There are no graham crackers in my office. This is a crisis — although a small one as crises go. Apparently someone ate them all. My office needs a box of graham crackers in it. The little comforts matter.
I see Princeton Theological Seminary, where I earned my MDiv, has selected a new president, Craig Barnes from Pittsburgh. This is a good choice. He reminds me not of PTS’s current president Iain Torrance, but the president when I was there, Thomas Gillispie, from whom I took a class on Galatians in the fall of ’89. Dr. Gillespie died last year.
My years at Princeton were bewildering mostly, as I wrote about here. It was for me more a time of theological un-formation than theological formation. The years later (2004-08) at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis for my DMin were much better and calmer for me. I think you should serve first as a pastor and then work on a theological degree.
And I think you should always have graham crackers in your office. Graham crackers were invented by Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister.
I liked this post, ’cause I like graham crackers, too, and I had no idea who invented them. And I liked the links. All in all, very informative.
My office thankfully has a new stock of graham crackers.
It IS the small things that make all the difference.
I had heard that the process of “Un-Forming” was to learn what was most important to us – what points we would not move from. It is often entertaining to see just what gets us through our “dark nights of the soul”.
It felt like this summer I went through a process of unforming. And reforming.