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| Exploring Intimacy
As sexual and provocative as that title may sound, and as likely as it might be to actually be such given that it's coming from me, it's actually not meant to be either. Rather, as I was reading an article for my "Introduction to Hebrew Bible" class, I came across a marvelous point that more biblical scholars might do well to heed (myself included...as much as I am a scholar...) The author indicated that our relationship to the Bible should be not so much a relationship of mastery of the text, but a relationship of intimacy with the text. Once again, lessons learned in my life as a married woman shed some interesting light on this concept. In our wedding chamber, Jeremiah and I approached one another not with a sense of trying to control or master the other, but with a sense of trying to know each other as fully as possible. (In fact, the biblical phrase "knowing one's husband/wife" is really quite fitting.) I find it fascinating to imagine approaching the biblical text in the same way I approach my husband. There is a level of trust that has to be there, trust that my partner will be faithful to me, will treat my vulnerabilities with gentleness. Truly an interesting way to think about my relationship with the Bible.
In other news, given that I have not updated at all since starting classes, perhaps a brief update is in order. In addition to the "Intro to Hebrew Bible" course mentioned above, I am also taking courses in "Apocalypse of John," "Elementary Greek," and "Intermediate Hebrew." Humorously, one of my fellow Hebrew students back at Messiah is attending Notre Dame and is once again in Hebrew with me. It helps to make the hugeness of Notre Dame not seem quite so insurmountable. In fact, I didn't realize how much the sheer size of the campus could be overwhelming. I think that I took Messiah's smallness for granted, and there is certainly a part of me that misses the familiarity and comfort of that place. I imagine that in time, Notre Dame will be my new natural academic home, but at the moment, I must confess to still feeling intimidated by it. I enjoy the small moments of familiarity that I do experience: the same group of people on the bus every morning (can I just mention how much I love the fact that public transportation is free to ND students?), the same people in classes, the same two buildings for my classes. This is truly such a minor adjustment, and it makes me think of the many friends that I have recently seen off to many different parts of the world and the far greater transitions that they are most certainly experiencing right now.
In any case, I should get back to my mountains of reading assignments.
~Melly~ *intimately*
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| Playing House
After being married for almost 2 months, I am FINALLY living in Indiana with my husband. It certainly took long enough for that to happen! I am learning how much work actually goes in to keeping up a house. I think I'm suddenly starting to understand why "housewives" even exist. I can only imagine that by adding children to things, caring for a home/family could easily be a full time (plus some!) job. Actually, part of the problem may very well be that this is our house. I'm finding that I'm far more picky about things that I really never cared about when living in apartments. It becomes very important to me to have the place looking relatively clean, even though we certainly aren't expecting guests any time soon. Needless to say, I'm discovering a side of myself that I didn't know existed.
In other news, Jer and I were able to find a church home on the first try. I was shocked, considering that my theology these days is fairly sensitive to a lot. We are attending the Kern Road Mennonite Church, and I am thinking that I really should have started attending a Mennonite church much sooner. My mom laughed at me, though, because she knows how crazy liberal I am in a lot of regards, and yet Mennonites are often considered one of the far more conservative Christian denominations. Go figure.
I've also discovered that many men here are, uh, more appreciative of a woman's beauty than in my small East Coast town. This being only my 5th day here, I've already racked up about 4 cat-calls/whistles/"Hey Babe"s. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. A few years ago, I would have been flattered by the attention, and to be truthful, there's still a part of me that gloats that despite the fact that I'm now an old married woman, I still "have it." However, there's another part of me that wants to yell back at the men, "Hey, I'm married! Leave me alone!" I guess part of it is coming from just working through an Orientation at MCC where we had a session on sexual harassment and talked about appropriate/inappropriate cultural norms for the behavior of men. I guess I have tended to think that while such cat-calls are appropriate to other cultures (and to some extent I even EXPECT them in other cultures), it is generally accepted that such behavior is not appropriate in the States. I don't know. I'll be interested to see how my reactions change and develop as I continue to encounter this sort of behavior. We'll see.
Well, I should be off to do something marvelously domestic. Until later, my dears.
~Melly~ *the new house wife....sort of*
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| Home is Where the Heart Is I have been thinking a lot about the idea of "home." This week at MCC we have participants from our SALT program coming back to the USA and Canada after having spent a year living abroad. We did an exercise with them yesterday about their expectations in coming home and trying to prepare them for the many disappointments that they will undoubtedly encounter. It made me think some about when I get to "go home" to South Bend. Despite the fact that I have only spent about a week there thus far, I feel as though my roots have been taken out there and my time left in Pennsylvania is transitional. Perhaps it just comes down to the idea that home is where the heart is, and my heart (aka. husband) is in South Bend. All of these thoughts also brought me to thinking about creating a home elsewhere. I broke the news to my mother-in-law the other day that Jer and I have been thinking rather seriously about eventually moving out of the States. Being true to her mother-in-lawness, she flipped out about the idea that not only did I steal her son about 500 miles away from her, but now I seem to want to take him even farther away. Oops. But anyway, throughout that whole conversation, I was thinking a lot about what it means to "leave home." How connected is "home" to "place"? Are they one and the same? If I have Jer (my "home" if you will) and we are in a different place, have I ever really left "home"? ~Melly~ *dreaming of home* | | |
| "Owning Our First Home".....Or "How I Just Aged about 50 Years and Stepped Back in Time"
As of July 2, Jeremiah and I are the proud owners of a new house. Our 1,746 square foot, 6 bedroom (though only practically 3 bedroom) white two-story 112 year old home cost a grand total of $20,109.53. Yes, friends, for about the cost of a semester at Messiah, we bought a house. (Also, I tend to be one of those reverse price-braggers. There are some people who would brag about how they have a $500 purse or a pair of $300 shoes, but no, I'm just the opposite. I brag about my crazy cheap house and the $12.03 decent kitchen table that we bought at Sal Val.) In any case, I am officially a homeowner. I think after signing the last set of paperwork, I realized that I just got about 50 years older. Then, later on in the moving week, as I hung my laundry on our clotheslines (my gosh, I LOVE our clotheslines!) and sat on the back stoop shucking corn, I realized that I probably would have fit in more when the house was built 112 years ago than I do now. All in all, I went from being "ditzy city girl" to "Amazon woman" (the nickname given to me by one of our next door neighbors commenting on my ability to move entire dressers and sofas on my own). In the past week, I have had so many firsts. I have (out of order):
--gone drill shopping
--used a drill
--drilled a hole in a wall
--thoroughly scrubbed at a stovetop for an hour and a half (and still didn't get all the grime off, daggone it!)
--shucked corn
--did three loads of laundry in two days
--moved 3 beds, 4 dressers, and 4 sofas/sofabeds/loveseats
--driven a 26 ft. truck which was towing a car behind it (keep in mind my typical mode of transportation is a tiny little Volkswagen Beetle. Compare the sizes. Be in awe of my awesomeness.)
--cried in an airport (Jer is in Indiana and I am in Pennsylvania for the next 5 weeks....not quite how I envisioned married life....)
--slept on amazing satin sheets
--hung a wreath on my own front door (it's too horribly ugly to even fathom, but I had it, and the front door had a nail that was just waiting for a wreath to be hung on it.....so against Jer's wishes, the wreath was hung)
--built a bookshelf (ok, so it was just a cheap piece of crap that had so many instructions it would have been impossible to mess up, but still, I did it all by myself!)
--managed to screw said bookshelf to the carpet by mistake
--didn't want to unscrew the screw I just screwed and just cut some of the carpet off instead (it was just a little! And it gave the bookshelf a nice fuzzy spot....)
--did dishes in a sink that is about 6 inches deep and has separate spigots for hot water and cold water
Really, there are way too many stories that I could tell about this adventure of buying and moving into a new house. So, for now, enjoy this highlights. I'm sure more stories will follow as I feel inspired.
~Melly~ *the Homeowner*
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| Why I Could Never Be a Pastor -- Reason #173
I am spending this summer living with relatives in Ephrata so that I don't have a horribly long commute to my work at MCC everyday. This evening, they came to me and said, "We have a theological question, and thought we would come to our theologian." They proceeded to tell me how they are giving a very substantial tithe, but with the economy going as it is, they are finding this tithe to be very hard for them. They asked me what I think God would think of them just giving the typical 10% tithe.
My reaction to their question was mixed. I felt honored that they would seek out my advice on an issue that they think is quite important, but I was also quite humbled and terrified by the opportunity before me. I knew that whatever my answer was, they would take that answer very seriously. I knew that I was in a position to influence what they think of God, the Bible and the church from which they get the majority of their religious teaching. As anyone who knows me will know, my religious beliefs are, like me, "unique." Thus, it was with great trepidation that I even tried to advise them. (For those who are curious about how I handled the situation, I pointed them to Deuteronomy 14:22-27 where the text notes that the tithe is set apart to be used to eat, drink, celebrate, etc. I mentioned something about how I didn't think God meant for the tithe to be a burden but rather as a means of celebrating wisely and responsibly.)
All in all, the experience left me feeling rather anxious. While it was an honor that they would seek out my thoughts, I was also very painfully aware of the position of power in which they put me. Thus, reason #173 why I will never be a pastor is simply that having that sort of authority over people scares me. It scares me to think that they would trust me to advise them and that I could advise them horribly wrong. While I would certainly not be happy to discover at the end of this life that I was positively wrong about everything, I would be scared to death that I would force my own wrong ideas upon others. I guess that there is a comfort in knowing that if I dabble on in the academic field, my students might only look to be as an arbiter in matters of the intellect and not of the soul. But really, if I am honest with myself, in my own life, the intellect and soul are nearly indisinguishable.
So, maybe, what I'm really saying in all of this, is that even if I avoid being a pastor, even the "safer" route of teaching will still present me with the problem of being trusted to have answers. May the Lord grant me the wisdom and discernment to guide my future students along correct paths.
~Melly~ *thoughtfully*
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