girltheology

Well, I'm back to being away from everyone I know and love, so I will try to post on my blog regularly again. So far, life in Berkeley has been great. For the most part, I feel very comfortable here. It's probably more like Vancouver than anywhere else I've been.

I had about 3 days to settle in to my new apartment before PhD Orientation started. We had a Friday, Monday-Tuesday of massive information overload from the Assistant Dean for Admissions and the Dean of Students (as well as many other fabulous people who gave us loads of information).

Last week classes started at UC Berkeley. I'm not registered in any classes for credit there, but I'm been attending an Arabic class (which I'm trying to get into) and sitting in on a first year history class in history of the Middle East. That's more for the lectures - I have some catch up to do in that area. The professors at UC Berkeley (known as "Cal") are very warm and accommodating so far and very helpful with letting GTU doctoral students sit in on their classes (with the exception of one other language I was trying to take where they didn't allow anyone to audit).

Monday, Labour Day, I went with three girlfriends (Christine - from Vancouver who is also studying here at the GTU, Elizabeth - another first year PhD in my program in Interdisciplinary Studies, and Anna - Elizabeth's sister) joined the Bay Area Chapter of the Sierra Club for an urban hike. We did over 10 miles (the google map says less, but it takes the most direct route and it's not *exactly* what we did) from the Ferry Building up to Coit Tower, down to Fort Mason for lunch, all past the Marina and Crissy Field, over the Golden Gate Bridge, and then along the shoreline to Sausalito where we caught a ferry back to San Francisco. It was about 8 hours in total - quite the hike!


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Anyways - that's about all I have to say for now. I'll post pictures from the hike later.

I arrived in Israel on January 8, 2008. I'm staying at Allenby 2 - Flax B&B in the Romema district of Jerusalem. The owner, Danny Flax, is a very congenial host, and enthusiastic about making sure his guests have a good experience of Israel.

Other guests here come from all walks of life - am joined by a Christian Zionist, Orthodox Jews, two young Swiss men - one a Persian Jew the other his friend, a PhD candidate from Heidelberg who is half Persian half German - she studies Jewish art, and two Americans on a 15 day whirlwind tour of the middle east - 5 days in Egypt, 5 days in Jordan, 5 days in Israel. Also - yesterday President George Bush arrived in Israel, apparently to try and promote peace talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. There were protests in Gaza, and several mortars launched into Israel from northern Gaza. I've been following the news on the International Herald Tribune's webpage. So far everything's seemed peaceful in Jerusalem, with the exception of helicopters.

Today I'm hoping, if it stops raining, to go to the Museum on the Seam. It was suggested that I go to the Rockefeller Museum, but I find I'm not actually all that interested in the archeology - and while I really appreciated my friend Sophie's tour of the Ecole Biblique, I think that my archeology needs will be more than adequately accounted for by visits to such places as the Garden Tomb and the Old City of Jerusalem.

"The Museum on the Seam is a unique museum in Israel, displaying contemporary art that deals with different aspects of the socio-political reality.

Through the works of artists from Israel and abroad, who respond to the stress and tension between and within groups, the museum invites the visitors to examine the degree of influence of the social environment on the individual and vice versa.

Between the local and the universal, between pluralism and extreme ideologies, the message of The Museum calls for listening and discussion, for accepting the other and those different from us and respect for our fellow man and his liberty."

Click HERE for more information.

So, I am leaving tomorrow for Israel for the first time. This morning's reading from the Revised Common Lectionary included Psalm 72, and it struck me as important... I include here Eugene Peterson's version from "The Message":

Psalm 72
A Solomon Psalm
1-8 Give the gift of wise rule to the king, O God, the gift of just rule to the crown prince.
May he judge your people rightly,
be honorable to your meek and lowly.
Let the mountains give exuberant witness;
shape the hills with the contours of right living.
Please stand up for the poor,
help the children of the needy,
come down hard on the cruel tyrants.
Outlast the sun, outlive the moon—
age after age after age.
Be rainfall on cut grass,
earth-refreshing rain showers.
Let righteousness burst into blossom
and peace abound until the moon fades to nothing.
Rule from sea to sea,
from the River to the Rim.

9-14 Foes will fall on their knees before God,
his enemies lick the dust.
Kings remote and legendary will pay homage,
kings rich and resplendent will turn over their wealth.
All kings will fall down and worship,
and godless nations sign up to serve him,
Because he rescues the poor at the first sign of need,
the destitute who have run out of luck.
He opens a place in his heart for the down-and-out,
he restores the wretched of the earth.
He frees them from tyranny and torture—
when they bleed, he bleeds;
when they die, he dies.

15-17 And live! Oh, let him live!
Deck him out in Sheba gold.
Offer prayers unceasing to him,
bless him from morning to night.
Fields of golden grain in the land,
cresting the mountains in wild exuberance,
Cornucopias of praise, praises
springing from the city like grass from the earth.
May he never be forgotten,
his fame shine on like sunshine.
May all godless people enter his circle of blessing
and bless the One who blessed them.

18-20 Blessed God, Israel's God,
the one and only wonder-working God!
Blessed always his blazing glory!
All earth brims with his glory.
Yes and Yes and Yes.


I read along with the Psalm this morning wondering, as I'm about to leave for this conflict-stricken place, how it is that so much praise and so much conflict can all come from the same place. I am both excited and melancholy about going...

I'll try and keep posting from Israel, but if not, definitely when I get back.

Epiphany blessings to all.

- Carmen.

OK - now I know I'm truly an academic (like I doubted it before).... because I understand not only all the words, but what they mean strung together.

It's interesting that for months and months I didn't write anything on my blog. I think it's partly because I had felt like once I returned to Vancouver that there wasn't the same sense of novelty as I'd felt in Saskatchewan (although I know there are folk in SK who wanted to know what I was up to here).

It seems that between studies and campus ministry that I haven't put much of an emphasis on my own personal reflections or experiences. One thing that has been sort of a recurring theme in my life and ministry in the last year though - as I am sure has been the case for many of you - is YouTube.com. It's been a phenomenal place to engage in pop culture but also to share interests between friends. Here's a great little video that I find though provoking which someone just posted on my Facebook funwall.



Anyways - just some random thoughts on blogging.

As a 32 year old "Gen X'ish" (depending on your definition) ordained minister, I've found myself in several positions in the last year where I had to defend my 'faith' against reason. While I think that the following excerpt from St. Augustine's Confessions leave Christianity open to its own criticism (for to say that Christians are never guilty of this same offense would be hugely inappropriate - perhaps moreso now). Yet, I find that it's important for me to read these words to remind myself of the tradition of intention in my faith... the self-critical position of many who have given their lives as an act of faith, depsite the fallibility of our lives as Christians. I know it's an ideal that many could/do find fault with, but I'm in love with this passage:

O Lord my God, be patient, as you always are, with the men of this world as you watch them and see how strictly they obey the rules of grammar which have been handed down to them, and yet ignore the eternal rules of everlasting salvation which they have received from you. A man who has learnt the traditional rules of pronunciation, or teaches them to others, gives greater scandal if he brekas them by dropping the aitch from 'human being' than if he breaks your rules and hates another human, his fellow man. This is just as perverse as to imagine that our enemies can do us more harm than we do to ourselves by hating them, or that by persecuting another man we can damage him more fatally than we damage our own hearts in the process. O God, alone in majesty, high in the silence of heaven, unseen by man! we can see how your unremitting justice punishes unlawful ambition with blindness, for a man who longs for fame as a fine speaker will stand up before a human judge, surrounded by a human audience, and lash his opponent with malicious invective, taking the greatest care not to say 'uman' instead of 'human' by a slip of the tongue, and yet the thought that the frenzy in his own mind may condemn a human being to death disturbs him not at all.

St. Augustine's Confessions Book 1, 18.