I never thought I’d pack up all my earthly belongings, say good- by to friends and family, drive half way across the country from the east coast to the mid west where I had never been, and didn’t know anyone, to attend seminary, all at the age of sixty. Sixty is the age I thought I would start to slow down, find an easy part time job and spend time writing my memoirs about the exciting life I had lived so far. School would have been a long stretch, but seminary was off the charts of believability.
I am a religious person at heart and have spent much of my life working in and for some church of some denomination. Not being a part of one I saw myself as part of all. So seminary was never even in my sights or on my list of things to do before I die. Truthfully, I spent the last ten years of my life trying to de-accumulate my mind, getting rid of all the excess teachings and instructions I had faithfully submitted to for a great many years. As one gets older the mind can’t absorb as much and as quickly all that it could during my youthful college years. So what in the world was I thinking?
My first week of classes had me ready to go home, repack my things and get the heck out of Dodge, well actually Richmond Indiana. After receiving my three syllabi with the work that would be expected of me, I surely thought that I would not live to see the next week. I needed a U-Haul truck to carry the required books home from the book store, not to mention a second mortgage on a house, if I had one. It appeared that there was a lot more information buzzing around since my last college experience and apparently the expectation from the professors was that I would gather this information and report it back to them, and perhaps keep a little for myself as well. High goals for an older woman who at times forgets who she is and who all these people are around me. But I was already here and the thought of repacking was equally terrifying, so I got to work filling my calendar with reading assignments and research paper due dates.
My first research paper was in the History of Christianity. I went to the library to search out the three encyclopedias, just like I did during my first college experience. Instead of three sets of encyclopedias, I found several bookshelves full of encyclopedias, and they were in the middle of an entire room of the library filled with other books labeled Reference. I felt like a lost ball in high weeds. Needless to say I could not find anything, so I searched for the faithful card catalogue, only to find that a card catalogue was an extinct relic from the past and everything was now on computers. Now my relationship with computers is not a friendly one, but having no choice I went to the “beast” and tried to figure out how to even get on to the thing. Unsuccessful at that, I went home and cried. I am sixty years old. I have a college degree in Behavioral Science, I have had a successful career as a camp director, and I am not stupid. But I can’t even figure out how to check a book out of a library or even look up information I need to write a paper. Oh, of course I could have asked for help. But the thought of admitting that I was helpless to a kid that was old enough to be my grandson, if I had one, was just too much for my pride. After a night of pity partying with Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream I went in the next day and found the Reference librarian and admitted my need for assistance and she gladly and patiently took the time to help me. I got my paper done and turned it in, feeling like I had accomplished an amazing feat. That bubble burst when the professor turned my paper back to me and told me it was a very good essay but was not a research paper. He gave me some suggestions, told me I needed to use primary sources, what ever they are, and asked me to do the paper over. This was the first of many glitches in my perfect school record I had arrived here with. My 4.0 GPA and Dean’s List credibility was quickly eroding. These are truly different times than my first college experience. Oh course, they were in the 1960’s so I guess I should have expected they would be different.
It made me long for those good ole days. I was in my prime. I could remember what I read for months after reading a book. I could go to parties after nine o’clock, not be leaving them at nine to go to bed. I could carry my books to class without straining some part of my body. I believed in stuff that was fact and able to trust in what I believed. Now I seem to be learning how all that stuff wasn’t fact at all, because of all the new stuff that has been found to disprove all the old stuff. It makes me feel unstable and unclear of who or what to believe, because we will probably just find new stuff to disprove this stuff that disproved that stuff. Now I’m lost. See what being sixty three does to you. Wait, I’ll explain quickly. Paul supposedly didn’t write all the letters he is credited to have written in the Bible. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John probably weren’t really the authors of the Gospels. All those books in the New Testament were anonymous and weren’t originally written in the form we see them now. And they weren’t written in the order they are in either.
Now I am a woman of simple faith. I like the Bible just the way it is, written by who it says it is written by. And besides, I still believe that God had a hand in writing the Scriptures and I’m not about to be the one to tell him he messed up. Having said that, my final evaluations (we don’t use grades here) by my professors have been interesting. My New Testament professor commented that I would continue to interpret the Bible the way I wanted to. My Old Testament professor commented that I had exegetically horrified her because I attributed a Psalm to David and that he really hadn’t written that Psalm, even though my version said he did. Not exactly Dean’s List comments but apparently they see some worth in the work I do because I am still here.
I am in my third year in the Master of Divinity program. For most students this is a three year program. I, however, appear to be on the twenty-seven year plan. As I said, I am a simple woman of faith, with the emphasis on simple. The ole adage of slow but steady is the only thing I can do at sixty-three. But I still sit at times with my Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, smiling and thinking to myself, I never thought I’d…
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