Whew ;(o_O)'

It is with great relief after many hours of worry, a placement test sprung on me last minute (OK, so I had two hours), and a reassuring meeting with my advisor, that I can report to you my official courseload for this semester:

• Introduction to Ministry Studies 
• Histories, Theologies, and Practices of Christianity
• Preaching for Social Change
• Meaning Making (a course to make us "think theologically" about our internships)
• Advanced Japanese

I would like to add that this whole shopping for classes thing is not as grand as I had imagined. As you attend each class you gather assignments from books you don't have for classes you aren't sure you will even continue on in. Case in point: I had to learn the Greek alphabet overnight for Elementary Greek, a course I ended up not taking. Lest I be overly pessimistic, the silver lining to be found in this cloud is that I can now fully grasp the awesomeness of God as portrayed in Revelations 21:13, in which He (God has a penis you know) proclaims, "I am the alpha and the omega." Truly, our God is a mighty God. Those letters were hard to learn.

Too Funny

The pastor of Harvard's very own Memorial Church, the Rev. Dr. Peter J. Gomes, made an appearance on Stephen Colbert's Colbert Report. I do believe that he is funnier than Stephen himself. Check it out:

Class Shopping: Day 1

Today marks my first official day of class as a Harvard student. I will not lie, there was a good deal of nervousness and perhaps even a little nausea today before the very first class. However, it proved to be spectacular and one I believe will stay on the schedule this semester. It is called Preaching for Social Change and is taught by the esteemed Rev. Charles Adams. Although most white people may have never heard of him, Professor Adams was named by Ebony magazine as one of the top 15 Black preachers in America and one of the 100 most influential Black Americans. This guy is so big he actually preached at Rosa Parks' funeral. 

Whoa. 

Here is the YouTube clip of it:

His lecture style is sermonic and his insights profound. In the class itself we will look at sermon upon sermon to see what it takes to incite change at a societal level and how to ask as catalysts for that change. We also have to actually preach two sermons throughout the semester. Though that proposition is a scary one, it promises to be an amazing class

My second and only other class of the day was Introduction to Ministry Studies. If the title of the class wasn't enough to remind me that I was in seminary, the fact that we began and ended in moments of silent contemplation rung in and out by a Tibetan singing bowl certainly was. As today was just a class overview, we only went over the syllabus. But, as all 60 incoming master of divinity students are required to take this course, I think it will turn into a bonding experience for us all.

Class Shopping

Orientation is finally over! It was a seemingly endless week of one informational meeting after another. The tedium, however, was divided up nicely with gourmet lunches and eclectic conversations with my fellow classmates. I suppose I should not be surprised (this is Harvard and all,) but everybody here seems to be nurturing at least one grand idea. Be it one about phenomenological anthropology or one about the church's approach to domestic violence, everyone has a pet theory and can wax eloquently about it at length. This has got me thinking I should perhaps be fleshing out an idea of my own. If you have any I could borrow, let me know.

Anyhow, with the end of Orientation Week comes class "shopping period," a longstanding tradition of the Ivy League. Whereas at a normal school you sign up for classes by looking at a catalog, at Harvard you are given one week to sit in on as many lectures as you care to and THEN choose those which you would deign to take. It's a pretty interesting system methinks. Here are the courses I'll be test driving this week:

• Public Christianity: Poverty, Aids, and Criminal Justice
  
• Preaching for Social Change
  
• Introduction to Ministry Studies
  
• God, Human Suffering and the Minister
  
• Introduction to the Histories, Theologies, and Practices of Christianity
  
• Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures
  
• Religion Reconciliation and Peacemaking

New Blog!

If you are here, you probably realize that I have a new blog! Welcome!

The point of this blog is to try to keep friends and family up to date on what exactly it is that I am doing at Harvard. 

I head out Boston way on the 1st and school begins on the 8th so the adventures are soon to begin!