So ends our first year at Wesminster Theological Seminary. Final exams ended last week. The sense of freedom and exhilaration one has upon laying down one’s pencil at the end of the last exam (especially if one has five in a week!) is about as close to a high as a seminary student can legally get. We felt like we did as well as we could on the tests, which is to say…we have no idea how we did.

Having been an elementary school teacher for 15 years previous to this incarnation, I was probably about as ebullient as any of my sixth graders had been upon seeing the schoolyard receed in the rear car window after the last day before summer vacation. Almost painted my face blue to shout “Freedom!!”

Karyn and I left almost immediately for our church’s pre-membership retreat, a wonderful way to decompress. Three days at the Jersey shore getting to know many folk from our church whom we had not yet met and hearing wonderful vision from pastor Geoff Bradford. In so many ways, liberti is the church we had been looking for for years now. We found ourselves whispering, “Yes!” many times during Geoff’s sharing.

During the freetime on Saturday afternoon, Karyn and I walked up the boardwalk to Atlantic City. Seedy is the word that comes to mind. Perhaps Vegas has some actual glamour (I’ve never been) but Atlantic City doesn’t even seem to try. Very sad seeing the busloads of grim-looking retired people sitting joyless at the slots. Poor Karyn was determined to play a slot machine just once (just to say she did, and because having done it on a church retreat would make such a great story). Having been lured by the large “25 cents” signs on the machine, she approached quarter in hand, determined to gamble away no more than her milk money. It was not to be. First of all, the directions on the machines are totally incomprehensible to someone not already initiated. Could you just put in a quarter? And if you did, what did you do then? There are no longer the inviting levers of the “one-armed bandit” days. Now you are confronted by a confusing array of buttons that make the average ATM machine look like your grandchild’s Fisher Price “See ‘n’ Say.” We attempted to obtain the support of a nearby couple playing the machines, but they merely grunted at us. We were obviously too ignorant (and far too young) to be playing the machines. Apparently, though these are 25 cent machines, you can’t just bet 25 cents. Or something. In any case, we left the Trump casino untainted by the allure of sin. And we didn’t see the Donald, either.

So now we’re enjoying two weeks at home before we leave for three weeks in Maine. One of the first things we’ve been doing is pursuing some unassigned reading. Perhaps revelatory of how much a year of seminary had fried our brains, we turned first not to the long list of theological books Karyn and I had both accumulated, but to a children’s series (see Karyn’s blog for the juicy details). I’ve also read The Way of the Wiseguy by Joe Pistone. Since the entire Sopranos DVD collection got passed around at the school where I taught last year, I’ve been fascinated by the mob. Probably has something to do with growing up in North Jersey, too. Maybe I’ll write something about Pistone’s book later. Also on my more serious reading horizon are The Temple and the Church’s Mission: Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God by Greg Beale and Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments by Geerhardus Vos. The former was a reference for my Biblical Hermeneutics paper on Revelation 22:1-2. I got so hooked on the book that I almost didn’t finish the paper. Portions of the latter were assigned to us earlier in the year, leaving me eager to finish the rest of this book so foundational to Westminster’s approach to the Bible.

Much more to write, but Karyn and I are off to the Os Guiness and William Edgar seminars being given in conjunction with Westminster’s commencement exercises later today. For a much better summary of our year (complete with a detailed response from our outgoing Dean of Faculty), see my wife’s blog.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 26th, 2005 at 6:28 am and is filed under It`s All About Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.