Middler Review

At seminary, I'm in the middle of a process called the 'Middler Review.'

It means I am halfway or so to graduation. Really, a year away and all the ducks need to be in a row, so now is a good time to fix them.

Middler Review. Reviewing one's middle. Navel-gazing?

I'm having the hardest time with this thing. I've spent all month thinking about it. Actually, I take that back a little. I've spent all month pondering the questions it raises about spiritual and ministerial formation, and have found its format of a list of questions and a survey to be kind of helpful for framing that ponderance.

My advisor assures me it's nothing to worry about. Of course, with all my searching questions and perhaps even whining, maybe that will change. But he's a pretty patient and wise man. I probably would not have survived so far in this new school, or in recovering from bad experiences at past schools, with any less. This is a paragraph of immense appreciation.

A lot of questions I have right now have to deal with worthiness, or my perceived lack of it. This comes mostly from a long history of hurts, and hurtful words, and my tendency to believe hurtful words as more truthful than the encouraging ones. This probably makes me a raving paranoid lunatic. Then again, we know Luther, at least from the recent movie, was also a raving paranoid lunatic. Where he stands ahead of me on this struggle, is recognizing that these words are probably of Satan. They still must be wrestled with and examined for glimpses of truth, or at least to keep one's enemies close at hand; but I cannot let them rule my life.

The things I feel most compelled to do with my life are wierd. Maybe because I am wierd. Maybe that is really okay, even if it ruffles other people's feathers.

Dr. Moore said last week that if you show any promise as a young leader, chances are, people who you might hope to be mentors to you are not as likely to be mentors and help you as they are to try and 'kill' you. This bears out in a lot of my experience, and the rejection has been so painful that for me that it has influenced my own self-destructive behaviors and attitudes. So while I am in my current spiritual restlessness, I'm trying to work that through. Dr. Moore, fortunately for me, has so far been for me also very patient and wise, more mentor than 'child-killer.' Another paragraph of immense appreciation.

Jesus said, 'it is better that a millstone be hung around your neck and you be dropped into the sea, than that you become a barrier to these little ones.'

Jesus sure wasn't mincing words that time.

I do think it's strange that in nearly all my seminary experience, it has been older straight white men who have been my best mentors and encouragers and cheerleaders and get me out of hellish situation-ers. It seems a little un-PC even, but hey, whatever works. Perhaps this is a positive outcome of the women's movement, that would not have happened a generation ago. Or maybe I've just been blessed. Not that all straight older white male faculty have been that great; not that there hasn't been a few women--though strangely, the ones without much power themselves. And as I've written before, it's been my experience nearly across the board that the greatest obstacles to me as a young woman entering the ministry are not men, but women who are already in ministry. I can only think of one or two that haven't been like that. But that's for another time and another writing. A lot of writing.