Some of these are strange "firsts" for a divinity student...

A list of "firsts" for the 2006-2007 academic year
(give or take a couple months)

In 2006...

April:

• taking Communion with wine and bread (instead of juice and flour-based chiclets)
• attending a Quaker service
• attending an Episcopal Eucharist service

May:

• owning a Prayer Book
• meeting a priest
• hearing a woman preach
  
• learning a dead language (Biblical Hebrew)

June:

• having my own priest

August:

• being an acolyte
• Communion with wafers
• being a lector

November:

• helping serve communion
• Eucharist on my birthday (it was on Thanksgiving Day)
  

December:

• Advent
• going to Lessons and Carols
• attending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services
• being a "LEM"

In 2007...

January:

• attending an Epiphany service
• meeting a Bishop

March:

• Ash Wednesday service
• Lent
• Visiting Washington, DC -- for a peace march
• Confirmation class

April:

• Palm Sunday - complete with palm fronds and a little palm cross
• Holy Week services

[more to come]

Quote for April 26, 2007

"In heaven all the interesting people are missing."

Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher (1844 - 1900)

Source

Project Blurriness, Thoughts on Prayer

It's important now to note that the line between my anthropology project and my own personal journey are blurred, not slightly, more like a big fuzzy swath across a page. My project is a bit of a tool to force myself to get out there and experience and explore things that I've wanted to for a long time, but been to afraid to do so.

I am researching something that I lack. My professor asked us "What do you want to know?" I want to know how religion beliefs and practices help people deal with stress because I don't have that. That's why I want to know! I want to know what I'm missing.


I regularly think to myself..."This is when someone would pray." I can't pray when I don't know what I'm praying to. I believe in a higher power or a higher order in the Universe itself. Do I believe in a God? I don't know. It is impossible for me to pray to a god that I don't know exists. It's not fair to me to relate to a deity who's existence I'm unsure of...To spend time giving thanks to and asking for help from a potentially non-existent source. It's unfair to the deity to say "hey, I don't really believe in you for sure, but can you help me out with these things?"

A friend of mine told me something like it doesn't matter whether or not you know the being you pray to exists because prayers are an expression of hope. Maybe that's true, but I am only able to express one hope at a time. Either the wish to find that higher power or the wish for help meeting my needs.

Did I mention that I'm working on a project about religion and stress?