Top Ten(s), With a First

Who doesn’t love a good ol’ fashioned Top Ten List?  No one I know, that’s for sure.  Certainly one of the most lamentable facts of living in the Northeast is that we are no longer on “Central Time,” and thus, our beloved Letterman watching days are too far in our past.  Who can stay up that late?  When did I become this middle-aged woman who has to be in bed by eleven?  What is HAPPENING to me?

Eh hem.  I think my existential crisis of these recent days might be overtaking my subconscious.  My apologies.

As I was saying. . .

With our seminary days winding down, Peter and I decided that we needed to reflect on these special first years of our marriage by having some kind of written record of the things we want to remember. So, I proposed that we write a series of Top Ten Lists pertaining to these days in our lives.  Hence, we will be providing these on our blog.  We hope you find them entertaining and even, perhaps, useful in some way.

The first of our Top Ten Lists will be easy for us to write and for you to read, the Top Ten Books We Read In Seminary.  I now humbly submit my list, and Peter’s will follow shortly.  Enjoy!

Megan’s Top Ten Books Read in Seminary

Disclaimer: These are in no particular order.  Also, we are not receiving royalties or advertising revenue.  Though, we wish.  Just wanted to clarify.

1.  Discovering a Sermon: Personal Pastoral Preaching by Robert C. Dykstra.  My first week of seminary, I walked into a class called “Confession and Forgiveness in Pastoral Perspective.”  The professor, the author of this book, introduced the class with opening remarks about how the class was primarily about shame.  He began to tell stories– of his own life, of the lives of others– and by the end of the class I was fighting back the tears that were welling up inside me.  Peter leaned over to me and said, “You know you have to take this class” (I had been considering dropping it from my already too-packed load).  And I did.  And it changed my life.  And I quickly decided that I would take as many classes with Dykstra as I possibly could.  And I have.  And they have all, in some way, changed my life.  In one class, “Pastor as Person,” this book was assigned, and it confirmed for me some of what I had already suspected of myself as a preacher.  It also, as it happened, changed my life.

2.  Name All the Animals: A Memoir by Alison Smith.  In that first class I took with Dykstra, he assigned us to read some of the most wonderful books I have ever read, particularly books about people’s lives.  I have always been fascinated by the story of people’s lives, and I think that part of what I have always found so compelling about the Gospels in particular and the Bible in general is that the story of lives and the Story of the Life is told and re-told and told again, and I am so captivated by it that I cannot put it down and walk away– even when I have wanted to.  This book is a story of a life, and it captivated me with its beautiful, nonjudgmental writing and reflection about life.

3.  My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love, and Forgiveness by Patricia Raybon.  Another life story.  Another beautifully written reflection.  Ever since my forray into the Deep South during my few (lost!) years in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I have been fascinated by the American project of all of these different-shades-of-skinned-people living under the same American sky on the same American land.  I have been equally fascinated by the way that the Christian Church in America (no, that’s not a denomination) has found ways to speak, respond, and exist in such a community.  My experience and judgment has led me to the conclusion that, by and large, we have failed.  Miserably.  But I think that sharing our stories with one another might be a starting place.  This book has been one such starting place for me.

4.  The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin.  Along with Professor Dykstra, Professor Yolanda Pierce has had a tremendous impact on me here at Princeton.  She has taught not only with her great mind but with her heart and soul as well.  I took her “African-American Religious History” course in the fall of 2007, and it, too, changed my life.  This was one of the many wonderful books/readings that she assigned, and the minute I was finished reading it through the first time, I turned to the first page and read it over again.  It is, for me, a flawless combination of my interest in life stories and race in America.

A snippet:

“I rushed home from school, to the church, to the altar, to be alone there, to commune with Jesus, my dearest Friend, who would never fail me, who knew all the secrets of my heart.  Perhaps He did, but I didn’t, and the bargain we struck, actually, down there at the foot of the cross, was that He would never let me find out.

“He failed His bargain.  He was a much better Man than I took Him for” (34).

5.  The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois.  Again, this is a Dr. Pierce-assigned-life-changing-reader.  I am ashamed that it took me until I was 26 years old to read this book in full.  This book took me away from my presumptions and assumptions and assertions and solutions, and it helped me to start from scratch in precisely the areas I thought that I knew all about.  Seriously.  Go read this book.

6.  Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.  This Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel is simply flawless.  I have learned more from reading this book about pastoral ministry and human beings than I have in entire semesters of theology or church history.  (Granted, that may also be because I actually read the entire book by its assigned due date!  Still. . . )  Dr. Pierce assigned this as a text in another life-changing and soul-enriching class of hers, “Writing as Faith Practice.”

7.  The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor.  Dr. Pierce assigned this in “Writing as Faith Practice.”  If there is anyone who knew how to practice faith through writing, it was Flannery O’Connor.  Seriously, how had I not known this woman’s awesomeness until now?!  These stories are haunting and entrancing, and I have not yet finished the entire book simply because I don’t want to be parted with it for too long.  It sits on my bedside table, on top of my Kierkegaard (maybe as a buffer?), and I pick it up and read a page or two each day.  So far, my favorites are “Judgement Day,” “Greenleaf,” “Good Country People,” and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.”  But even trying to narrow down favorites is a futile exercise.  They’re all amazing, and my favorite is really whichever one I’m currently reading, which right now is “The Train.”

8.  The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch.  And, we’re back to a Dykstra class.  In “Pastor as Person,” which, by the way, I merely audited (but read more for than some of the other classes I took for credit that semester!), Dykstra spent some time talking about death.  Light, cheery, seminary stuff.  Actually, I have no idea why this never sunk in before, but this time we spent in class was when and where it finally hit me that, if I really do this whole pastoring thing, I’m going to have to perform FUNERALS.  FOR DEAD PEOPLE.  (Well, technically, for the living, because, as Lynch is careful to reiterate, “the dead don’t care” [5]).  FUNERALS OF PEOPLE THAT I KNOW.  WELL.  AND, SOME THAT I LOVE.  A LOT.  It is easy to get caught up with all the fun and games of pastoral counseling, of preaching and teaching, of organizing and administrating, of helping and loving, of molding and shaping, of listening.  But, on occasion, those very people that you have counseled and preached and taught and organized and helped and loved and shaped. . . will die.  And the living will turn, in some part, to you.  To me.  Ponder that, and then go read this book.

9.  Sing! a new creation.  Ok, so this is technically not the kind of book you or I probably had in mind at the start of this project, but I would really be remiss not to mention the enormous impact that it has had on my understanding, appreciation, and expansion of worship resources.  It is “the green book” in the pews of Miller Chapel, and it is filled with wonderful hymns, praise choruses, psalms, and global music that have been an important part of my “unofficial” education at Princeton Seminary.  If you are a musician, like I suppose I am, you probably spend an inordinate amount of time scrutinizing and pondering the music in church.  This is a great resource, in my opinion, for anyone who is granted the remarkable task of leading and planning worship for Christian communities.

10.  Welp, I don’t have a tenth yet.  There are about thirty books I could place here, but I’m currently in another Dykstra class, “Sexuality and the Christian Body,” and I’m banking on number ten coming from this class, so I’ll keep you posted.  If it doesn’t, I guess I have some more narrowing down to do.  Or who knows, maybe we’ll have a surprise upset in this last semester.  After all, I am in a Children’s Fantasy Literature class right now, and I must say that it is a blasty-blast, and I sure loved reading Twilight.  Oh the days of my womanly, adolescent longings!  Where have you gone to, my lovely?

50 Things

I don’t have a Facebook account.  Sometimes, I internet-stalk people on Peter’s Facebook.  And herein lies the major reason why I don’t have a Facebook.  Because I am even afraid of myself when I INTERNET-STALK PEOPLE.  Just sayin’.

But, in my ongoing effort to get him to contribute to this blog, I am posting his “25 things” here.  Because I think they are awesome.  Then, I am including 25 of my own things.  They are also awesome.

Happy Reading.

Peter Kline’s 25 Things

1. I am NOT a night person. As a kid, I did not do well at sleep-overs or lock-ins. If I start watching a movie after 9pm, most likely I will not make it through. Even if it is a good movie.

2. Summer camp / over-night retreats make me anxious. I do not enjoy them. I have been to several of these events, and am probably the better for it, but it is always an uphill battle.

3. I am a home-body. I am an introvert. I have a mild form of social phobia. Hence, #2.

4. My wife, Megan, loves to travel. She is an extrovert. She was the director of a summer camp for several years.

5. Megan and I have both taken a quiz to determine one’s ideal city. Mine was Jacksonville, Florida. Hers was Vancouver, Canada. Few cities in North America are farther apart than those two.

6. On the Myers-Briggs I am an INTP. Famous INTPs include Albert Einstein and Linus from Peanuts. Megan is an ENFP. Snoopy is an ENFP.

7. Snoopy is also a Beagle. Our dog, Bono,is a Beagle. Taking care of him makes me very happy. A theologian once said: “The way we best show our love to the whole world is to love with a particular passion some little part of it.” Bono is part of our little part.

8. Contemplating the death of beloved pets is one of the few things that can move me to tears almost instantly.

9. I sometimes have deep existential doubts about pursuing a vocation in theology.

10. I wonder sometimes if academics is purely a political game.

11. If I had the skills, I think I would be happy being a carpenter, or a car mechanic. I love building things and knowing how things work.

12. There are four foods I am sort of snobbish about: coffee, beer, yoghurt, and cheese.

13. I think one of America’s deepest shames is the cheese we produce. American cheese? Who is responsible for such a paltry form of cheese?

14. My older sister is an artist. When I was 8, for my birthday she painted me a still-life of a block of cheese and a cup of yoghurt. It was titled, ‘Peter.’ Few birthday gifts have been as gratifying and meaningful.

15. I tend not to have strong political opinions. This is largely because politics confuses me.

16. The lawsuit between Joe Satriani and Coldplay saddens me. I learned to play the guitar listening to Satriani, and Coldplay is one of my favorite bands. I don’t think Satriani has a strong case against Coldplay.

17. I have had the same retainer since I got my braces off in high-school. I still wear it every night.

18. I was in a heavy metal band in high school. One of our songs began with a line of spoken word: “Maybe this offends you.” We once played at a birthday party, and during our set an elderly man had a heart attack.

19. I think anyone who has never been in a band, orchestra, choir, musical /play, sports team–basically any performance group–is missing out on one of the greatest joys of human existence.

20. My siblings–all 6 of them–are some of the most enjoyable people to be around. I am sad I live so far away from them.

21. I am currently learning German. I do not find it a harsh language. I think many people judge the German language based on a few clips of Hitler they saw in History class.

22. I have watched every episode of Gilmore Girls at least twice. I have watched many of them 4 or 5 times. I am not ashamed of this.

23. In the TV show, ‘The Office,’ I think Pam is prettier than Karen. Megan disagrees with me.

24. I tend towards monotony in terms of fashion. If I find a sweater or pair of pants that work for me, I wear it constantly. Recently, I have been trying to diversify.

25. I recently changed the part in my hair. I had doubts that I could do it. But I am pleasantly surprised.

Megan DeWald Kline’s 25 Things

1.  This is a picture of me at Calvin College for the Calvin Worship Symposium this past January, where I was a member of PTS Touring Choir.  I sang a song in Portuguese.

2.  I am not Portuguese or Brazilian.  I am a little Hispanic and, possibly, a dash of Chinese.  I am also whatever else my dad is, which, for all I can tell, is freckled.

3.  I used to hate my freckles.  Now I like them.

4.  I have frequently been asked the question, “What are you?” when someone is inquiring as to my race.  I find this question simultaneously hilarious and insulting.

5.  I find many things in life simultaneously hilarious and insulting.  I think this is why I love The Office and Arrested Development so much.

6.  I think Pam from The Office is pretty.  But I think Karen is prettier.  That is partly because I think Karen looks more like me (or I look more like Karen), and I am on a quest of self-affirmation.  This quest, for me, is long overdue.

7.  Peter thinks Pam is prettier, but I know he still loves me.  Actually, that’s a big part of the whole self-affirmation thing.

8.  Sometimes people get upset with me for claiming to be Hispanic.  Some Hispanics that I know don’t think I count because I don’t speak Spanish as fluently as I should.  Some non-Hispanics that I know think that I am just trying to be on the receiving end of affirmative action decisions.  I think it’s simultaneous hilarious and insulting that a person of a minority race can be intelligent and gifted, but if s/he gets anywhere in life, it’s the result of affirmative action.

9.  I didn’t mean for this list to get so political.  I’ll stop now.

10.  My favorite two activities in life are sleeping and eating.  I will sleep all day long if I can.  I usually can’t.  I can, however, eat for most of the waking hours, and I do.

11.  My favorite things to eat are: cheese, guacamole, chocolate, ice cream, and french fries.  (Not together).  My favorite things to drink are: coffee, wine, good margaritas, and ginger ale.

12.  I like to cook, and I find tremendous satisfaction in making a good dinner for Peter.  Though I always eat it, I usually feel as though I am really cooking for him.  I’m ok with the patriarchal overtones of that statement.  They’re just tones.

13.  Sometimes, I pretend to be a fundamentalist, conservative, evangelical in class discussion, just to see people’s heads explode.  I used to pretend to be a liberal, amoral hippie when I lived in Texas, for the very same reason.  In truth, I’m still trying to figure out who I am.  I think that makes people very nervous.

14.  I know one thing about who I am– I love to travel!  I have been to 38 of the 50 states.  I am proud of this fact.  I have also been to Canada, Mexico, and Western Europe.  Someday, I want to go to Honduras and meet all of my relatives that I’ve never had the opportunity to know.  And I want to go other places.

15.  I think the ideal job is the one that Samantha Brown on the Travel Channel has.  I love Great Hotels and Passport to Europe.  And now she has some other shows.  I wonder how she got that gig.

16.  I’m probably in the wrong school right now if I really want Samantha Brown’s job.  Often, I fear I’m in the wrong school right now anyway.

17.  I am trying to embrace the results of my Myers-Briggs personality type, especially the extroverted part.  I think this is because I might get my energy from other people, but I don’t like most of them.  I’m an anti-social extrovert.

18.  I love my dog more than I like a lot of people.

19.  Living in New Jersey is kind of like living in a pitiful suburb between two cool places (NYC and Philly).  I don’t much care for it.

20.  Living in New Jersey does have this one positive for me: seasons!  I love watching the seasons change here.  It’s sort of lightly flurrying here today.  I love thinking that I live in a place where it can flurry.

21.  I love the way certain words sound.  Here are some of my favorites: flurry, begonia, nevertheless, soft, hum, apricot, and jubilee.  There are many more, but we would be here a while.

22.  Before I got married, I lived with two of my best friends in two apartments.  The first was named the Myd and the second was named the Deuce.  I like naming places where I live.

23.  I think that birthdays should be celebrated all week long.  So, I do.  Peter and I have been celebrating “Birthday Week” ever since we got married.

24.  We may have gotten the official idea for Birthday Week from Gilmore Girls, but it had been brewing in my head long ago.  Though, I think that Amy Sherman-Palladino might have just hacked into my brain somehow because watching Gilmore Girls is like watching myself on screen.  You know, minus the whole baby-at-sixteen, filthy-rich parents, owning an inn in Connecticut thing.  But, otherwise.

25.  I am about to go do one of my favorite activities: sleep.  G’night.

All the Single Ladies (all the single ladies)

As an agsty teenager, full of cynicism and self-loathing, I hated Valentine’s Day.  Notice how I thoughtfully italicized the word hated.  Let me make clear to you that the angle at which this font is leaning in its italicized form is still not extreme enough to convey the degree of my hatred.

It seems like every school that I attended had some kind of gimmick that they would whip out every Valentine’s Day as the means of a twofold mission: 1) to make money for some God-forsaken dance or project and 2) to make some God-forsaken students feel, well, God-forsaken.  The ploys varied.  There was the carnation donation thing and the “Conversation Hearts” thing and the balloon thing.  But, you know how this goes.  There are some students who end up needing a caddy to carry their bounty around with them, and there are some students who end up love-less. 

Now, I’m not here suggesting that I was at either one of these extremes.  But I still hated Valentine’s Day.  It just seemed like such a mean joke.  And as a sticker affixed to my angsty, teenaged bedroom door said, “Mean People Suck.”

But now I am married, Peter is my knight-in-shining-armor, my prince charming, my…

Excuse me, I think I just threw up a little.

No, Peter is my husband.  He is the saint and sinner I wake up next to every morning.  Sometimes, he steals the covers and leaves me shivering next to our dog.  But then, he wakes up in the morning and brews me a near perfect pot of coffee.  But then, he gets dressed and throws his pajamas, socks, and boxers on the floor.  But then, he drives me to school and often drops me off next to our building so I don’t have to walk all the way from the parking lot in the cold.  But then, he silences his phone and doesn’t receive my calls when I’m trying to reach him.  But then, he’ll come home and sit quietly beside the dog, reading instead of flipping on the TV to watch sports or play video games.  But then, he’ll ask me what’s for dinner.  But then, he’ll offer to help.  But then, he won’t.  But then, he’ll compliment my cooking and clean the kitchen.  But then, he’ll go back to reading and complain that the TV is distracting him when I’m trying to watch The Hills.  But then, he’ll (shamefully) watch it with me.  But then, he’ll start getting ready for bed and take over the (one!) bathroom for the next thirty minutes.  But then, he’ll get the bed all nice and comfy and will pray with me.  But then, he’ll fall asleep while we’re watching Arrested Development together on Hulu.  But then, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night and kiss my forehead.  But then, he’ll steal my covers.

And like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives.

So imagine my surprise and jubiliation when I arrived home yesterday after work and Peter! had gotten me an orchid!  And had made dinner reservations!  At an Italian restaurant!  For Valentine’s Day!  I wanted to forgive him all his sins (but then, that’s not my job).

We got dressed up and headed to our restaurant, Camillo’s Cafe.  He had done some Internetting and discovered that it was a place with a nice and reasonably-priced menu.  HOWEVER!  It turns out that there are more reasons to hate Valentine’s Day even when you are older and married.  Camillo’s is one among many of the places and reasons to do so. 

What is it with America deciding that Valentine’s Day is Ultimate-Rip-Off-Day?!?  Peter and I were looking forward to a nice meal–with salads and pasta and wine and dessert.  We knew that this would take a chunk of our inordinately humble bank account (it’s nice when you are so poor that the economy can tank and it doesn’t effect you one iota because you have absolutely nothing to lose!), but we wanted to do so without a) being ostracized and ignored in a public restaurant, b) having an incredibly overpriced, undervalued meal from a paltry selection of very un-special “Valentine’s Day Specials”, or c) being reduced to having to eat canned tuna and apples for all our meals the next week.  We were cramped into a ridiculously tight corner, sitting next to a Princeton-divorced-Mom-who-thinks-the-best-way-to-raise-a-son-is-to-make-him-eat-food-he-hates-and-talk-for-hours-about-his-grades-and-cello-playing.  (P.S. Spencer, if you happen to read this, sorry to have overheard your whole’s life’s history last night.  I’m sure as an eighth-grader, the last thing you wanted to do on Valentine’s Day was eat monkfish with your overbearing mother.  I think she might really love you, but I’m sorry it doesn’t feel or seem like it right now.  You’re gonna be ok.  I’ll pastorally-counsel you later in life, if you want.)  We were handed the menu.  Nothing that we had wanted from the online menu (say, a nice Antipasto Misto and the Papardelle) was on the not-special “Valentine’s Day Special” menu.  Instead, there were some overpriced salads and four entrees with their prices jacked up 10-20 dollars.  Because of this, we couldn’t order wine.  We couldn’t order an appetizer.  We couldn’t order dessert.  And the server looked at us with authentic European disgust when we said we just wanted tap water (Note to Camillo’s Servers: That’s only charming in the REAL EUROPE!  And even then, not so much).  We ate our food.  It was fine– nothing to write home about.  So I won’t.  We were out $80, and as soon as the waiter realized that we would not be his cash cows for the evening, he delightfully ignored us for the rest of the evening after plopping our plates down in front of us.  I had to make threatening New-Jerseyed eye contact with the manager from across the room so that she would bring us our check.

After this experience, I hereby vow never to “celebrate” Valentine’s Day ever again.  Peter, my love and my cover-stealer, being married to you is a gift and celebration a thousand times over.  Even when you drive me crazy.  Or maybe, especially then.  And I don’t get queasy saying it this way because I think that maybe this is closer to the truth about love and marriage than any of that other stuff.

But, for those of you who still want to gag, do this next year.  I totally would, but he liked it and he put a ring on it.  Oh oh oh.

Sunbather.

He’s such a glutton.

Re-Vamped

Howdy friends.

We know, we know.  We suck at blogging.  We’re bad bloggers.  We’re bladoggers.  (See?  You haven’t missed much).

We gave our blog a facelift and some Botox.  Express Yourself.

(By the way, who is the moronic copywriter who came up with that tagline?  He [and it most definitely is a he] should be shot.  With a syringe.  Of Botox.  To the brain.)

Moving right along, we now find ourselves in our last semester of seminary here at Princeton.  There is a part of us that finds this to be a tremendous relief.  Barring some major catastrophe, it looks like we’re really going to graduate; we’re really going to become Masters of Divinity.  (Need something?  We’ll see what we can do).

While this probably does not come as much a surprise to Peter, it sure is a shock to me.  If I could take you back, gentle reader, to that autumn afternoon following our first seminary exam, you would most assuredly find me huddled in a corner in the third floor bathroom of Templeton Hall, bawling.  I truly believed that I had just failed my first test and was destined to fail out of seminary, out of ministry, and out of life.  I briefly entertained the idea of surreptitiously getting Peter to knock me up so that I could withdraw from school with some sense of dignity.  But then I remembered that this would mean I would have to give birth to a human and, even more frightening than this, I would have to have copious amounts of needles poked into me during the pregnancy.  This, gentle reader, scares me more than the aforementioned birthing process.  But, anyhoodle… I digress.

Somehow we have made it this far, and we are relieved about that.  But in other ways, we have lately begun to feel the creeping presence of that haunting feeling that comes to call whenever we are on the verge of a major life change.  You know, that feeling that comes along and occasionally wakes you up in the middle of the night by getting right up in your ear and whispering the litany of things that you should be freaking out about if you know what’s good for you?  Of late, it’s been tormenting me with these gems: “All of your friends already have real jobs and you’re just getting out of school now, and you’re going into ministry.  Way to heed the economic times, lady.”  Or, there’s this one: “Good job with the ol’ amassing three years worth of stuff.  Too bad you’re going to have to sell it all in order to be able to feed yourself over the next year.”  You get the idea…

I guess what I’m trying to say, amidst all the blahblahblah, is that I am realizing that I have come to seminary, learned all manner of things that I sincerely hope will be helpful and beneficial in the future, and I still find myself in much the same place I have always been–living somewhere in the already-but-not-yet, needing to trust God, and sorta half-believing it all.  And maybe the most useful thing I’ve learned in seminary yet is that maybe that’s an ok place to be.