I arrive at my college this morning for some miscellaneous little admin thing and the lady is like, oh they are in the hall for coffee, so she takes me up there and lo and behold it was the orientation day for people starting grad and post-grad work. Lucky I went there!
It was a good day, really full and very tiring. Got to meet my DOS (Director of Studies) in person, finally, after being in touch with her by e-mail for months. We were all taken on a tour of the old and labyrinthine structure where folks study things like religion, church history, theology, and divinity. It was very good to meet other people in my specific program which focuses on Christianity outside of the Western world. One guy was interested in Japan, another in Zimbabwe, and so on. The building really is baffling. I mean I was totally lost. My favorite thing is that all the rooms are named after former professors and clergy except for one room, which is named, mysteriously, 1.07. There are no rooms 1.00 through 1.06, or to my knowledge any room >1.07. It just is. Room 1.07, I'll be spending a lot of time there this semester.
Near the end of the day I started getting nervous. That feeling you get when you think, Wow, I didn't think it would be this hard. But I guess that's to be expected.
One thing that was very cool: I was told I can attend any classes I want at all, in all the university, even outside the college. And I just go, I don't have to read or do assignments. How cool is that? So yeah, I'm salivating over 'sacraments in the post-modern world'. That's the name of one of the classes I'll be going to. Will also see what they have in terms of Arabic over the college that deals with that topic.
In the evening I had a very nice supper with Fr. Andrew of a local Anglican church, and really enjoyed our conversation. He was interested in our work in the Middle East and I heard about his life story and calling to the priesthood, and I really do love stories of how people discerned their calling to ordination. We meandered our way down to a local pub after a scrumptious dinner which he made with smoked fish, peppers, mushrooms, in a light gravy on rice. So we got to sample some of the local Scotch which I am learning is a wide and varied world of tastes and colors and so on. Such are the burdens of contextualized ministry!
Salam.
Abu Daoud
2 comments:
If anyone I know can do it, you can. We NEED what you are doing.
سلام الله معك
I hope you will blog re: sacraments in the postmodern world.
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