| What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Literature Nerd Does sitting by a nice cozy fire, with a cup of hot tea/chocolate, and a book you can read for hours even when your eyes grow red and dry and you look sort of scary sitting there with your insomniac appearance? Then you fit this category perfectly! You love the power of the written word and it's eloquence; and you may like to read/write poetry or novels. You contribute to the smart people of today's society, however you can probably be overly-critical of works. | |
| Drama Nerd | |
| Musician | |
| Social Nerd | |
| Science/Math Nerd | |
| Artistic Nerd | |
| Gamer/Computer Nerd | |
| Anime Nerd | |
| What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace | |
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Another quiz
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Absence makes the heart grow fonder...
Sorry for the extended absence from blogging. The end of the quarter has kept me busy and then spring break never really happened. Oh well, at least I'm over halfway in my seminary career. I just read an article about two kids in a texas school. One is white, burned down a families house and got 18 months probation. The other was black, pushed a hall monitor down and got seven years in prison. Stuff like this makes my skull creak! More on this ethical issue later. I have to go finish an ordo (service booklet) for the Great Vigil of Easter (kind of the liturgical world series). More later. Max Pax (Latin for "lotsa peace to you!)
One of those quizzes
| What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Literate Good Citizen You read to inform or entertain yourself, but you're not nerdy about it. You've read most major classics (in school) and you have a favorite genre or two. | |
| Dedicated Reader | |
| Book Snob | |
| Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm | |
| Fad Reader | |
| Non-Reader | |
| What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz | |
Friday, March 2, 2007
Transitional Diaconate
There probably is not a more inconsistent practice in the Episcopal Church than the ordination to the Transitional Diaconate. Over and over again, the church has affirmed that it believes in a Transitional Diaconate (as opposed to direct ordination), but cannot decide the best approach to when and how to do it.
Some Diocese ordain after graduation from seminary. Some ordain in December, six months before graduation. Some ordain over the summer prior to the senior year.
Some diocese have extensive examination and discernment with ordinands prior to ordination, while others have less rigorous standards in place.
I wonder what the perception of the purpose of the Transitional Diaconate is among Bishops? Is it a training period? Is it an on-the-job-training period? Is it "paying your dues?" With the state of many parishes, finding a paying gig as a Transitional Deacon is getting harder and harder. For those Diocese that ordain after graduation from seminary, that means working for free for six months and then trying to find a paying curacy or associate position at the same time that your student loans are coming due (usually significant student loans!).
If I were able to speak to every Bishop in the U.S., I would encourage examining what they are doing around the Transitional Diaconate and why. Are they doing what they have always done because they have always done it that way? If it is to be a training period, please consider that training while in the seminary, with the ability to interact with other students and faculty, might be a better training for a transitional deacon than sitting in a parish with little or no feedback loop. I would also ask that they consider the economic position they are putting their seminary graduates in. Many diocese spend a great deal of time and energy examining aspirant and postulants financial situations, and at times, denying them their call on the basis of financial position. Wouldn't a better use of time and resource be to find paying jobs and seminary funding?
Some Diocese ordain after graduation from seminary. Some ordain in December, six months before graduation. Some ordain over the summer prior to the senior year.
Some diocese have extensive examination and discernment with ordinands prior to ordination, while others have less rigorous standards in place.
I wonder what the perception of the purpose of the Transitional Diaconate is among Bishops? Is it a training period? Is it an on-the-job-training period? Is it "paying your dues?" With the state of many parishes, finding a paying gig as a Transitional Deacon is getting harder and harder. For those Diocese that ordain after graduation from seminary, that means working for free for six months and then trying to find a paying curacy or associate position at the same time that your student loans are coming due (usually significant student loans!).
If I were able to speak to every Bishop in the U.S., I would encourage examining what they are doing around the Transitional Diaconate and why. Are they doing what they have always done because they have always done it that way? If it is to be a training period, please consider that training while in the seminary, with the ability to interact with other students and faculty, might be a better training for a transitional deacon than sitting in a parish with little or no feedback loop. I would also ask that they consider the economic position they are putting their seminary graduates in. Many diocese spend a great deal of time and energy examining aspirant and postulants financial situations, and at times, denying them their call on the basis of financial position. Wouldn't a better use of time and resource be to find paying jobs and seminary funding?
The Test That Shall Not Be Named
There has been some buzz around the seminary lately (albeit, in quiet, hushed tones) about the GOE results from last month. Every year about this time, when the results of the General Ordination Exams (GOEs, or as my class refers to them, "The Test That Shall Not Be Named) come out, there is the anguish over scores not being as expected and the anxiety over one's Bishop's reaction. There is always a general feeling of, "why didn't I do better?"
This test is an academic exercise designed to test one's ability to be academic. Is that really the best way to determine who should be ordained? Are all clerics academic? I realize, and affirm, that a certain degree of knowledge should be attained, but is a timed essay test the best way to assess that? Would Diocesan testing be better? Maybe combined with personal interviews? Maybe with personal written statements about what you have learned and how you are going to put it into practice?
However, to implement that strategy would be to remove nation wide consistancy. Unless the Bishops could get together and decide on some particular standard of minimum, measured in Diocesan specific manner.
All of that sounds like a lot to do just to measure seminary students abilities, but there must be a better way than the current "Episcopal Church's Annual Hazing of Seminary Students!"
This test is an academic exercise designed to test one's ability to be academic. Is that really the best way to determine who should be ordained? Are all clerics academic? I realize, and affirm, that a certain degree of knowledge should be attained, but is a timed essay test the best way to assess that? Would Diocesan testing be better? Maybe combined with personal interviews? Maybe with personal written statements about what you have learned and how you are going to put it into practice?
However, to implement that strategy would be to remove nation wide consistancy. Unless the Bishops could get together and decide on some particular standard of minimum, measured in Diocesan specific manner.
All of that sounds like a lot to do just to measure seminary students abilities, but there must be a better way than the current "Episcopal Church's Annual Hazing of Seminary Students!"
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Introvert / Extrovert
My introverted friends tell me that they can hardly stand all the interaction that they are forced to have here at Seminary. I don't quite understand what they are talking about! This has to be the lonliest place I have ever been. You spend a couple of hours in class, not really interacting much with others, and then go to chapel. Chapel is not terribly interactive, at least not with other humans. You are around them, but physical colocation does not equal interaction. Then you to to lunch. Lunch does provide interactiion and I enjoy it a great deal.
The rest of your time is spent reading, doing research, wandering around the basement library stacks, and writing papers. I am constantly alone. This place is the most isolated I have felt since I first joined the Air Force twenty-four years ago. I sit in my library study carrel, reading, watching the rain run down the window pane and wonder that my introverted friends are not more energetic than they are. If you get your energy from being by yourself and spend 80% of your time by yourself, shouldn't you be in a great mood the other 20%??
To an extrovert, this place is purgatory. The isolation saps the energy and tires the soul. I can't wait to be done.
The rest of your time is spent reading, doing research, wandering around the basement library stacks, and writing papers. I am constantly alone. This place is the most isolated I have felt since I first joined the Air Force twenty-four years ago. I sit in my library study carrel, reading, watching the rain run down the window pane and wonder that my introverted friends are not more energetic than they are. If you get your energy from being by yourself and spend 80% of your time by yourself, shouldn't you be in a great mood the other 20%??
To an extrovert, this place is purgatory. The isolation saps the energy and tires the soul. I can't wait to be done.
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