My
decision to attend Wesley Theological Seminary over the other schools in
contention was based on a lengthy pro-con debate with myself. Boston University School of Theology requires
the GREs? Not even applying. Wesley will accept me immediately, with
scholarship offer? Then I guess Duke is
out. That’s how I decided.
The only
question mark in attending Wesley, located in Washington, D.C., was how big my
scholarship would be. For that, I had to
visit the school and take an interview.
After my interview my family and I would get a free night-time trolley
tour of the city. Essentially, it was an
almost free family vacation.
Since I knew hardly anything
about the school except its address, my parents and I were blindly following
our printed directions to the school.
This was well after the invention of GPS but well before my father
accepted using such technology. Maps and
printed directions are, to this day, his only form of directional compass. So we’re driving through the city, elated that
our long drive from Hudson, MA was nearly over, and after correctly navigating
one of D.C.’s many multi-lane rotaries we suddenly saw a sign for Wesley
Theological Seminary. It came upon us
unawares, however, and my father wasn’t able to stop and signal to turn left. He safely decided to wait until the next
entrance to the school to turn in.
Next thing we know, we’re in
Maryland. You see, Wesley’s campus
consists of four buildings smooshed together around one small parking lot. We passed the only entrance to the
school. From where I come, that was
unheard of. Even my undergraduate alma
mater, though a relatively small school of 2,000 students, sprawled a few miles
and five or so entrances. My first
impression of this school I had already committed to with hardly any research
done was already a disaster. Your first
impression of a seminarian’s intelligence can’t be great right now, either.
Once my parents turned around
and drove into the right place, they let me out but said they’d wait until I
found where I needed to go. The map they
had sent me of all the campus locations I might need to know the whereabouts of
made everything seem confusing. I walked
around in a circle for a bit until I realized that everything on my map was in
the same building. Who does
that? When I walked in the gathering
room, I was greeted warmly with a folder full of stuff and sat down by myself,
as I like to do. Then I realized that my
second impression of the school was no better.
What defined my second
impression? Looking around the room and
watching everyone for a bit, I saw only one girl I thought I might be
interested hitting on. Out of about
twenty. Figuring this was representative
of the school generally, this was a bad sign.
Worse, there was on particularly smooth, ruggedly handsome man engaging
a bunch of the ladies all at once with funny chatter. If I had to compete with him for the handful
of women in the entire school I might be interested in, my next three years
would not be very joyful.
Later that night, on the trolley
tour, our driver and tour guide was an egomaniac. Whatever he said and did was clearly intended
to garner laughs. On occasion we would
stop and have some few minutes to explore nearby sites. At one stop near the end of the tour, one prospective
student came back to the bus with a minute or so to spare. For some reason he was confused as to whether
it was the right bus, so he said to the driver, “Is this the…?” and never
finishing his question, the driver responded, “No, I don’t think so. Sorry.”
The kid stood there for a second, as if he wanted to challenge the
driver, but then as if he didn’t have the balls to do disagree with authority
he walked off to see if any of the other trolleys were the right one. With only a minute to do so, he didn’t return
before we left and continued our tour.
The driver said, “What a quack that guy was,” as we drove off. I didn’t see that kid again. I did, however, hear about him. An hour so after returning from the tour in
our dorm rooms, one of the school’s representatives ran out saying one of the
students had an emergency downtown.
That story doesn’t say much
about those organizing the scholarship weekend but it also doesn’t say much for
me. Why didn’t I stand up to authority
and say that kid had the right bus, just not the right words to tell the tour
guide so? Honestly, I wasn’t sure I was
right, since I couldn’t actually see him as he was talking to the driver. Surely, though, I could have rushed outside
to see who it was and ask him what he was looking for. I could have.
Truthfully,
I didn’t even know what I was looking for.
The time between “hearing the call” and applying to seminary was short,
and once I was accepted I gave no thought to what I might expect there. Clearly one thing I expected was a bigger
school (Wesley did and does have quite a number of commuter students, but I
didn’t know that, so it appeared small geographically and population-wise). Beyond that?
I don’t know. What was seminary
about? What kind of people go to
seminary? What kind of people should go
to seminary? In hindsight there are all
sorts of questions I should have asked myself before moving in, if not before
applying. At the least I should have
been aware of my own expectations, hopes and dreams. What did I expect to “get” out of
seminary? If I’m honest with myself and
with you, at the time all I wanted to get was the degree that would make me a
pastor because obviously I’d make an awesome pastor—let’s get the ball
rolling. Even without any conceived or
preconceived notions, what I found the day I finally moved in proved a major
disappointment.
Driving
from eastern Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. takes anywhere from eight to ten
hours, depending on traffic. The day I
moved in I made the trek myself. That
day was full of excitement because, a) as a twenty-two year old kid, it was the
first major step that I took on my own; b) I was moving to D.C. for goodness
sakes. Plus, there’s always a feeling of
elation when you arrive somewhere. “Ah,
we’re here!” Next time you take a long
train or plain ride, take a look around.
You’ll see tired and exhausted people who (once bags are in tow) are
suddenly full of energy again. So there
I was, a proud Masshole glowing with arrival-elation and freedom from my parents.
Then, I
pick up my keys from the housing administrator, take a couple of boxes out from
my car, and walk into the dorm, only to find no one there welcoming or
directing anyone. Granted, this wasn’t
the only possible day students could move in, but it was such a day, it was
expected students would be moving in. No
“Welcome” sign or anything. Some doors
were open. Peek inside and a second or
third-year student might blankly stare back without a wave or a hello, let
alone any, “Oh, are you moving in? Which
room? Can I help?” Good thing I’m smart enough to figure out
whether room numbers are increasing or decreasing so that I didn’t walk in the
wrong direction to my room. I forget now
which room number I had. 21? Let’s go with it.
As I
walked down the hall, wondering if I had entered some Twilight Zone where it
was move-in day but it actually wasn’t move-in day, some strange little man
with no clothes on except shorts and the hairiest chest and back you’ll ever
see popped out of one room, running towards another room, laughing
hysterically, “I have so much hair!” The
person who lived in the room he ran out of yelled back, “Isn’t it great?” Obviously all I could think at this moment
was suppressing my dear hope that this man didn’t run into room 21 because if I
let myself hope that he wouldn’t be my roommate then I’d be crushed to find out
he was. The Twilight Zone ensured that
he ran into room 21.
Outside
of the room were some sandals. Upon
reaching the room, the hairy leprechaun creature came darting back out, almost
knocking me over, and instead of apologizing for his haste he instead said, “Sorry
about the sandals. They smell really bad
and I didn’t want them to air out in the room.”
These were the first words anyone spoke to me that day.
Quickly the creature realized
his error because there were no other rooms for me to go to, it was a corner
room, so he returned and introduced himself as my roommate. He was also one of the two RAs. Now I noticed, too, that he sported a full
beard that hadn’t seen a trimmer in at least a year. I was sure he should have been deported to Vermont years ago. He had these strong brown eyes that wanted to
look into and through you. He was my
roommate. Joel.
Skipping ahead a little bit, to an
annual talent show night the school hosted to welcome its new students, Joel
donned a bright yellow tank top about five sizes too small, held up a picture
of Jesus, and gyrated while lip-synching to the song, “Stand By Your Man.” Watching his belly twirl around was funny, no
doubt, but it simply reinforced the question I began asking that fateful
move-in day: What in the hell had I gotten myself into?
God had called me to do great
things. I was special. I knew this.
Though I first heard the call from God to be a pastor around the age of
twelve, at that time I had no reference or reason for what was going on in my head
so I dismissed it. It wasn’t until I was
a sophomore in college that I say I heard the call. And when I did, despite being old and wise
enough to acknowledge what was happening, I still had no reason to believe it.
The call came while sitting in
worship in a small, poor looking church, having listened to a three-person
choir that clearly hadn’t had any training and then listening to the sermon of
a pastor who was no doubt retired. “You
can do better. You will do better,” is
what I heard. So the guy was a bad
preacher, so rural small churches need some revitalization, what could I possibly
do about it? I hated public speaking and
I was no good at it. I didn’t even like
people very much. I still don’t. Nor was I a very faithful person. Sure, I read a devotional once in a while but
I rarely attended church worship or anything else. I prayed at night only because I felt guilty
and couldn’t sleep if I didn’t pray. There
was nothing about me that said, “Pastor,” because pastors are supposed to be holy
and charismatic and I was nowhere close to either.
A year later, as I was pondering
becoming a pastor and whether I could actually do it, I was sure of two
things. First, God knew I could and
would do better than that crap pastor I witnessed the year before. I mean, look at me. Maybe I wasn’t very faithful, but I was
awesome. In a way, too, I could start
making the argument that I was holy. I
didn’t drink, even though I was attending college, nor did I swear, take the
Lord’s name in vain, or any of that. I
was the definition of straight-edge. Second,
I definitely did not have any pastoral gifts.
There was no escaping that fact.
Until, during the course of an introduction to political science class,
I first befriended a young man with great intelligence and ambition but with
some combination of mental illness that made him a target for mockery. Again, I didn’t like people, so I didn’t much
relish the idea of talking to this young man, either, but I despised how he was
treated and figured he needed a friend.
Suddenly I discovered within myself at least one gift that might be
useful as a pastor. Then, through the
easy-going encouragement of the professor, who required that we do short
presentations throughout the semester, I said, “what the heck,” and volunteered
for more presentations than I needed to.
Suddenly I discovered that I was funny and a great public speaker.
To this day I do not quite know
if I simply unleashed powers that were already within me or if God implanted
new gifts in my soul. Either way, God
made his point: if he calls me to be a pastor, I’m darn well going to have the
gifts to fulfill that call. This was
further confirmed when, at a campus ministry dinner, some random nun whom I had
never met before and without any lead-in asked me, as we were leaving, whether
I had considered being a priest. I told
her that, as a Protestant, I was considering being a pastor. She said, “Good. I see it all over you,” and then walked off.
From then until my arrival at
seminary, God’s intervention in my life spoke volumes. Again, I was special. I was called to do great things. God had chosen me and given me the gifts to
do better, to revitalize churches everywhere.
Thus, whether I could have admitted it or not, I was expecting some
special treatment from the school I’d attend to hone my special gifts. After all, whichever school I attended would
benefit more from my time there than I would, since I’d later become famous and
they’d always get tag-along mentions whenever I made news headlines. When I instead received “normal” treatment,
as if my arrival meant absolutely nothing to everyone, and was even embarrassed
by my new roommate, I felt humiliated. Wesley
can’t possibly have been a good school, let alone the right school for me.
As you’ll see, I often make
Wesley Theological Seminary the butt of some of my jokes and stories, but in
later young life, I have come to see that, actually, Wesley was the right
school for me and my initial experiences with the school prove that.
I needed to be humbled. One could even say that I needed to feel
humiliated. Most of all, though, I
needed affirmation. Not affirmation of
my call or my greatness—I have enough of an ego to do that on my own if I want—but
affirmation of me. Joel was and is a
crazy, silly person, who firmly believes some wild ideas. But so am I.
Maybe not quite as crazy and silly to run around shouting about my body
hair or to provocatively dance half-naked serenading Jesus, but the same
elements are present within me.
As we’ll also see and have
already seen, I am attracted to women.
Yet I lived a straight-edge lifestyle in which I needed to be holy at
all costs. I desperately wanted women to
like me but I never acknowledged that about myself. I created a Jekyll-Hyde persona within
myself. I went off to seminary both
expecting to be the most handsome, smooth guy on campus—because obviously
pastors are ugly—and also to find women who didn’t want to have any sexual
activity until after marriage. I didn’t
know what I was looking for, what I wanted, who I was.
I needed a place that would
affirm me, that would give me the space to be me. When I say I needed a place to affirm me, I
mean the me that God created me to be, faults and struggles included. I needed a place to teach me confidence in
the good within myself and the sinfulness of the bad, but without merely
dusting over the bad. Maybe I am called
to greatness. Maybe I’m not. The point is that whatever I do in life, I do
it as me, not as some pretend version of myself that I think God or the world
want.
We all need that place and
space. Most of the time we haven’t thoroughly
reflected on who we are, what our expectations are, what our hopes and dreams
are, and so we need a community of friends and teachers who will journey with
us and guide us, to open our hearts and souls to ourselves and to God. We don’t need any longer to wear a mask for
the public. That’s exhausting. We need a little silly and crazy so that we
know what we are looking for.
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