FINDING GOD IN A CHEOM DRIP by Tami Groth, 2nd Year Diaconal Ministry Student

Recently Pastor Jeff Giles, WTS, 1994, visited the Wartburg Seminary campus and shared his time, presence and ministry with us. He shared his story both informally and formally in his presentation, “Finding God in a Chemo Drip.”

As background, Pastor Jeff was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) seven years ago along with an underlying disease, Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS).The MDS can sometimes be treated for years before it converts to the more deadly AML; however Pastor Jeff’s converted prior to his initial diagnosis and has relapsed once since then. Pastor Jeff is considered terminally ill.

Being terminally ill altered Pastor Jeff’s ministry in many ways that have been and continue to surprise him and others, and yet he, and his wife, Jennae, continue to share their journey and their faith – continue to minister. They persist in their ministries.

Pastor Jeff ministered to us by simply sharing his journey and his faith. He shared his faith speaking through God’s word, beginning not surprisingly through the 23^rd Psalm. He went on to interpret, “No matter what happens in our life, in our joys and in our sorrows on the mountain tops and deep down in the darkest of valleys, our God is with us to help us, and through us, to help others as well.”

As Pastor Jeff made space for the common question, “Why me?” the Psalm 22 was quoted:

¹My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?

²O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.

The question of “why me?” and of questioning God in anger and despair was familiar to me as it relates to my own personal journey and my daughter’s death. Thankfully the journey towards, “why not me?” is also familiar. Pastor Jeff articulated this journey in a beautiful, faithful way that I hope to embody in my own life and ministry as he lifted up the normalcy of asking why alongside the progress of lament psalms, such as psalm 22. He affirmed that during a cancer diagnosis one grieves many things and this questioning is a healthy part of that grief and of our faith life. One of the things grieved is the loss of a future, and this loss connects to those touched by cancer as well as many other tragedies. In my experience I’ve found this to be a nearly universal part of the grief journey no matter what the details of the loss are.

Then Pastor Jeff asked, “What if we were to turn this ‘why me?’ question around and ask a different question – ‘why not me?’” Clearly, nobody deserves a cancer diagnosis or any other “why me” tragedies, and yet bad things happen. In our grief journey there comes a turning point just as there is a turning point in lament psalms. Pastor Jeff reminds us that lament Psalms such as Psalm 22 are helpful as we move from lament to praise. While assuring us to not be afraid of the “why me’s,” Pastor Jeff also cautioned us to not get stuck there. He shared that moving toward and to the “why not me’s” is “where you will find peace and joy even in the midst of a horrible disease, having been comforted in that darkest valley by the shepherd’s rod and staff.”

During our time together Pastor Jeff’s prophetic voice was also able to authentically give voice to the fullness of his journey. He discussed avoiding platitudes or “greeting- card theology” and lifted up listening and responding to where each person is at in their journey and to accompany others as God accompanies us, “holding everyone, walking with them through the shadows, even the shadows of death.”

I was once told that while not everyone receives a cure, there can always be healing. I embraced that and yet struggled to articulate and live into in my ministry. Pastor Jeff shared his belief on healing as he encouraged us toward a broader understanding of healing, “To see that healing is more than physical. . . . it can also be mental, and it can also be spiritual. . . . God’s healing will give us the strength we need to face the day even when we are physically, mentally, and spiritually broken. . . .We can feel the healing presence of God in each and every day. . .” The encouragement was both personalized to Jeff’s journey with cancer and broadened to include the journeys of all humanity struggling with death and grief. He said, “We might think, how is it possible to go down into that dark valley of the shadow once again? Yet, God’s healing presence is there by our side, having gone ahead of us to meet us where we are, and to accompany us on the journey, comforted by our Shepherd’s rod and staff.”

Rather than common one-liners and platitudes Pastor Jeff encourages us to direct hard questions of grief and theology boldly, and he continued to do so during our time with us, and he also continues to do so as he shares his own journey as well as ministry through his online journal at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/pastorjeff.

In closing Pastor Jeff shared a poem (see link below) with those of us gathered to hear and learn together. Jennae, Jeff’s wife, wrote the poem for him in the spring of 2000 to use in the funeral sermon of a teenage girl who had taken her own life. The poem fits a broader context as we seek to wrap our minds around all of the terrible thing that happen in life.

A Conversation with God by Jennae Giles (a poem)

INVESTING IN EDUCATION TO ELIMINATE HUNGER by Christa Fisher, 2nd year M.Div.

Hunger is the result of an inadequate income.  People with money are able to purchase food while people without money struggle with hunger.  In order to eradicate hunger we must ensure all people have the means to purchase food.  Because education is understood to be the key to leveraging economic status, education is vital to the fight against hunger.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2012 the median weekly income for adults without high-school diplomas and adults with bachelor’s degrees was $471 and $1066, respectively. [1]  Over the course of one year, the difference in earning potential between an adult without a high-school diploma and one with a four-year degree is nearly $35,000.   This is a significant, life-altering amount of money.

Much like the gap in earning potential, a similar division exists in educational attainment between low–income and affluent students.  The truth is that poverty itself impedes students’ educational success.  Robert Balafanz, in his white paper Overcoming the Poverty Challenge to Enable College and Career Readiness for All sums up the often invisible but severe impact poverty has on educational performance.  “The impacts of food scarcity, housing instability, and insufficient access to medical and dental care are clear. If a student is hungry, without a home, suffering from untreated ailments or in need of glasses, it is difficult for him or her to focus on school work.  Poverty also brings with it an increased exposure to violence and the lived experience that life is capricious which further shapes student behavior directly.”[2]

Many educators and administrators, aware of the burdens inflicted upon low-income students, are working in innovative ways to help students achieve their full potential, such as early intervention reading programs, individualized curriculums, and intensive summer school programs.  Additionally, educators recognize that one-time interventions are insufficient.  As children change and develop so to do the obstacles they face regarding their education.  In the earliest years a child, not having exposure to early-educational opportunities, may have underdeveloped math and reading skills.  As a middle-school youth, the same student may be relied upon to care for his or her younger siblings or elderly relatives, resulting in less time for studies.  During high school the same student may feel pressure to abandon his or her education in order to acquire a job and earn money for his or her family.  Individualized supports must accompany students through the years.

Despite their success, these innovative college-readiness support programs are in jeopardy.  In 2011 many states experienced drastic cuts in educational funding.  Wisconsin, for example, passed a two year $834 million cut in K-12 educational funding[3].  This cut is the equivalent of an average per pupil funding reduction of $555.  Supposing an average class has 25 students, a $555 per student cut would total a $13,875 reduction per classroom.  Additionally, almost 900 young children will lose access to Head Start programs.[4]  Teachers and districts are doing more with much less.  Yet, given past and impending funding cuts, schools will have to continue eliminating vital programing – programs which, for many children, are their only means of escaping the cycle of poverty.

The Feeding of the Five thousand, a story found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, speaks to the Christian responsibility to eradicate hunger.  Having just delivered a lengthy sermon of hope and blessing to a crowd of more than 5,000 people, the disciples ask Jesus to send the people home as the people are hungry and day is ending.  Jesus, responds, “You feed them.”  His response is not a suggestion and it allows for no exceptions.  The disciples, having recognized the hungry, are commanded to address the pain of the people.  After Jesus blessed the small amount of loaves and fishes, the disciples were able to satisfy the appetite of the entire crowd.

Our situation today is not much different.  Our nation is faced with a hunger epidemic with 1 in 6 people experiencing chronic hunger.  The numbers are staggering and often we feel unequipped to tackle the situation.  Yet, like the disciples, we have been called and endowed with the resources necessary to care for our hungry neighbors.  We can eradicate hunger, if only we take Christ’s word and ministry seriously and use our gifts to benefit the poor.  We can contact representatives and ask them to invest in education for all children.  We can contact our school boards and advocate for the programs which serve the needs of low-income students.  We can volunteer in our communities at a local food pantry, after school program, or within a school itself.  We can use our gifts to feed the poor by supporting them in their efforts to end the cycle of poverty.

RESOURCE FOR MORE INFORMATION

Jonathan Kozol speaks to the class and race disparity within the US educational system in his book The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, available through Crown Publishing Group.

To learn more about the impact of poverty on education as well as solutions to this problem, read Robert Balfanz’s Overcoming the Poverty Challenge to Enable College and Career Readiness for All:  The Crucial Role of Student Supports, available online http://new.every1graduates.org/publications/reports/

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[1] US Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Education Pays.  January 28, 2013.  http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm

[2] Balfanz, Robert.   Overcoming the Poverty Challenge to Enable College and Career Readiness for All:  The Crucial Role of Student Supports. http://new.every1graduates.org/publications/reports/

[3] Hetzner, Amy and Richards, Erin.  Budget Cuts $834 million from schools.  WS Journal, March 1, 2011.

[4] White House.  Impact of March 1^st Cuts on Middle Class Families, Jobs, and Economic Security: Wisconsin.  February 24, 2013.   http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/sequester-factsheets/Wisconsin.pdf

Prayers for Sexual Assault Awareness at Wartburg Seminary by Mary Wiggins, 2nd Year M.Div

The community of Wartburg Seminary, during the week of April 25th 2013, prayed for those impacted by Sexual Assault. April is Sexual Assault Awareness month. This effort was coordinated by the Global Concerns Committee and the Chapel Staff and planning groups. Although Sexual Assault and Abuse primarily affect women, it does not discriminate for men and women, young and old from all over the world are survivors of rape, incest, and abuse. It is estimated that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men are impacted by sexual assault in their life time.  

What makes sexual abuse so vile? Its power to isolate and to silence.

Fifty-eight candles were lit in the chapel to represent how sexual abuse statistics would look in a community of Wartburg’s size. These candles were accompanied by prayers for victims–survivors and those who did not survive, supporters, advocates and perpetrators. With sighs too deep for words to express these candles were a visual prayer for all the people whose voices were silenced by abuse.

“Holy One, you do not distance yourself from the pain of your people, but in Jesus you bear that pain with all who suffer at other’s hands. With your cleansing love bring healing and strength to victims of sexual assault and by your justice, lift them up, that in body, mind, spirit they may again rejoice. In Jesus name, Amen.” (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 84)

Photo credit: Mary Wiggins

TO PROTEST BY PERSISTING IN REMAINING by Paul Andrew Johnson, 2nd year M.Div.

This article has remained unwritten for far too long. Despite encouragement from classmates, there always seemed to be something else more important to do. I realize now how foolish that was. I do not want it to sound like I am such an insightful person, or that when I speak, everyone should listen—far from it.  It is the message, not the messenger, that needs to be heard.

I am an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America.  I cherish this title and am proud of what that represents.  I am also a homosexual. Same thing goes. But most of all, I am a child of God, and that alone makes me special. The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) have decided to uphold a policy which suggests that, because I publicly identify as gay, I am unfit to be a leader in this organization.

In recent months this has gained much media attention from both sides of the issue, both for and against homosexuals in scouting. One particular group, which seems to be growing ever-larger, is the group of Eagle Scouts who have turned in their badges to the BSA in protest of their stance. I definitely support these individuals in their personal decisions and am encouraged by their public statements in protest. But I will NOT be turning in my badge, and I hope they can respect that as well.

I do not want anyone to think this is because I believe the BSA’s current stance is correct, nor that I disagree with those who have made the decision to protest by turning in their badges.  Above all, I certainly hope no one thinks this stance is because I am not passionate about the Boy Scouts or do not care about the issue—quite the opposite.

My decision is both to recognize that I, a child of God who happens to be gay, have rightfully earned the rank of Eagle. It honors all those who have been denied this honor because of their orientation. Even more, I hold on to my medal because I wish also to honor all those who earned this rank before and after me. Turning in my badge would, for me personally, disregard all those who worked so hard to earn this rank. I wish rather to honor those individuals, who include, among others, my brother, cousin, friends and role-models.

I anticipate a day when I may once again proudly don that scouting uniform, hold my right hand up proudly in the scout sign and join my voice with all the others in saying “A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean and Reverent,” and “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.” Until then, I will stand not only with those who protest the exclusion of homosexuals, but also with all those who still believe in and are proud of this organization and its scouts.

BOOK REVIEW: THE NEW JIM CROW Reviewed by Alan Berndt-Dreyer

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, (New York: The New Press, 2010 and 2012). Xvii and 312.

Reviewed by Alan Berndt-Dreyer, M.Div. Senior

It has been a long journey for me from the rural, yet diverse community of Western Nebraska to the streets of the Harambee neighborhood in Milwaukee and back to seminary. Along the way I have had the opportunity to encounter races other than my own and more importantly, my own aversion to defining race that has led to colorblindness. This colorblindness has not been helpful for me or for others.  Through the course of living a year in a predominately African American neighborhood I have seen the effects of my and the nation’s colorblindness in helping to create and maintain, as the author rightly calls it, a racial caste system.

Through her book, Michelle Alexander lays out argument after argument, fact after fact, to support her thesis: “We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” Alexander points to the very same constitutional amendment that abolished slavery as the one that allows the one who is a criminal to be a slave to the state. As we know; one must pay their debt to society.  Just 110 years after the emancipation proclamation and a decade after a successful civil rights movement, the start of the War on Drugs and mass incarceration moved in to redefine racial minorities, particularly African Americans, in terms of being a criminal. Being labeled a criminal puts every obstacle in the way  of reintegration into society. Who wants to argue on behalf of one labeled a criminal?

Michelle Alexander successfully argues that this “New Jim Crow” has been created through the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs was started by President Ronald Reagan on the verge of seeing penal prisons on their way out.  The War on Drugs systemically has given police in our country the legal right to racially profile along with the financial incentives to do so. Moreover, prosecutors have incentive to pick all-white juries, as well as try to bring as many charges as possible against people of color. Though drug use and sales are equal across the races in America, blacks and browns are targeted unfairly, but legally, through many cases judged by the Supreme Court to be constitutional. Furthermore, drugs that are common to those who are white carry a much lighter sentence than those more common to those who are black. These are just a few of the hundreds of cases and examples that she brings forward to support her case.

Though Alexander’s book is devastating in example after example of racial discrimination and the effects of that discrimination, she remains hopeful and determined that this new racial caste system should and will fall. The core of the book comes not in the first five chapters where she builds the case that a new racial caste has been created, but in the final chapter where she addresses colorblindness. Colorblindness to an issue doesn’t mean that the issue isn’t there. As we are made aware of the issues of race that still pervade our society and will continue to as sinful human institutions it becomes clear that colorblindness to racial disparities equals endorsement. It becomes increasingly important to focus on race, not because we want to endorse racism, but because race is a factor in how a person is treated. It is a responsibility that a person act on behalf of brothers and sisters who are put most at odds with society. By naming the evil in our society, even if that means giving up our illusion of a colorblind society that has moved past racism, we are able to continuously be concerned with those who are often positioned as the least. By becoming aware of our false colorblindness we are able to discuss frankly the welfare of not only our neighbors, but ourselves as well. We are all affected when one is affected. This is the crux of the book and the hope that this new Jim Crow will be the last.

THE OPPOSITE OF INVISIBLE by Tera Lowe, 2nd year M.Div

How many times did I hear “Oh, you’re getting married in Jamaica? How exciting!” No, not exciting at all. Not the way you think. Exciting because I was  marrying a man I fell in love with eleven years ago, with whom I had lost contact but never forgot.  Now he has three children and I’m excited because I have no children and now I am able to be a step-mother. But not exciting, because I was able to spend only six weeks with them before I came back to school alone. We won’t all be together permanently for about five years. Not exciting because I was not having a “destination wedding.” I, a privileged white American, while I was there,  would be staying in the bush with no indoor plumbing with people who know what it is like to go to bed hungry.

In my world, I usually don’t receive a second glance when I’m out shopping, in a restaurant, or just walking around. I can go around as if I am invisible, only attracting attention and initiating conversations when I want to. But in Jamaica, I was the opposite of invisible.

In the span of six weeks, from the time I left the airport upon my arrival to the time I hopped in the taxi to return to the airport for my departure, I saw about five other white people. When I walked from shop to shop in the middle of Montego Bay, everyone looked at me because I wasn’t supposed to be there. When I stood still long enough, the store security guard usually came to stand next to me. When I paid for our purchases, the cashiers looked to my husband before looking at me, as if waiting for him, a Jamaican, to say that it was ok to interact with me. I was a female, white, American, and everyone knew that someone like me didn’t shop there.

No one was rude to me, but no one talked to me. People would stare at me, but nobody really made eye contact. This was the way it was not just in the inner city, but also in the bush where we lived. The house was not located on a major road that would lead from one tourist area to another, so there was no reason for a white person to pass by, even in a vehicle.

Children wanted to touch me and hug me, but adults would not speak to me unless I was introduced. I walked the same road a few times each week, and every time I would have to wave and say hello before anyone would acknowledge me. I was a sight to behold, I gathered by the response of people walking by to reach the river. If I was outside, heads would turn to look at me in the yard. If I was hollering to the kids I really drew the attention of a passersby, and even more so if I was outside hanging up laundry. I was doing the things a woman there would do, but I wasn’t a woman from there.

Jamaicans speak Patois, and they speak fast. Not knowing all of what the words mean, I could pick up on some of the conversation because it is mixed with a lot of English words. People having conversations with my husband would sometimes be particularly kind to me and speak English so I could be included.  But more often, as if I wasn’t there, they would speak in a way that I could not understand. I don’t think they meant to be rude; however, it made for some very lonely times when I would be standing in full view of the person speaking to my husband and not be able to participate in the conversation.

I thought long and I thought often of those who say things like, “If you are going to come to America, you have to learn the language.” I was in a country where, for the most part, I could speak the language, yet could not understand what was being said. The same can be said for those who speak English as a second language. In America we use words that do not carry the original meaning or have multiple meanings, and we have made up words by melding some words together. Speaking English doesn’t necessarily mean that you will understand me just because we are both in America.

Language wasn’t the only thing that caused me to feel invisible while in full view of all of Jamaica. My white privilege definitely caused me to stick out while also causing some distance between me and others. When I arrived, we had to buy a shower curtain for the outdoor bathing room so that the neighbors couldn’t see me out there. When the water stopped running in the drought conditions, I was not expected to go bathe in the river because I wasn’t used to being naked in front of strangers. Plates were purchased shortly after I arrived, but I was the only one served on a plate. These are just a few examples of ways that I was set apart from others because of who I am.

I would like to tell you that I would happily agree to give up all my modern conveniences and move to Jamaica to be with my husband and kids, but I don’t think I could. It was ok when I knew it was temporary, but the idea of living that way all the time is frightening. There would have to be some changes in their lives before I could move there, changes that would bring them out of their way of life and start to move them into mine. Like into a place with indoor plumbing, which would mean moving out of their home. They would do that for me, and in fact have agreed to move to the U.S. when they can, which means giving up everything they know and love. Could I do the same?

No matter if I give up everything I know or not, when I am there I could give up all but one thing: I cannot stop being a female, white, American. Even if I changed my citizenship, people would hear me speak and know where I’m from. They would see my skin and there would be expectations: they would think I expected certain actions and behaviors from them, and they would expect certain actions and behaviors from me in return. No matter how long I were to live there, no matter if everyone in the bush got to know me, no matter if I learned all the Patois and could keep up with and be a part of all conversations, I would still be the opposite of invisible. But maybe that’s just the way I would feel because when I’m there I am always going to be different.

SORTING THROUGH HUNGER MYTHS by Christa Fisher, M.Div. Middler

This past summer, while hosting the ELCA World Hunger Table at the Dane County Farmer’s Market, I met many people who questioned our mission of eradicating hunger.  It wasn’t the extent of the hunger epidemic they doubted – more than 1 billion people  are food-insufficient – rather they were skeptical of our ability to achieve our mission.  The question I commonly confronted was “How can ELCA World Hunger successfully reduce hunger when the demand for food far outweighs the supply?” This question is based on two faulty suppositions about the causes of hunger – overpopulation and an inadequate food supply.

There are many widely believed myths about hunger, yet the reality is that hunger is caused by poverty.  People are food insufficient when they lack the resources necessary to purchase or grow food for themselves or their families. While overpopulation and climate change may exacerbate global hunger, they are not primary causes.  People with financial means have access to food, regardless of their family size or the severity of weather in their local community.  Reducing poverty is fundamental to the fight against hunger.  Therefore, ELCA World Hunger’s anti-poverty ministries, such as increased access to education, job training, and micro-loan programs, are core components of our anti-hunger initiatives.

Holly Poole-Kavana of the Institute for Food and Development Policy debunks the top three hunger myths, demonstrating poverty to be the predominate cause of the global hunger epidemic.

Myth1: Not Enough Food to Go Around

Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world’s food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,200 calories a day. That doesn’t even count many other commonly eaten foods – ­vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish.   The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food.  Even most “hungry countries” have enough food for all their people right now.  Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.

Myth2: Nature is to Blame for Famine

Reality: While human-made forces are making people increasingly vulnerable to nature’s vagaries, food is always available for those who can afford it.  Starvation during hard times hits only the poorest. Natural events rarely explain deaths; they are simply the final push over the brink. Human institutions and policies determine who eats and who starves during hard times. Likewise, in America many homeless die from the cold every winter, yet ultimate responsibility doesn’t lie with the weather. The real culprits are an economy that fails to offer everyone opportunities, and a society that places economic efficiency over compassion.

Myth 3: Too Many People

Reality: Birth rates are falling rapidly worldwide as remaining regions of the Third World begin the demographic transition – ­when birth rates drop in response to an earlier decline in death rates. Although rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many countries, nowhere does population density explain hunger. For every Bangladesh, a densely populated and hungry country, we find a Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia, where abundant food resources coexist with hunger. Or we find a country like the Netherlands, where very little land per person has not prevented it from eliminating hunger and becoming a net exporter of food. Rapid population growth is not the root cause of hunger. Like hunger itself, it results from underlying inequities that deprive people, especially poor women, of economic opportunity and security.  (www.foodfirst.org/node/1480; April 9, 2006)

Christa, besides being a student at Wartburg, is currently employed as the ELCA World Hunger Intern for the ELCA South Central Synod of Wisconsin and this article was written as part of her work for the synod.

To learn more about the myths and root causes of hunger checkout World Hunger: Twelve Myths, 2^nd Edition by Francis Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset (New York: Grove Press, 1998).

More information on ELCA World Hunger’s anti-poverty ministries can be found at http://www.elca.org/Our-Faith-In-Action/Responding-to-the-World/ELCA-World-Hunger/Stories.aspx

THROUGH A DIFFERENT LENS: A Poem by Tammy Barthels, M.Div. Middler

Through a Different Lens

My lens is different from those around me,
I see beauty in the snow
While another sees frustration in the shoveling.
I see beauty in the spacious fields,
While others may see emptiness and desolation.
I see beauty in diversity.
Other people may want uniformity.
I see beauty, strength, and wisdom
in the worn, wrinkled faces of my elders.
Some may see only weakness, sorrow, and hopelessness
and merely pity their elders

Lord, help me understand the lenses others wear
Lord, give us all the courage to see the lens of your expansive view

 

PIPELINED by Mary Wiggins, M.Div. Middler

One of my mentors, someone very dear to me, my campus pastor, holds the theory that we aren’t fully adults until we are thirty; that young adulthood is a decade phase of liminality between the threshold of youth-hood and adulthood. In many ways I agree, considering I feel I have a lot of growing up to do and often I feel like I am constantly in-between. At twenty-three years old, a few months shy of my college graduation I felt a calling to pastoral ministry and by twenty-nine, I hope to be an ordained pastor. I am a part of the group of seminarians that used to be much larger, those that will be ordained or consecrated before the age of 30. I am going to be a young clergy person. So I ask the question “Is someone too young to go to seminary?”

There were several reasons why I began to explore this question, but none of them matter nearly as much as the question itself. Today, there are far fewer pipeliners in seminary than there used to be. Maybe part of it has to do with the times. Or it could be the encouragement of more second-career seminarians. Or maybe it is the strong persuasion to do anything else you possibly can, such as an old trend in some denominations to encourage candidates to live a little bit first.

So my answer, unsurprisingly, is, “No. I don’t think, within reason, that anyone is too young to go to seminary.” Yes, I still agree that most candidates should have a Bachelor’s degree first, even though many pipeliners feel called much earlier. And yes, I believe some pipeliners are developmentally less mature than others and are obliviously less developmentally mature than our older classmates. And yes, we have many challenges ahead of us, including amount of growth, issues in establishing our authority (both with parishioners and colleagues), and finding a witty yet tactful comeback to being questioned on our age on a regular basis.

But you see, despite all of this, we are called. God calls all types of people. And some of us may actually end up being called “the pastor that looks like she’s twelve.” We may grow beards, cut our hair short, buy more “grown up clothes” to establish authority, but we are called none-the-less. You see because it’s not entirely ourselves and the things we do that give us authority to pursue this calling and to be pastors. It is also the people to whom we minster. It is the college student taking to her mom on her cell phone on the way to a retreat who calls the Wartburg intern, her pastor. Or it’s the woman who called the CPE student, the chaplain. Or it is the man who asks the very green 25 year-old seminarian, “How long have you been in ministry?” and then pours out his heart. It is these people who recognize who we are and prove that no one is too young to go to seminary.

“THE BIKE RIDE”: A POEM by Carina Schiltz, MDiv student

AUTHOR MINI-BIO: Carina was inspired to write this poem by her work at a local elementary school.

“The Bike Ride”

Dearest child who cried today:

I can’t tell you your life is going to be better.

When your mom came and rode away with you on the bike
all I could think about while you sobbed was
the air flowing in and out of your lungs
as the sobs built to a wail
rolling over all who heard it
but tried so hard not to.

I have no idea how she balanced you
or balances her life–
her reality.

I live in utter privilege
and it makes me sick that I cannot escape it.
Instead I add to it; I encourage it
I bow down in homage to it.
I am bound to it and it separates me from you–
your reality

How I wish I could duck my shoulder
and crash into that barrier
pulverizing it; shattering it into something smaller:
perhaps a mirror where I could see you in me
and I in you–
but sin prevents us; society prevents us; I prevent us.

You have challenges ahead of you I cannot begin to imagine
and you are five.

You cannot even zip up your own winter coat yet.
As I helped you today your huge eyes bored into mine.
Will you remember tomorrow?
Will I?
Will we remember that my eyes looked at you in love?

Your braids bounce against your face as you run and play tag.
Even during the game your countenance is so solemn.
I hardly see you laugh or smile.

Once in awhile–how my heart flips when I see it–
your face breaks open to reveal that you are still a child
still find wonder
still grasp the joy of realizing that somehow,
life
is
good

But today,
your face crumpled instead.

You instantly start to cry when your mother
does her best
to transport you from here to your home in 25 degree weather
driving a bicycle and clutching you to her through the dark streets:
I curse my own warm, empty car.

How hollow is my drive home
as I imagine your tears freezing to your face
on your night journey past neon-lit bars
and vacant front porches.

How universal is your story?

I pray you rest well tonight;
that someone tucks you in
tells you they love you that you are important
that you can change the world.

You changed mine.