Smile

Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
—Theodor Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss)

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
(melodramatic violin music playing in the background) Yes, the end of an era has finally come upon us. This will be my last and final post on A Month In My Life. I want to say that it's been a blast. There have been ups and downs (as you so well know), but it's all been for the best. I appreciate all of the readers out there who have connected with me via comments or email to let me know that sharing my, at times, very wordy, thoughts was actually worthwhile. Though I will make my exit from the 90&9 realm of the blogosphere, I'll still be around. I will return to my familiar, small-town place, Where You Can Find Me.

Coming Soon . . .
Never fear, I will leave you in good hands. Marjorie Truman, a fellow UGST classmate, I might add, will be blogging live during her upcoming travels in Turkey and Greece during "The Paths of Paul," which is an extension of the Paul class. I so wish I could be joining her and many of my other classmates, but alas, qué será, será. Her sis, Jane, who will remain stateside, may also pick up the slack if Marge gets too tied up in her travels. It's something you won't want to miss!

Hooray!
Just had to throw this in, but yay! I won the name contest! I submitted the name in half jest, realizing that it was kind of clunky. The Third Triumvirate? But my Julius Caesar obsession got the best of me. I'm especially looking forward to enjoying the Goth CDs. Har har.

Adieu, Exeunt
Ladies and gents, this is it. UGST wraps up tomorrow, I'll spend one more Sunday in the STL, and Monday morning, I'll be on the road again, Montgomery, AL bound. I'll have a good 9 hours, guided by cruise control and wearing my 90&9 t-shirt, to ponder over my week and what lies ahead of me upon my return (namely, a 20-page paper about some historical aspect of the Apostle Paul). Fun, fun!

Spanish word/phrase of the day: adiós (ah-dee-OHS) = goodbye

Questions, comments, concerns? Please feel free to E-mail me!

Fact, Truth, and the Word of God

The Word of God = Infallible?
One of the issues we're dealing with in the Paul class is the attitude that modern Bible scholars take when examining scripture, especially the New Testament. If they happen to find anything that might be considered a discrepancy, instead of holding fast the assumption that the Word of God is infallible and attempting to reconcile it, they take every opportunity to drive a rift in it and to invalidate it. The agenda that many of them have to try to present the Word as contradictory, as mere metaphor, as embellished, or even as pure invention is very disturbing to me.

Case in point—Paul's conversion story. In Acts 9, the account goes that a light shone (v. 3), Paul heard a voice (v. 4), and that the men who journeyed with him heard a voice but saw no man (v. 7). In Acts 22, Paul is speaking in his defense and claims that he saw a light (v. 6), that he heard a voice (v.7), but that those who were with him saw the light but didn't hear the voice of him that spoke (v. 9). In Acts 26, Paul again is giving an account, this time to King Agrippa. He says that he saw a light that shone about him and his companions (v. 13), but doesn't mention whether they too saw it, and that he heard a voice (v. 14) but doesn't say whether his companions heard it.

There are seeming contradictions between the accounts in Acts 9 and Acts 22. But upon further study and examination we discovered that if you go to the original Greek, that the fact that the traveling companions in Chapter 22 didn't hear the voice could also mean that they didn't understand the voice. The verb 'to hear' is conjugated differently in Chapter 9 than it is in Chapter 22. Another possibility is that after the first account in Chapter 9, the traveling companions could have later told Paul, "Hey, man, we really did hear that freaky voice. What was that all about?" So in Paul's own retelling (in the first account, it is told in Luke's voice) Luke has him mention that his companions really did hear it.

Facts vs. Truth
Facts change. The earth is flat . . . oh, wait no, it's round. Bill Clinton is the President of the United States . . . oh, now it's George W. Bush. Carbohydrates are good for you . . . oh, wait, cut them completely out of your diet if you want to lose weight (the Atkins way, anyway). The Bible may, in certain instances, show variances of differing human accounts. Why? Because we are human, the Bible has human contributors, and the Bible presents those human contributions as they are.

The bottom line is that though facts change, the truth remains the same. Whether the light was seen or the voice heard by his traveling companions, the truth is that Paul received a revelation of Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. And without Paul's understanding of who Jesus really was, the New Testament would not be what it is today.

And I answered, Who art thou, Lord? And he said unto me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest (Acts 22:8).

Spanish word/phrase of the day: Jesucristo (hay-soo-KRIS-toh) = Jesus Christ

Questions, comments, concerns? Please feel free to E-mail me!

It Ain't Over Yet

Y'all Thought It Was Over . . .
But it ain't over yet! Yes, today is the last day of the month of May. And yes, usually on the last day of the month, the current blogger will get out the hankies and bid the 90&9 section of the blogosphere farewell. But this month will be a tad different in that I've been commissioned to go on through the rest of the week, which will bleed over into June.

However, this coming Monday, a dynamic duo of sisters will arise, and their tag-blogging is sure to be a treat. So stay tuned—more details to come!

UGST Goes On
The class is just getting awesomer by the day. We began today going over researching methods and were introduced to some online resources to help us begin researching for our final papers. The prospect of the 20 pager is a little daunting, but I'm sure I'll tackle it as I've done other stuff connected to this class, so it'll be all good.

I presented one of my papers on one of the readings. One of the author's main points that I brought out was the dual nature of Paul. He was obviously very-well grounded in Judaism on one hand, but on the other was a part of the Greek-speaking Hellenistic culture of his day. He navigated the two worlds well, but was always torn between them. I could identify with Paul in that respect, just a little.

Without going into my life story, I'll just say that I've always found myself trying to fit. Trying to make myself at home in at least one of the worlds I claim to be a part of and that I've navigated here and there. But I'm coming to the realization that I can't force myself to be anything other than what I am, and that really, it's okay not to fit.

Spanish word/phrase of the day: todavía no (toh-dah-BEE-ah noh) = not yet

Questions, comments, concerns? Please feel free to E-mail me!

Getting Out of the Box

Cruise Control
Greetings from the unusually-hot-this-time-of-year fair city of St. Louis! I have just had an absolute blast these past few days.

Before this blast could have been had, however, I had to strike out and go where no 24-year-old, single, female Montgomerian has ever gone before, and it all started with Mapquest. What did people do before Mapquest? rung in my brain as I charted out my 9-hour road trip's course. I have never in my life attempted a road trip this long by myself before. My parents were freaking a little, but once this girl says she's gonna do something, it gets done, you knaamean? At 6 a.m. Sunday morning, I was ready. I was on the road to the Show Me State. I got there, 9 hours later, completely surprised at how easy it was! Needless to say, cruise control was my friend.

Fresh Faces
That Sunday night, I attended church at New Life Center in Bridgeton. It was refreshing to meet new people, and to see fresh, unfamiliar faces (and a few familiar—I reconnected with a few folks I met at the IQ Forum in October), and just to worship God freely and un-exhaustedly, despite the long drive. I'm still eating steak quesadilla triangles out of the to-go box I brought back from the Mexican restaurant I went to with a group of young people that night.

The Advent of the Paul Class at UGST
As I've mentioned before, I'm here to do a J-Term at the Urshan Graduate School of Theology (UGST). I was pumped. I was hyped. I was nervous. Everyone's going to be more Bible scholarly than me, went my self-doubt. I felt like a little school girl on her first day. Except that instead of Kindergarten, it was seminary. Armed with my dinosaur of a laptop, notes, and my teacher bag converted into a depository of Paul books; and spurred on by fatherly encouragement from one of the friends I'm staying with, I set out on the first few steps of my journey out of the box.

The official title of the class is "The Historical Paul: The Man Behind the Letters," and the approach that my professor, Steven Beardsley, (his personal site is under construction, but here's that of his church, of which he is the pastor) has taken with the class is unconventional, but rocks nonetheless. It is very student-led, and one of his opening remarks were, "I'm not a professor of answers, I'm a professor of questions." He's one of those guys that, instead of turning students into receptacles to receive rehashed stuff from his professorial mind, allows his students to engage with one another while he takes more of the role of a mediator rather than a lecturer. He's one of those profs that pushes, probes, questions, challenges, encourages us to do the same, and basically forces us to think. I gotta give props to my prof. I'm loving this and drinking in every ounce of it.

Aside from being enthralled by Beardsley, I've also had the chance to meet and engage with many like-minded people, which is such a godsend. I've been craving this, and so far, I've been highly satisfied. Boy, I'm so glad I decided to do this. The readings and response papers were a bit of a killer, but now that that part's over (though we still have the 20 pager to contend with), I do not regret my decision to do this one whit. So far, we've presented our position papers on how we should treat extra-canonical texts in New Testament research (especially with regards to Paul).

It Was Greek to Me
That's a classic line from a classic play—the Shakespearean play that I hold most near and dear to my heart, Julius Caesar. After class yesterday, we grabbed some blankets, grabbed some sandwiches, and picked an ideal spot in Forest Park to watch a free outdoor production of the play. (sigh) It was superb. It was divine. It was the exact way I wanted it to be done—especially Mark Antony's funeral oration. Although the actor playing my main man (as well as the guy playing Octavian) was disconcertingly height challenged, especially in the face of Brutus and Cassius, when he started spouting "Friends, Romans, countrymen," it was over. His shortness didn't matter. He was moving the stones of Rome to rise and mutiny. Honorable men. Ha!

Paul and Julius Caesar
Ever the unsuspecting post-modernist, I couldn't resist publicly making the connections between the play and Paul in class the following day:

1. The play takes place in Rome and Philippi—both places where there were churches to which Paul wrote letters.

2. Octavian (later, Caesar Augustus) becomes known in the Roman world as The Son of God. This terminology was in direct conflict with Paul's declaration of Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

3. Mark Antony, during his crafty oration claims, "For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,/Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,/To stir men's blood: I only speak right on" and in a similar fashion Paul claims "But though [I be] rude in speech, yet not in knowledge" (2 Corinthians 11:6)—as if they didn't know they had a way with words.

After that, throughout the rest of class today, we were all one-upping each other with corny Julius Caesar references.

Spanish word/phrase of the day: la obra mejor en el mundo (lah OH-brah may-HOR ayn ayl MOON-doh) = the best play in the world

Questions, comments, concerns? Please feel free to E-mail me!