled to silence the different atonement theories battling in my mind so that I could think of what I might say to a friend who has no Christian background.

I left church that night wondering how the Gospel seemed to get so complicated all of a sudden. Then I remembered what we talked about the day before in my 1 Corinthians class—that without the Holy Spirit awakening faith in us, a crucified God is foolishness. We can have great theology and explain it in various ways, but we rely on God’s power to create faith through the preaching of Jesus Christ. Yes, we should work to be effective preachers and teachers. Yet through all this, I am glad that it is ultimately not up to me to “discover Jesus,” but rather Jesus discovers me, as well as those we minister to.

My impressions so far! (part 2)

Hi again!

While my first impression was the cultural differences I feel that I have to mention something about the academic differences I have experienced!
The classes I take here at Luther are different in many ways from the ones I take in Sweden.
In Sweden, we have something called "National Agency for Higher Education" (called "Högskoleverket" in Swedish). The purpose of this agency is to oversee the higher education in Sweden and make sure taht it stays objective and secular. Unfortunately this applies to theological studies as well. Meaning that someone who is study to become a pastor in Sweden cannot do something that could be interpreted as religious. (e.g no internship, no CPE, no praying in class and definitely not preaching!). The seminaries have to follow these guidelines if they want to be able to graduate their theology students. How is this possible?
In 1949 a man called Hedenius published his book "tro och vetande" (belief and knowledge). Hedenius was a Professor of Practical Philosophy at Uppsala university and a famous opponent of organised Christianity. The main line of argument in his book was that it is not possible to have a rational debate about religion. Theology can not be classed as knowledge, but belongs outside it as "quasi-knowledge". Therefore Christianity is irrational and the study of religions and their development should be separated from theology and become a non-religious academic discipline.
This had a major impact on Swedish academics and the ideas of Hedenius are followed to this day.

Some schools outside the bigger universities, such as my own, realize that this is not a good thing if you are studying to become and pastor. In my school we try to get around this by having courses that gives no credit and goes "under the radar" where we can learn and practice how to preach and do some internship. But since we get no credit for it and still have to fulfill the criteria of being "academic", making the "religious" elements have a small place in our education.

With this background I am sure you can understand my bliss when, in one of our first classes, my teacher here at Luther Seminary says that the goal of the course is to make us better at having bible studies and preaching!

My impressions so far! (part 1)

Dear readers!

Time sure goes fast! I have now been at Luther Seminary for half a semester!

I arrived about two weeks before "first week", in order to make myself at home before the classes started, something I highly recommend, especially if are from another country.
At the first week I was overwhelmed at first. At Johannelund in Sweden we have about 100 active students, at Luther Seminary we received over 200 new students! I received a warm welcome, especially since I was an exchange student, and we had a couple of extra "first days" for us coming from other countries. It was also interesting seeing the other "international students" (I am using the term "international" since not all are "exchange students" in the aspect of exchanging students). It also helped my to get some perspective.
I am from Sweden, a rich welfare country where education is not a privilege, it is a right. Everyone has the right to study and the government in Sweden promotes it by making the school free (no tuition) and giving us money every month to support our studies. We also have the right to borrow money from "CSN" (financial aid for studies) with low interest. In Sweden we often complain about how hard the life of a student is, having to borrow money to survive, have to study all the time and during the summer break we "might" have to work if we spent too much money during the semester. Many Swedes complain about this "hard" student life. Gaining some perspective changes that. Here in the US education is not a right, it is a privilege (at least at higher levels). Most American students I have met here have to receive scholarships and still work while they are studying to be able to afford school. I admire my American friends for being able to pull this out. When I meet the other international students many of them have been forced to leave their families back in their home country for this rare change and privilege to be able to study!

This makes me consider if I should feel ashamed, coming from a welfare country and in addition to that receive all the privileges of an international student at Luther Seminary, or greatly blessed for having what I have and to be a Swedish student here at Luther Seminary.
Perhaps both?

Another Step

For those of you that have been following me, you know that I'm in the process of transferring up to the cities in preparation for a new job for my wife and full time school for me. This weekend my wife and I headed up to the cities for 3 different reasons.
The first reason was to go to the funeral of my aunt that has been fighting cancer for the past two years. It was a hard day, but not an unexpected one. As difficult as that day was, I also think it was a bit of a relief as we've all been worried about her for a long time. Now her fight is over and she's home with Jesus.
The second reason that we went was that this was my wife's birthday weekend. Typically we get together with my sister and her husband and visit a bunch of wineries. Its a fun way to celebrate her birthday, but this year we skipped the wineries because we had other business to attend to.
This brings up the third reason, house hunting. We had a couple leads on potential places to look at to live when we make the big jump north. We checked those out, as well as a batch of other locations as well...all in all, we probably looked at a dozen different condos, townhouses, and apartments.
Finally in the end, we did find a townhouse that we both really liked. So we'll be settling in the north part of Plymouth. Its very handy for my wife who will only be a couple miles from work. My commute will of course be a little longer, but if I can manage to avoid traffic, I should be able to make the drive in about 30 minutes each day. For the Twin Cities, that's really not too bad.
Additionally, over the course of the weekend, the sign went up in the yard at home. So the house is officially on the market now. Additional good news...I got a call today from a Realtor that wants to show the house on Thursday morning already. Hopefully the people looking like what they see and put in an offer.

Hopefully.

Greetings from the other Jenny

Hello!

My name is Jenny Pietz, and this will be my first time blogging, ever—no Facebook or anything of the sort, so I am excited about trying something new!

I am a Master of Divinity student at Luther, starting my second year. I wish I could say that I’m from somewhere exciting like Sweden, but alas, I live in a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis—St. Louis Park. That makes me a commuter student, which gives me the best of both being fairly close to campus life, as well as being able to go home at the end of the day.

One unique perspective I will hopefully bring to Life@Luther is that of a non-Lutheran student at Luther. I do not identify myself with a specific denomination, so I have a hard time responding to the question, “What denomination are you?” I like to say that I’m a Christian who is working with a group called Converge Worldwide. The next question is often, “so why did you come to Luther and not go to Bethel? (Bethel is another local seminary affiliated with Converge). My first response is that I wanted a challenge. I believe my views and theology will best develop in a diverse environment that provides a perspective other than what I get at church, or in other ministries I have been a part of. Looking back at my first year at Luther, I can see how much I have learned and definitely know I am where God wants me to be.

My goal upon finishing seminary is to be a pastor, and hopefully go on to further studies. I am passionate about teaching in the church, with the aim of helping people discover their own gifts and call in service to God, each other, and the world. I spent the past 5 years working with a local Hispanic congregation, and hope that I can continue to participate in ministries that bridge different cultures with the Gospel.

When asked my hobbies, my first thought was, “what hobbies? I’m in seminary!” That’s not to say that there is not life outside of classes at Luther in general, but rather reflects my nerdy-ness—I really do like to study things like the Bible and Greek. I am a full-time student, so it’s nice that what I do each day is something I’m really passionate about it. When I’m not studying, I enjoy spending time with friends, being out in nature, travel, and photography.

Well, that’s my brief introduction. More to come soon…

Sorry, no jazz hands here

I’ve been watching a lot of Glee lately (my daughters like to watch the episodes over and over) and I thought it would be great to introduce myself with a musical number. Except I can’t sing or dance very well. And, you know, this is a blog, not TV. So I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way and just use paragraphs.

My name is Jenni and I am an older, part-time commuter student. I am a senior in the Master of Arts program with a concentration in Children, Youth and Family Ministry. I have been married to my husband, Paul, for 16 years. We have three children (Patrick, Hannah and Zoe), a cat, two hamsters and a bunch of fish.

This is my fourth year at Luther. Because I don’t want to leave school with more debt, my husband and I are paying for classes out-of-pocket and with generous support from our home church. We are blessed that my husband has a full-time job (his calling is that of computer nerd with full benefits) and I have two part-time jobs which allow us to do this. Needless to say, we are a busy family. My husband and I grew up in the Twin Cities so our family is blessed with a community of kind, caring people in our lives.

I love dark purple and hot pink, T.V. and movies, reading and pop culture. I knit in my free time (or while watching T.V. or reading for class), wouldn’t trade my Macintosh for the world and am a graphic designer by trade (that is also one of my two jobs). It has been amazing to watch God at work in my life connecting all of these different things I enjoy into my own ministry work with children and youth. I look forward to seeing God at work in the lives of my family and I as I move forward through this process and we live out our own individual calls as part of a family.

Introduction and Eric Hoffer Trivia

My name is Eric Hoffer. I'm an M.Div. student who is currently on internship at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Salem, OR. While I was born and raised in Edina, MN (for you non-Twin Cities residents, that's just outside of Minneapolis), I am truly loving the Northwest. It's tough to beat mountains plus ocean! Of course, I definitely miss my friends and family in the Midwest.

I’ve been blessed with a great family, and they mean the world to me. My parents are Mark (a small-town boy) and Cindy (a city girl)—the reverse of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” I have a younger sister named Hannah, who is a senior at Denver University. Over the years, we’ve become very close. About 14 months ago, I married Kirsten Anneke. Our marriage fills my life with joy, adventure, and comfort. As with any marriage, though, it’s also created some hard work, a bit of stress at times, and a lot of dirty dishes. One of the great parts of marrying Kirsten is becoming part of her family—many of whom live in Oregon, and all of whom have been welcoming and loving. I’m so thankful for everyone in my family.

I love adventures of all sorts. I love stories, and my favorite movie is “Big Fish,” because of its exploration of what stories mean to people. My second favorite movie, though, is “Renaissance Man.” It might be cheesy and poorly-acted, but it lifts up the idea of the Renaissance Man. I identify with the movie because I have a wide array of interests, including sports, reading, music, languages, pop culture, camping, people, and (of course) film. But seriously, “Renaissance Man.” Check it out.

I look forward to sharing all about my experiences and adventures from my internship and my life, in general; but before I get back to my sermon preparation, let me close with a few pieces of Eric Hoffer trivia…because this information is truly trivial.

- I can’t wink with my right eye
- I share my name with a moderately famous philosopher
- I went to a French immersion elementary school
- My wife and I both love the smell of books—both new and old
- I love to cook and I dream of becoming a chef someday
- I also dream of managing a professional sports franchise
- …or a pastor.
- I always manage to blink for pictures
- I am goofy. Very goofy.

P.S. To prove the last two points, here’s a photo of me and another summer camp counselor about to sing "Every Rose Has It's Thorn." (I'm on the left):

An Intro and A Tough Day

For starters, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Scott Dalen. I've actually been blogging on Life at Luther for a year now, and am glad to be back again this year. I'm currently a member of the Distributed Learning program, which means that my Masters of Divinity degree with take longer to achieve, but the vast majority of my school work happens online rather than being on campus. At least at the moment. I posted earlier this week that my family and I are moving to the Twin Cities about the first of the year. She has accepted a job at a church in Plymouth and I'm planning on going to to school full time.

So my perspective currently comes from the distance learning direction, but only for a few more months when I'll be more of a full time commuter.

All that being said, today's a tough one. We have a funeral at church for a beloved member of our congregation and community. It hits close to home for me because he was such an outgoing guy and always joked around with my son at church.

Something else is going on for me personally which doesn't make today any easier. My aunt died last night. She's been fighting cancer for a long time, but we knew that she's been losing the battle. God called her home last night.

So now I sit here, trying to figure out how to offer any sort of comfort to a grieving family, at least in a support role along with my partner pastor, when I'm experiencing my own grief. Grief for a man that I respected and enjoyed, and grief for my aunt. It's certainly a mixed bag.

International blogger!

Hi everyone!

I'm the new international blogger here at Life@Luther!
For those who don't know me (which would be most of you, since I arrived in the US only about 2 months ago) my name is Carl Mattias Gustav Olofsson (I go by "Mattias") I am an exchange student from Johannelund theological Seminary in Uppsala, Sweden. This is my 4th year studying at a seminary, and after this year I hope to return to Sweden, finish my studies and become ordained as a pastor for Swedish Evangelical Mission (EFS).

When I'm not blogging or studying my interests and hobbies are reading, computers and doing the dishes (you read the last words right, although I am a little disappointed that there aren't as much dishes as there should be here at Bockman hall were I'm staying!).

To be an international student here at Luther Seminary in the US is interesting to say the least!
My goal with my posts here at the Life@Luther is to reflect how it is to be someone from the outside coming to Luther Seminary and the US, and will deal with issues such as culture shock, the different way of learning and thinking as opposed to how we do things back in Sweden.
I have been maintaining a blog in Swedish for some time now and will try to make some of it available at this blog to give you a sense of my initial experience here at Luther.

If you have any questions or comments to this foreign student feel free to post them by clicking to "comments" button below.
Stay tuned for more posts!

A Big Change

I haven't posted for awhile now. I'll admit to being pretty quiet...but I hope that this posting helps explain what's been happening.

About a month ago, my wife had an interview for a position at a church in Plymouth, a suburb on the west side of Minneapolis. Apparently the interview went pretty well because they asked us to join them for worship and the chance for my wife to meet with some more of the staff members. We did that about 3 weeks ago and admittedly, it went pretty well. They contacted my wife a couple of days later and offered her the position.

We've been talking for quite awhile about the possibility of moving to the cities so that I could go to school full time. Now we have been faced with the reality of that possibility. After wrestling with the decision for about a week or so, seeking advice from a few trusted people, and a lot of prayer, we felt that it was the right move. This is the direction that God wants us to go.

Tonight, my wife had a meeting at our house for the high school youth group so that she could tell them directly. So its in the process of becoming official. We need to announce it to the staff...though a couple of them know. I also need to let them know at my other job, something that I really need to do, probably tomorrow.

We are both very scared about this change. This is the biggest change that we have gone through as a family up to this point. But at the same time its exciting too. We have a lot of steps that we need to go through, a big one is getting our house sold. We've been working our tails off through the weekend trying to get a lot of little improvement projects done. Funny, we've been meaning to get these little things done for a long time. I guess that it takes moving out to get ourselves psyched up for it.

So where do we go from here?

Well, good question. This is just one more thing to juggle. Two classes, work at the church, cpe, and now trying to get ready to move.

Spring semester is going to be a big change.

Hanging out in the library

Today I had to spend some time in the library to read some reference books (you know, a little something called "Luther's Works"). Because I'm a mother/commuter student it's sometimes challenging for me to find time to spend in the library, but I was able to adjust my schedule for today.

I love spending time in any library, and this is no different. Luther's library is like a present. See, first you walk in and it's a perfectly lovely library, but it seems really small. There is the check out desk, the periodicals and computers and then the reference room with cubbies, tables, reference books and large windows with lovely views. But that's it. I remember the feeling of disappointment and thinking, "This is it?" the first time I walked in.

Then, out of the way I see it: a door. It's like a magic door. A door to my own personal Narnia. A door to the stacks.

The stacks are seven tight little floors with tiny staircases, each level full of books. I'd never been in a library stacks before and I still feel a little thrill of excitement when I have to go in to find a book. On each floor there are cubbies students can rent. I've always thought I should rent one, just to have a cubby in the stacks. I just don't spend enough time in the library to feel like anything but a book nerd sitting at a cubby for no reason. So no rental ... yet.

Until then, I visit the library like a groupie. Today, I spent several hours in the library reading. To keep me from being distracted (and using my computer instead of reading), I brought along some knitting (I love to knit). Eventually my son joined me after school. I knew he wouldn't love hanging out in the library, but with the Celebration of Biblical Preaching happening on campus today, I wanted to keep him out of the way. Instead I let him play with my computer (we giggled a lot, I hope we didn't disturb too many people actually being quiet in the library today) when his homework was done. He had fun with the camera on my laptop and check out the picture of Patrick, my knitting, Luther and me, above.

I miss campus

I miss campus. I was last on campus in June, but I got really close last weekend. I was in the Twin Cities with my family for the weekend, and on a whim, we decided to have supper at Mannings, the local pub that we tend to frequent when we are on campus. In the process of heading that way, we were within a half mile of campus, but we didn't go there. It was Saturday night and there wouldn't have been anything going on anyway.

That being said, being that close makes me miss it. I love being on campus. Our intensives as DL students are few and far between...6-7 months at a pop...and that get's pretty long. There are two main reasons that I love campus. One is to be immersed in the "academic." I'm probably more of a "professional student" than I like to admit, or even realize. Because of that, I love being in that mode.

The second reason is because I love the community. Community is a very important aspect of the seminary experience and as DL students, we take this very seriously in the limited time that we have together. When we combine the community aspect of being together as a cohort with the academic aspect minus the distractions of work...I love it there.

Its only the first of October...I've got awhile to wait before I get back on campus again...but after being so close a week ago...I'm sure looking forward to it.