March 1, 2011

Musings on the GOE's from an email


The further I unfold into who God desires me to be, the more I know that desire is not to be an academic. I speak the truth of broken things, and I hold up the mirror gently, if persistently, so we can see those things broken in ourselves, our community, our society. And I speak of God's love for broken things, and the yearnings of reconciling and peace. I speak of the joy, thanksgiving and salvation that comes from letting go of fear. And I speak the truth that all of God's creation participates in this, and that in our baptism, we seek to live our lives especially and intentionally as beacons of God's reconciliation and peace. 

But I don't speak any of that in particularly fast or academic or theoretical ways. And I speak almost nothing in 3 hours. (I've nearly spent three hours responding to this email as it is.) 

My scores were all 1's and 2's. I haven't gone back and read what I specifically wrote down. I meet with my spiritual director on Friday, and I have committed myself to re-reading my papers before I go. But I stand by what I remember writing, or intended to write, some historical and factual inaccuracies aside. And the experience of thinking through the questions was God filled, even if reading the results wasn't. 

All that said, I recognize that I have failed the shibboleth. And I have no idea what, if anything, that means. I am not even sure that I want to pass it, for all that it implies the priesthood supplies the church with independent and external experts. I think I can imagine a time or place where that model would be beneficial (when people took ships to England to acquire an education, and all the resources they may ever have at their disposal were the SPCK books in their trunk). But I don't understand the world to work that way anymore, and I don't understand our ecclesiology to ask that of us, lay or ordained.