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I wrote this sermon as an assignment for one of my classes. Like everyone else, I'm struggling to make sense of what happened in Sandy Hook, a town in which my brother's family once lived, and at a school that my nephews once attended. Writing this helped me process my thoughts; I hope that reading it might help you process yours. Words fail. For all of the ways in which we have become a wordier society—a society of status updates, tweets, and text messages—our words sometimes fail us. They cannot fully convey the horror of what transpired in an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, just two days ago. They cannot begin to describe the overwhelming sense of loss of parents who cheerfully sent their children off to school with their lunch or their lunch money, their book bags, and a kiss goodbye, only never to see them again. They don’t adequately capture the moral outrage that we may feel at God for allowing evil to triumph over innocence. Where is the justice of a God ...

I just registered for my final semester of classes. In six months I'll be done with seminary. That was quick! Here's what the final semester is looking like: Survey of Reformation History (my last remaining requirement) Marriage and Family in the Christian Community Dialogical/Imaginative Prayer in the Ignatian Tradition Job, Literature, and Modernity Word and Act: Sacraments, Funerals and Weddings I am most looking forward to the Job class since it hits so many of my interests: the Book of Job, the problem of suffering, comparative literature, and the modern world. The fact that it's being taught by the world's foremost Job scholar, who literally wrote the book on Job (the second book of his two-part commentary on Job is awaiting publication), adds to the allure. Also, the class is being co-taught with a comparative literature professor from the university. Lastly we're going to watch the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man , which is based on Job, and alleged...

I found this graph the other day on another blog--the always interesting Daily Dish--courtesy of Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan cites the graph to show how Obama's religious coalition reflects the diversity of America's youth. More interesting to me are the trends revealed when one compares religious affiliation between age groups. There is a clear decline in those who identify as White Evangelicals, White Mainline Protestants, and White Catholics. The trend is consistent within each age group. Conversely, there is a distinct increase in two groups--Unaffiliated and Other Christian. Clearly, America is becoming less religious, and those who do consider themselves religious are becoming less inclined to identify with a denomination. These are sobering statistics for anyone [ahem] planning to go into ministry, but they are also laden with opportunity.

Election Night seems as good a night as any to declare my candidacy for ordination in the Presbytery of New York City in the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA). It's not quite official yet. I've cleared two of three hurdles. I've been approved by the session (a group of elders from the local church) and the Committee on Preparation for Ministry (CPM) from the presbytery, but I still need to go before the full presbytery, which I'll do next month. Then I'll need to spend a year as a candidate before being certified ready to receive a call to serve the Church in some capacity somewhere (TBD). Ordination in the PCUSA is a two-step (and minimum two-year) process. The first year is spent as an inquirer, during which we reflect on whether we think we're actually being called to serve in ordained ministry. If approved by the session, CPM, and presbytery, we then move on to candidacy, which consists of at least a year of trying to discern (in conjunction with the session...

Some random musings from the cold front: I just read that the power is not expected to be back on in Englewood until Tuesday at the earliest. My Princeton apartment is not expected to have power for another seven to ten days, but classes resume on Monday. It looks like I'll be spending more time in the library than usual. The outside temperature in Englewood today was 55 degrees. The temperature inside my house was 60 degrees. Suddenly, I'm grateful for the fact that, when I was growing up, my father would turn the thermostat down to 60 every night (and never let it rise above 68 during the day). I also once lived in a dump in Hell's Kitchen that would not infrequently lack heat and hot water, and occasionally even a functioning toilet, on the coldest winter days. But that was more than made up for by the apartment's panoramic vistas of the Port Authority and Lincoln Tunnel. Given the choice, I would never opt for a cold shower over a hot one, but I'm convi...

Those words, from Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven , are especially relevant this Halloween, with much of the Northeast without power. I've made it a Halloween tradition for several years now to read The Raven , whose rolling rhythm and sense of growing dread have always fascinated me. And as much as the poem fits within Poe's macabre oeuvre, it's really less a poem of horror than of sorrow, or the horror of sorrow that doesn't end, sorrow for the lost Lenore.

One of the first things I did when I moved to NYC in the mid 90s was to look for Downtown Beirut, a favorite bar of my brother Donny, who moved to the City in the early 80s. Donny had built up Downtown Beirut in my imagination as the dive bar of dive bars--a dark, dank pit of squalor that served cheap beer and had a legendary jukebox. Although I had never darkened its darkened doorway, I could picture its seediness in my mind's eye--the beer-stained booths, the rank pall of stale cigarettes, the Clash's London Calling playing on the jukebox, and the crowd of East Village regulars that congregated there, misfits and wannabes and ornery old timers with their own personal bar stools. Downtown Beirut was located at the corner of First Avenue and East 10th Street. I made my way there one night with a friend, only to find its doors shuttered, the bar being one of the first victims of the gentrification of the East Village that was underway. This was a time when Alphabet City, just...

This post somehow got lost in the run-up to taking my ordination exams and getting my psychological evaluation, both of which happened at the end of August, right before the start of the semester. Yes, it was a busy end to the summer, which is part of the reason for the silence on this blog for the last two months. One of the reasons I've always loved New York City--and there are many--is that the City is like a living, breathing organism. It's not just the people, but the backbone of the City, its buildings--the bars, restaurants, clubs, cafes, and stores where people congregate--is ever changing. While the change of seasons provides a sense of the passage of time over the course of a year, the changing urban landscape marks the passing of the years. I was reminded of this when I read of the closing of Colony Records , a sheet music and pop culture memorabilia store just north of Times Square, at 49th and Broadway (three blocks from my old office). Colony was the place...

I figured I'd post while I still have electricity; I don't expect to for much longer since Englewood can lose power if someone sneezes particularly hard while outdoors. Because classes have been cancelled for Monday and Tuesday, I'll be riding out Hurricane Sandy in Englewood with my Sandy. I was due to preach at Miller Chapel at the seminary tomorrow, but that won't be happening; I'll be rescheduled for another day. In the meantime, I'm just waiting for Sandy...who's downstairs preparing a late night snack. Oh, and Sandy, who's starting to make some noise outside. Sandy

I don't normally attach much significance to certificates and diplomas (I'd have to think long and hard about where my high school and college diplomas are), but I earned every drop of ink on this one. I went into the summer chaplaincy program to complete my field education requirement for Princeton, and because I thought it would be a good experience. Even going in, I knew that the church was but a part of the full scope of ministry. But I didn't expect to fall in love with the work, as challenging as it could be. It's not in my nature to casually approach strangers and strike up a conversation. Yet the hospital is conducive to reflection--there's only so much Jerry Springer and Let's Make a Deal that a person can watch without wanting to pull their hair out--and for the most part, people wanted to talk. Even so, I was surprised at how quickly people were willing to share intimate details of their life--their worries, their fears, their doubts--with a comp...

Having spent four weeks working as a chaplain and discussing my experiences with the other chaplains during our group time, I've learned that this clinical pastoral education program is really not about the patients but is about me. It's about determining what my fears and needs are, what causes me to enter or avoid a room, and what makes me interact with a patient the way I do. Much of this self discovery comes during the presentation of case reports. Each of the chaplains presents a report of a patient visit that includes a verbatim--a word-for-word account of the dialogue between the patient and the chaplain--and a theological reflection of the visit. It's fascinating to watch a chaplain present his case before the group, certain of what he experienced, and then to have each of the other chaplains offer their feedback, analyzing and questioning the presenter, compelling him to confront his prejudices, fears, needs, whatever the case may be. It has happened to me and I ...

I just remembered that today was the day of the NYC Gay Pride Parade, pretty much the only parade I ever enjoyed watching, but that's what having your parents march in it will do for you. Talk about pride! By pure coincidence (although as a Calvinist I don't put much stock in coincidence), I logged on now to post about an incredibly courageous pastor I read about. He took a stand for gay rights, even as it cost him much of his congregation. You can read about Rev. White here . For those with shorter attention spans, there's also a video here . Rev. White has until June 30 to pay some $200K in debt on the church or its doors will close permanently. Some will see that as God's providence, along with the loss of membership since he "came out" in support of marriage equality. Such thinking mistakes failure for defeat. It's the same thinking that demanded that Jesus come down from the cross "to prove" that he was truly the Messiah. That he failed...

The past three weeks of chaplaincy have taught me a twofold lesson regarding the word "no." First, I have an inability to say it when someone asks something of me. For example, although the CPE supervisor advised all of the chaplains not to give out our phone numbers, I gave my number to the secretary on the floor of the ICU, who asked for it when I introduced myself as the chaplain for the unit. That very day she called me with a pastoral care emergency. The reason for the caution around giving out our numbers is that 1) we can be paged, and 2) the secretaries may assume that we're available 24/7, which is not the case. On the flip side, I have learned not to immediately accept "no" for an answer. There have been a few occasions where I have introduced myself to patients as the chaplain and received a polite "no thank you" in response to my invitation to talk. Patients have all sorts of pre- and misconceptions of what it is I'm there to do, whi...

The clinical pastoral education (CPE) program I'm involved in is a 10-week intensive program. "Intensive" is meant to describe the condensed nature of squeezing 400 hours of CPE into 10 weeks. By contrast, the extended program fits the same number of hours into 8 months--a few hours here, a few hours there. During the summer, however, each day is a grind. I come home exhausted yet satisfied. Many nights I go to bed before 10:00 and wake up before 6:00 to try to fit in a run, knowing that I'll be too exhausted to exercise by the time I get home. While "intensive" may describe the act of completing 400 hours of CPE in 10 weeks, the program is also emotionally intensive. My first patient visit was an end-of-life situation in which the family was planning to withdraw life support from the family matriarch. They had requested a pastoral care visit, to which another chaplain and I responded. My colleague "C" led the family in prayer, after which they a...

Two days ago I began a summer intensive unit of clinical pastoral education, or CPE, as its commonly known. I'll spend the next ten weeks serving as a full-time chaplain at Capital Health. Capital Health operates two hospitals: one in Trenton and one in suburban Hopewell. They are about 5 miles--and for all intents and purposes--a world apart from each other. Trenton is urban, older, bigger, busier, and a full-on trauma center, meaning patients with any type of traumatic injury (e.g., accident, gunshot) can receive care. Hopewell is brand-spanking new, with every modern convenience, including a spa, and is surrounded by lush, rolling hills. Given its setting and the fact that it's not a trauma center, the atmosphere at Hopewell is more like a hotel than a hospital. I'm one of seven interns in the program. I don't think I could ask for a better group. We're a diverse lot in age, race, country of origin, faith background, and personality, but not so much gender (six...

In the odd beast that is the Princeton short-term semester, students take one class three hours a day, every day, for three weeks (in fact, the total class hours are greater than the 10-week long term). After spending the past year learning the basics of Hebrew grammar, I was hoping to take a Hebrew exegesis class, but none were offered. Instead, I took 2 Corinthians, which I knew would entail reading the letter in the original Greek. I had taken Greek the previous summer, which was like the short term stretched over 8 weeks--3 hours of class every day for eight weeks. Verb tenses and vocabulary were feverishly memorized each day and--more often than not--just as quickly forgotten. Even though I took a Greek exegesis class in the fall to help retain the Greek I had learned, the class emphasized exegesis over grammar, and I felt my grasp of Greek slipping through my fingers like so many grains of sand. All of this serves as preface to say that I was less than confident about my abili...

Finals for the long-term were last week, yet the odd three-week short-term semester begins tomorrow. I remember this feeling last year, feeling that I was done for the year when in fact there were three more weeks to go. Regardless, it still feels great to be done with Hebrew, Calvin, Preaching, the Psalms, and again, Hebrew. I wrote for nearly three hours for my Calvin final and spent nearly three hours translating for my Hebrew final. Mazel tov (congratulations), to me. What am I taking for the short-term? Missional Hermeneutics of Second Corinthians. "Missional Hermeneutics," now there's a phrase you will encounter only in seminary. "Good morning, today I will be preaching about missional hermeneutics" [congregation's eyes glaze over].

Seven Stanzas At Easter By John Updike Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall. It was not as the flowers, each soft Spring recurrent; it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles; it was as His flesh: ours. The same hinged thumbs and toes, the same valved heart that--pierced--died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring Might new strength to enclose. Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door. The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache, not a stone in a story, but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day. And if we will have an angel at the tomb, make it ...

That includes recycling sermons. I preached this sermon at One Table Fellowship last week and will give an encore performance this Sunday at Broadway--the third and final sermon of my internship.

Today I got in touch with my Catholic roots in--of all places--a Presbyterian church. Every Wednesday I serve at Broadway as part of my year-long field education, which on Wednesday primarily involves leading the young adult/college group in the evening. However, today being Ash Wednesday, the church was open for most of the day to anyone who wished to receive ashes. (Yes, it turns out that Protestants do receive ashes. Who knew?) The church's full-time pastor and I took turns administering ashes to people as they wandered in throughout the afternoon and also during the evening service. It was an altogether strange, solemn, and humbling experience to be the one making an ashen cross on people's foreheads and uttering the words of Genesis 3:19: "Dust you were and to dust you shall return." I was intensely moved today by several different aspects of what I experienced. First of all, in receiving ashes on our foreheads we're participating in a ritual as old as the ...

I'm still here; however, I'm not sure if you're still there. If you are, I have a backlog of posts coming. I've been captive to an unsustainable schedule. Between the January short-term, field education, One Table Fellowship, interviewing for summer clinical pastoral education positions in the NYC and the Princeton areas, and moving into a new apartment in Princeton, finding time to write on this blog has not been a priority. I hope to change that in the coming weeks.