Vaya Con Dios

To begin with, “religious” is a label for Catholics who are neither laity nor priests (and a good label), and was once useful when “Christian” could be considered a default category in America (and Europe). It was a useful distinction between “observant” and non-observant, rather like the distinction sometimes still applied to Jews (which is another kettle of fish, isn’t it?).

“Religious” today is generally used for people who call themselves Christian, since the default now is assumed to not be Christian. The implicit argument is that anyone still claiming to be Christian must also be religious (a/k/a pious, which was another, older distinction). But that’s no more true now than it was when one was presumed Christian until proved otherwise.

All by way of an excuse for me to bring this up:

I think this is close as I am going to get to a post about god for a while. So to give an update. I started evening classes last week at the United Seminary of the Twin Cities. They are a United Church of Christ affiliated seminary and have a robust remote learning program, which were the two most important things for me. They run on a trimester system which I like, with four children, a professional job and aging parents, it's likely that in the next 4-5 years I will need to take time off. I can take a semester but not lose half a year. The costs were manageable (financial aid, spread out tuition by class, family help). They also have the arts as a running theme through their classes, which is interesting. Most importantly, every time I interacted with the school, they were responsive, helpful and kind. For someone going back to school after 30+ years, that really mattered.  

Mostly I just want to say thank you. I'm grateful for here (and for the Thought Criminal), for making a space to think and talk about god and religion in a way that doesn't exist on most of the web. I've learned and grown here, and that is part of the process that has led me to this point. I will need to be a lawyer for maybe even another decade, but I am now moving in a direction that feels meaningful. I can feel some of those old academic muscles stretching, and already I've encountered views and ideas that are new. The point of seminary is to learn, but more importantly to transform. In my late 50's, a time when most of my contemporaries are looking at retirement and settled with themselves on who they are, I am instead moving in a new direction. It may be madness, but I also feel deeply drawn to this path. If you can spare a prayer for an old dog learning something new, I would be grateful. I'll keep you updated. My first classes are An Invitation to Theology, Truth, Beauty and Goodness, and Introduction to Religious Texts. They seem like a good place to start. The class composition is radically different I am guessing from your seminary experience, but that can wait until later.

United is one of the three “historical” UCC seminaries, the triad usually identified as CUE. United is the “U” in the middle, and boasts among its former faculty Reinhold Niebuhr.  I think brother H. Richard may have taught at Chicago (the “C”), but don’t hold me to that. I could check, but I’m notoriously lazy.

The “E” is Eden, my seminary Alma Mater, and I think the oldest. Eden was founded by the German Evangelicals about the time they were busy in the St. Louis area establishing Deaconess Hospital and a mental health facility, and an orphanage (all still functioning). I know Harvard was founded by the Congregationalists, and still has a Divinity School, so I assume United is not the oldest Congregationalist seminary still operating. I’m not sure when Chicago was founded, or by whom, for that matter. I do know the three banded together, for financial reasons at least, sometime after the merger in 1957 that created the UCC. (The German Evangelical church joined with the German Reformed Church in the 19th century (? I think I’m right), to form the German E&R church. In ‘57 it merged with the Congregational church.) Anyway…

I was, oddly enough, right next to the Chicago seminary bookstore the last time I was in Chicago (for my brother’s memorial service). My brother was an architect and admirer of Wright (FLW), so the Lovely Wife and Golden Child and I visited the Robie House, on the University campus, in his memory (he’d always wanted to take me there, but somehow it never worked out). I threatened several times to step into the bookstore, but it was a day to see sites in my brother’s memory, and the family knew if I set foot in there, I’d be lost to them.

So that’s as close as I’ve ever been to that seminary. No idea what United is like at all, or even where it is. (We did get to go into the Rockefeller Chapel, near the Robie House. It’s an ecumenical chapel, not a UCC church, or attached to the seminary. It was officially closed, but a very nice guard let us come in and look around.)

I like the idea of art connected to theological study. My Pastoral Care professor was an Irish priest who had us write about movies and books and art at the St. Louis museum. I scanned all those papers recently. My subjects included the movie “Aliens” and a huge steel and glass installation, “The Shattering of the Vessels,” based on a Kabbalistic tale about God’s essence flowing into 7(?) vessels and shattering them and some of that essence then flowing into Creation to create life. Somethings Platonic about it, I always thought, with the essence becoming less pure and diluted (shadowy) as it descended from the origin.

I know you can find pictures of it on the St. Louis museum website. Again, I’m lazy…

There was another painting I wrote about, something to do with the waters of oblivion. It was a remarkably good museum, and very cheap for a middle aged seminary student with a wife and child and no income to speak of.

Ahh, dem was de days…

Anyway, I think art is a remarkably important part of spiritual and theological study. I encountered Maslow’s (?) hierarchy of needs in seminary, and eventually came to reject it, mostly because of art. The theory is that art comes after all the comforts of civilization (good, shelter, safety, even clothing and friendship), have been met. But human beings long before the Greeks set that standard were leaving art on rock walls in what is now South Texas, and painting in caves well underground in France and elsewhere. And most of that art is thought to be connected to religious practices. So art and religion aren’t ancillary to human needs; they’re fundamental to it. At heart I think the Romantics were right and we’ve cut ourselves off from that wellspring, and pursued false gods offering power and comfort for each of us alone, and damn the needs of others.

But there I go, preaching and getting well ahead of my chain of reason.

I like what they’re offering you and hope it goes well for you. I’m mindful the technology I appear to criticize (in use, not in existence) is making these things possible for you. When I entered seminary late in the last century (!!!), such things were unimaginable. Now it proves in one sense deeply problematic, but in another use, profoundly salvific. Blake would probably call it one of his “contraries.” Another fine example of the importance of art and religion.

Blake, I mean: who combined visions, illustration, and poetry. Much to this, for a beginning, donchaknow?

N. B. I always think I’m clear, and then realize I didn’t at all say what I meant.

I taught online for years. I’m all for it. It’s the new reality, especially for seminaries, and in that sense salvific. I did something up there 👆 that I do too often; switched references mid-sentence. The downside to technology is the problems we all see with social media. OTOH, of course, we get the benefit of tele-education (I remember back to when we added “tele-“ to every noun because we had no better frame for it).

So I’m glad that’s available now.