mars hill graduate school

one of these days, i'll actually take time to blog again.

in the meantime, here's a new video about my school.




mhgs what no. 2 from blaine hogan on Vimeo.

this is why i am at mars hill graduate school.

mhgs

Jak and i moved to seattle two years ago. the trek across country was for us to go to mars hill grad school. Jak wanted to do the spiritual direction certificate to balance out his mdiv degree, and managed taking several sd classes before his work schedule made it impossible to continue (but he at least got to take enough classes to let him feel a bit more balanced in his education, and still plans to take more as he can squeeze them in). i wanted to get my master's in counseling at mhgs.

when we first decided to move, it was mid-summer and a bit late for the application process. so when we arrived, i began taking classes with plans to apply for the following year.

i loved my classes that first year, but life got in the way of my plans to apply, and i never did. after all, by the end of the year i was doubting i'd even take more classes. but i did take more classes all of this last school year, and completed about as many credits as i could as a not-real student there.

at the end of spring term, i finally applied - and got in! so i'll be starting my master's program this fall. the counseling degree at mhgs is usually considered a 3-year program, but since i've already taken a bunch of classes, i'm hoping those credits will allow me to finish in another two years.

anyway, i do hope to take time to blog about my classes (as i've failed to do for the most part these last two years) and my experience at mars hill - which will hopefully have me posting here more often.

questions i'm pondering about therapy

so i'm sitting in class all day (all day) today (and tomorrow), and no one can expect me to be in class from 9-630 and not have my mind wander in a million directions (per minute).

the class i'm in all weekend is called History and Therapeutic Perspectives, so it's essentially a class covering theories and practices of psychological therapy.

the thoughts i'm pondering in particular during my mental break right now are ones that have to do with why i want to get a master's in counseling and what that means to me, questions about what i believe make a good counselor (or a bad counselor), and what are good things that therapists do (and the things that are downright bad).

my professor just said that for him, the greatest sin as a therapist is making the person less than they are, and that he does this through being distracted.

so i find myself feeling the need to figure out the details as to why i want this degree, what i want to do with it, whether it is something i can do well - because i believe that those who don't do it well often become abusive in one form or another. and i find myself needing to set out the things that i think are most important to do and to avoid.

anyway, just some random thoughts for the day.

and more hermeneutics

as i mentioned previously, i'm in the midst of the final days of this first term at mars hill.

this weekend, i have to come up with my personal hermeneutic, written out in a coherent enough form to turn in by monday afternoon. i know i've had all semester to think about it, and wrestle with the idea of how i view biblical interpretation. but at the moment it seems a monumental task.

i find myself asking these sorts of questions:

do the words on a page mean different things depending in which book they are included? and if so, how does one decide which meanings they have, and what gives them greater or lesser importance? what, for instance, makes the bible different from other texts? yes, i believe in the inspiration of scripture, but as that is a matter of faith for me, i don't know how to explain how or why it is the case.

do we, or should we, interpret texts differently from one another? when we engage a text, should we look to interpret it in different ways because of what the text is? should we try to interpret the bible differently than we would a text of fiction or an encyclopedia or a philosophy book or another book from the same time period? and if so, how and why?

how has my understanding of a text changed due to the knowledge of the author? do i hear or read a quote differently when i know it comes from the bible or a favored author or someone i've never heard of? i think i do. i think when i hear a quote attached to someone i like or respect, i suddenly like the quote more than i may have upon first glance. why is that? what gives that credibility and how does or should that look different when dealing with biblical texts versus other texts?

why is it that i view the words of the bible as having greater authority than those written in other texts? how do i hold my faith in the inspiration of the bible with the knowledge that the canon was put together - chosen - by men? if i hold to the truth of the bible, then i would believe that all men are liars, all have sinned and fall short of God's glory, that our hearts are deceitful - yet it is men who chose which books would be part of the canon of scripture and which wouldn't. yes, i do believe in God's power, in the Holy Spirit's work, but i can't deny the tension that lies there either.

and i wonder about the whole chicken and egg argument i've been having in my head, which came first, the church or the scriptures? i mean, obviously we had the Hebrew scriptures before the church existed, but what about the new testament? the church met before those texts became canon, so the church existed without the bible as christians know it. the canon came about due to the work of the church working (under the guidance of the Spirit) to select the texts. so, knowing that it was the church that brought the texts together, how tightly can i hold to sola scriptura? please don't immediately hear that as heresy. it's simply that what we consider the bible is such because of the tradition of the church to call it the bible. so can we truly say sola scriptura, and ignore tradition, when the text themselves are considered scripture because that, itself, is the tradition of the church. in that case, which traditions are okay to hold on to, and which aren't? can we hold to other traditions that aren't in the bible just as we hold onto the tradition of the bible itself?

so these are some of the questions that i feel i should answer in my paper, while also knowing that they are questions not so easily resolved, especially over a weekend.

a hermeneutic of hearing

okay, so you're probably not interested in this, but it's a paper i just wrote for my hermeneutics class, and the topic really drew me in. it's brief- 500 words, as that was our limit - and somewhat out of context without knowing the biblical story of Amnon and Tamar, and especially without familiar with Trible's book, Texts of Terror. but here it is anyway.

Phyllis Trible, in her exegesis of the story of Amnon raping his sister Tamar,[1] writes, “Amnon has desired to see and touch her, for with these senses he has made of her what he wills. But to hear her voice is another matter; it disturbs the fantasies that eyes and hands have fashioned. To hear might mean repentance. So Amnon chooses to close out her voice.”[2]

Trible compares Tamar to the Wisdom in Proverbs.[3] Amnon leaves Tamar, symbolic of beauty and wisdom, broken and desolated. Thus, the story becomes a metaphor for a broken hermeneutic, one that treats the text – like Amnon with Tamar – touching and seeing, feeling and manipulating it to please the senses, rather than listening and therefore risking a call to repentance.

Comparing the Bible to the earth, Nancy Pereira writes, “Some parts are hard, and others are swampy… yet there are countless fertile places to be worked on . . . . in the same way as the land: with tenacity, determination, wisdom and pleasure.”[4] Rather than risk hearing, risking the call to repentance, it is far easier to remain in the broken hermeneutic, to avoid the hard and swampy places; it is far easier to remain in broken and desolate relationships than to hear the other, and once again, risk a call to repentance.

Gerard Loughlin describes this broken hermeneutic when he speaks about biblical scholars taking the Bible apart – thus breaking it – leaving “little room for ideas of inspiration, divine or otherwise,” and leaving us simply with “a text like any other, a wholly human work.”[5]

Modernity offered us a way to avoid the hard and swampy places, a way to touch and see without hearing by focusing on solid answers to elude difficult questions. Don Michael Hudson says that Christians use the “methods and the thinking of modernism to project an image of a God who removes questions and doubts. Modernism, then, becomes a way of thinking which attempts to tame and reduce God to logical categories so that our worlds will be predictable.” [6] Postmodernity then offers us an invitation “to trust a God who is beyond our comprehension.”[7] This offering gives us the freedom to step into those hard and swampy places and to hear the words that are written and spoken, thus giving us the ability to move beyond a broken hermeneutic into one that may offer wholeness and grace.

The Bible is “living and active,”[8] it is simultaneously the word of God and the words of man, these are words that cannot simply be seen and ones that cannot be touched, but must be heard. We must not act deaf like Amnon, but must listen. We must not leave the text desolate like Tamar, or deaden it by removing its inspiration, but hear its words. This listening is risky, it can call for repentance, but we can do nothing less with this sacred text that calls us to trust “a God who is beyond our comprehension.”
....................................................
[1] 2 Samuel 13:1-22.
[2] Phyllis Trible. “Tamar: the Royal Rape of Wisdom.” Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984, 46.
[3] Ibid., 56.
[4] Nancy Pereira, “The Body as Hermeneutical Category: Guidelines for a Feminist Hermeneutics of Liberation.” Ecumenical Review 54 no. 3, July 2002, 235.
[5] Gerard Loughlin, “Making it Plain.” Telling God’s Story: Bible, Church and Narrative Theology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 111.
[6] Don Michael Hudson, “Dance of Truth.” Mars Hill Review. Bainbridge Island, WA: Mars Hill Forum,
no. 12. Fall 1998, 13-14.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Hebrews 4:12.

final week of class

ah, the home stretch, the final week of classes.

with this time there comes the expected stress of more papers to write, too much to read, and the panic of realizing how much procrastinating has preceded this week.

there's also the excitement, looking forward to finishing a term and knowing that there is a period of rest in between.

the funny thing though - being here at mars hill - i think for the first time in my life, i'm also experiencing a pang of sadness to know that this first trimester here is already finishing. i have so enjoyed my classes and most of my experiences, that knowing that there are only a few days left brings a twinge of sadness. i want to go on learning and experiencing in these courses, i'm not quite ready for them to end.

already, i look forward with anticipation towards next term, knowing my experience here will continue on for at least this next trimester.

of course, in between, my work will not end, since i'm currently only taking classes as a non-matriculated student and still have to get my application done and turned in within the next month, so that next fall, i can - hopefully - begin working towards a degree.

herme-who-tics?

oh blogger, though we have not known each other long, or even that well, how i have missed you,

sorry for that randomness.

i think i need one of those little mood icons like LJ offers, then i could just let you know right off the bat that i'm in a strange mood.

so i'm still trying to gauge what i think of seattle. i mean, i really love boston, and it's certainly not boston. i think i miss the T. the cultural atmosphere, in the sense of what people are like, is pretty cool. and there is certainly plenty of coffee, which is a wonderful thing. but the city itself isn't impressing me so far. even after seeing the famous wall of gum or whatever they call it. pretty gross but somehow mesmerizing.

one of the classes i'm taking now is intro to hermeneutics. i'll assume most of you (whoever you are) have no clue what that word means, it's the science (or art? of interpretation. i would surmise that most seminaries would teach it by either not teaching it, and focusing solely on exegesis - which has to do with the language and grammar of a text as well as its historical context while hermeneutics has more to do with content and contemporary application - or by taking a vastly different approach. i would guess that after much time spent in exegesis, that the focus on hermeneutics would still be quite exegetical by looking at the author and primary audience of the text before - if ever - considering the contemporary reader.

at mars hill though, the entire seminary process is quite different than the norm.

so for hermeneutics, the first thing we're focusing on is on the reader - that is to say ourselves. we're admitting that we don't come to a text without preconceived notions. we have our backgrounds that affect the way we read a text: our gender, socio-economic status, education, race, ethnicity, culture, family history, age, experiences, and those who've mentored or affected us in some way all contribute to our reading.

therefore the questions i'm mulling over for this course this semester will not only have to do with the authors of the texts, or the Author for that matter, or with the historical and literary context of the texts, but ones that affect the way i approach the things i read and see and experience. how do i, as a woman, who grew up in an upper-middle class home, has a college education (finally), who's white with a mixed hispanic-american background, has already hit an age i'd rather not think about, who's had the experiences that are uniquely mine, and who's been influenced by the individuals who've entered my life, how do i, as this particular person, in this time and place, approach a text? which of these things are most influential? are there any of these things (and untold others) that i can say do not create a bias when i read? how will this understanding of why i read the way i do, change the way i live, the way i minister, the way i interact with others?

i think this shall prove to be an interesting semester. i think my entire mars hill experience will prove to be quite interesting. i face this future with a fearful excitement, but excitement nonetheless.