outside is better

5 Tools for the Seminarian

Last week I started my final full semester at Asbury Seminary. It has been a great time, and I don't think I would trade it for anything.  I am taking one class that has never fit well into my schedule, and it is full of first years.  I think back to that time and I sometime wish I could have had a better primer for how to handle school, so this is my attempt to add to the various posts around the interwebs on the subject.  These are the tools that I look back on and realize how much they have saved my life.

This week I will post 5 tools that I have found very helpful in my education. On with the first....

1. A System
You are entering into graduate school combined within a tradition of spiritual formation that has been part of a theological education for centuries.  On one hand, it will be hard and get very complicated.  On the other, if you choose to not take advantage of the deep formational opportunities you will be missing a big part of your education.

With all that said-You need a system. A system that is designed around future memory.  If you get 20 years in the future and realize you have forgotten much of your education and the time around it, you will have wasted untold hours, ideas and money.  This isn't about continuing to study Hebrew participles, but how to categorize everything so it can be recalled.

I write down EVERYTHING, and I primarily think visually..so I keep several notebooks. I have blogged before about how I am addicted to Moleskine notebooks. Lately I have been using the Moleskine Ruled Notebook Soft Cover XLarge for everything work/idea/planning related.  They have a really nice softcover and fit in well in a variety of situations (I think I even mind mapped a sermon and preached from it once). I also use the Moleskine Ruled Cahier Journal Kraft Large for my reading notes. They are the perfect size to slip in a book.  When I fill them up I save them to archive.

Whenever a notebook is full, I take an hour or two and compile an index for it.  That way I have a small record of what is in the book.  I have filled almost 6 notebooks since I started seminary, and every week I have to go back to one to find an idea, since I tend to hash things out on paper first and I usually make lists and charts for many things that don't fit in a word processor easily.

I spend the money on the moleskines because I want them to hold up.  If something is going to live in my backpack or be in constant reach for months I don't want it to self-destruct on me.

I archive everything (especially reading notes) in a single file that I can search.  I am careful to tag things when I am reading, as well as take notes in a manner that will be easily searched.  Since I have been doing this for 5 years, I have learned to take notes for the archive specifically.  Instead of the type of notes you would need for writing a paper, I direct them towards searching...that way I can recall things quickly. I used to have a word doc for this, but I have since imported them into Accordance (which will come up later this week) because I have all of my other research in there.

Since I have a system, I have even noticed that I can recall information and prepare things more efficiently than many of my classmates.  I keep real busy with work, so it is worthwhile for me to have an easy way to get at my information.  I don't do this to cheapen what I am preparing for, but to use my time the best in areas that deserve it.

See you tomorrow

Worship, Eschatology and Sacramental Imagination: Part 3

Thanks for sticking around.  This will be the final post in the series.

++++
Revelation 19:1-4 as applied text

19:1 After these things I heard a tremendous voice, like of a crowd of many people speaking;
        Hallelujah! Salvation has come and glory and power belong to God alone;
19:2-Because of his true and righteous judgment He has weighed the great idolatress, who destroyed the earth with her idolatry, He rescued the blood of the servants out of her hand.
19:3 And a second time they said;
        Hallelujah! The smoke from her city ascends into the eternity of eternity
19:4 And the twenty four elders and four living creatures fell and worshipped God who sits on the throne sing;
        Amen.  Hallelujah (6)

 Entering into the heavenly vision of St. Johns Apocalypse in chapter 19, we come into the story late.  The characters have already been long introduced and many of the cryptic elements have already taken place.  We see an interaction between the redeemed church and the creatures of heaven that speaks to the eternal placement of those who are found in Christ.  This is a great text for us to look at, because it allows us to think of heavenly worship, eschaton and an envisioned sacramental reality of participation in the throne of God.

 A brief description of the heavenly creatures is needed.  They are introduced in chapter 4 of Revelation and are woven throughout the narrative. Books have been written identifying these characters, but most agree that the four creatures represent the totality of creation wrapped inside the existence of the Father.  Their role that has been played out since the beginning of time is one that identifies and protects the holiness of the Father.  The twenty four elders have put themselves is a posture of constant submission towards who God is.  They represent those who have passed through the salvific efforts of God into a new reality.  These are heavenly creatures, full of the knowledge of the divine, but do not have an earthly home.

The interesting part of this reading is found in vs. 4, with the antiphonal response of the heavenly creatures; Amen, Hallelujah.  Glossed, this is con temporarily translated as "we agree, Praise the Lord".  These are two words that are heard in church often, and are part of the Christian  vocabulary that many people might take for granted.  But there is deep meaning in this response.  G.K. Beale notes this response as a “formal expression of ratification”(7) by the creatures.  These words are the endorsements of the truth spoken by Christ’s church.  The creatures of heaven and operating in agreement with the redeemed church.  The creatures, since they are holy beings, understand the function of the incarnation as rescue, and the activity of God recovering His world.  It is a “reckless indiscrimination”(8), salvation as the action and the very make-up of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

God is also doing this with us, enlisting us in the saving action, by our entry into the kingdom through the sacraments.(9)  We understand our Eucharist as a “Transporting Feast”, as Charles Wesley wrote, bringing us into a timeless reality of action with God.(10)  The sacraments are the best vehicle of participation, a vehicle that God provided.

But what does this antiphon have to do with us today?  Does it hold some sort of secret regarding our salvation?  Gleaning contemporary meanings out of Revelation without diverting off into crackpot prophecy is a skill that is not practiced well by many church leaders.  I think that our answer lies in the liturgical and textual analysis of v.4.  Why are the heavenly creatures agreeing with the words of the redeemed?  To think that the church holds more understanding of God than the creatures that have surrounded him in heaven for eons is bold.  But to reference Dons Scotus again, the incarnation is a fundamental action that would have happened regardless of the fall.  Christ came not because of sin, but because God desired a complete union with humanity that could only be finally realized by grace.  This does not discount what Christ did regarding sin, or say that Adam and Eve were not truly perfect, but that the fundamental attribute of God is salvific.  The creatures that have been responsible for naming and protecting the holiness of God are agreeing because as a saved people, we understand the things of God better than they do.  The heavenly creatures can understand the idea of grace, but they can never understand it as an action because they haven’t received it.

This makes salvation not about perfection, but a deep holy love and desire for relationship.  Sacrifice for the sake of salvation is in the very being of God.  The twenty four elders and living creatures were saying to the redeemed, “This is now your song to sing, because of grace and that you now know God in a way we cannot.  While me may understand the complexities of his holiness, you understand him through the radical, sacramental power of grace.”  This provides a very Wesleyan way to look at the eschaton, as fulfillment that is couched in the marriage supper of the lamb.  As humans we look towards this privilege with expectation.

Sacramental Vision today
At the heart of our sacramental vision is memory, the anamnesis, the constant active memory of the Church.  We use our memory to locate ourselves not in the plight of postmodernity, but in the story of God.  It orients us towards a narrative that is built out of rescue, renaming, and bringing the lowly to places of Holy prestige. It gives us coherence, meaning and a frame of reference that is built in the creator of the world.  Because of this we “are not trapped and confined in the present moment but can locate it as the invention of temporal processes and actions, which gives us the wherewithal to transcend the limitations to which the here and now restrict us”.(11)  We do know what has happened before us and we know the design of the world.  In participation with anamnesis is prolepsis, the active engaging of the future.  We know that our world is on a timeline, and that it is originated with the divine.  Placing our worship in the language of eschaton allows us to give service to this idea that is able to stay away from the language of revenge and judgement.  We know that these things will happen, but that more is written regarding how humanity will be eternally positioned in relation to God.  The liturgical Sanctus of the church is a recognition of how creation and end are in relation towards one another, and that end does not mean a final point, but a reconfiguration.  Schmemann says “This is the ultimate purpose of all that exists, the end, the goal and the fulfillment,because this is the beginning, the principle of Creation.”(12)

When we worship, we place ourselves on this timeline.  We shift back towards renewal, and again think that our sacramental actions are a reality and sign of our communion with God. The baptismal waters and the Lords table re-members us back into humanities proper place with God.  But unlike Adam and Eve, we live knowing the radical sacramental powers of grace.  Worship ceases to become a spiritual filling station and returns to the chief story of the Church.  An ancient-future practice both grounds us and thrusts us towards the Trinity.

The Church’s mission as an eschatological oriented people is one that understands we do have a storyteller.  We tell of what happens when we will all know more about the story than ever imagined.  Our Eucharist is the time in which we taste an appetizer of the anticipated heavenly reality.  We are in between memory and hope, and we look forward to the time in which we will be able to do the things of heaven best; because we have a savior standing like a slain lamb that has brought us a redemption steeped with the grace that God gives his restored people.

+++
6 Authors own translation
7 G.K.Beale The Book of Revelation (Eerdmans,1999) pg 929
8 Eugene Peterson Reversed Thunder (Harper & Row, 1988) pg 153
9 Ibid 166
10 Daniel B Stevick The Altar’s Fire (Epworth, 2004) pg 129
11 Barry Harvey Can These Bones Live? (Brazos Press, 2008) pg. 47
12 Alexander Schmemann For the Life of the World (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973) pg.40

Being a notebooker-

For this last year the cult of moleskine has come to wilmore.  I have been on the train for years, but I am now just starting to understand my accumulation.  More than a fascination with a brand is my habit of writing everything down, doodling and making charts to try to understand things.  Many people do this in their own way.  Michael Bierut is a designer that writes for the Design Observer.  His post on his notebook habit is eye opening to the habits of the notebooker, a clan of which I am proud to be a part of.

HT
43folders

Taking Care of Business....and why paper is important

My last post had my woes about the lack of organization that I felt I had.  What I learned this week was I needed a really busy schedule to kick me back in gear.  My little pocket moleskine has turned into my office, and I like the fact that it lives in my back pocket.

I really like paper.  I wish that I had spent more of my life taking good notes and taking them in something that lasts.  I use Moleskine Cahiers for most of my school and research notes, either the large or the extra large size.  Here is a shot of some work in action.  I like these Moleskine notebooks because THEY LAST.  Some people assume since I am a techie that I like to use my lap-top. I only do this when the teacher is going really fast, and is pretty linear.  If not, I prefer to write things down

I tried using the cheap 10 cent notebooks that go on sale at everyones local Buy-Mart, and they lasted about 2 months.  I want to keep some notes longer than that.

There is a great post about the benefits of paper here at  Goingtoseminary.com.

If you do anything that you consider to be important, try to keep up with it and come up with some sort of system.   Find out what works for you and do it.  It will  make life easier in the long run.

Wednesday Final

  Finished Wednesday 
  Originally uploaded by chadbrooks

Well I am done with Wednesday.  I figured this would be a hard one and it turned out alright.  I got some serious reading done and vocab memorized (even though I just found out that we have ALOT more than I knew of). 

So far "Murder Week" has been successful.  A good buddy of mine (and my first moleskine and GTD convert), Jeremiah, told me today that he needs to do a "murder week".  I had never thought about doing it other than for the sake of the experiment.  He is as swamped as I am, school is really beating us like a bad puppy right now.  So I guess that another reason to do a murder week would be to get things under control.  I know that I can handle this because I promise you, as soon as the sun goes down on Saturday I am DONE.  No, I am not Hasidic, but I really dig the idea of sabbath.

I also decided to only post finished schedules.  Since I do my to-do lists in a different notebook I realized that my schedule is only interesting looking after a full day.  As much as I love the moleskine, I think I am going to ditch the daily planner next year in favor of just keeping one notebook, and do all of my work stuff in it. 

Well I passed through the middle.  I am about to go take some well deserved surplus time in front of the TV.

Wednesday

  Wednesday 
  Originally uploaded by chadbrooks

So I have made it to Wednesday.  This is honestly not as hard as I thought it would be.  I even re-did my calculation yesterday to make sure I didn't screw up the math, and it really did show me that I had that much "surplus" time laying around.  I am not sure when I use it...because so far I am only using around 3 hours a day.

This is the day when I could screw things up.  There is a 6 hour block of free time in the middle of the afternoon, my best time to screw things up.  So what I have decided to do is to try to really write down everything I do and when during these times so I can see how much time I am wasting.

I was in a conversation with a friend yesterday and we were talking about this and I used the term "saturated" time.  It is when you only have a small amount of time in your schedule for something and you really want to concentrate on it.  I imagine that most of us don't really do this.  Office procrastination is something that we all know of, think of the many "man" games that have been invented with a wastebasket and some sort of object.

Well here goes Wednesday.

Tuesday and Monday thoughts

  Tuesday? 
  Originally uploaded by chadbrooks

I was trying to think how to title this post, and how I will handle them for the rest of the week.  I will post the next days schedule and give a link to the end-result for the current day (todays is here).  Tuesday is a little more relaxed than Monday, since there is no work due immediately on Wednesday.  I usually use it has a day to get some serious school work done.  But if you look I do have a small to-do list shaping up on the right.  My GTDing is normally done in another notebook, but if it gets crazy this week I will scan that in as well.

Monday was interesting.

I was able to keep up with everything pretty well except for a few places.  I ended up crashing in the late afternoon for around an hour, taking a nap on the couch with the dog.  A few hours later a friend called and needed to talk for awhile so that took some more time out, but no problem, that is why we keep ourselves organized, isn't it?  When I need to go off schedule I want to know that it is possible, it is in the nature of my work.

I learned something about schoolwork today.  Don't attempt to start learning semi-complicated noun structures of a dead language on the day you have to prove you know them, start the day you find out about them.  I ended up taking a hit on my Greek work so I wouldn't stay up all night with it.  I did have to re-format my New Testament paper, because the margins on Apple Pages were not standard.  I swear, this paper keeps getting shorter and shorter.  I think if I take it out of double spacing and the inch margins all around we could call it a long blog post.  But I just got that wrapped up and this all puts me at going to bed around 2 a.m.

But Mondays are normally like this,  I am curious to see how "Murder Week" changes my Wednesdays, because those usually ended up being BIG blow off days...as well as Friday.

Day 1 wasn't so bad, and I am already learning things.

Murder Week Day 1

  Murder Week Day 1 
  Originally uploaded by chadbrooks

This is my planned schedule for Monday.  If you look, you can tell that I am pretty much going for around 18 hours.  The reason for this is as follows.  The image is taken from my moleskine planner, it is pretty much the reason my head is still screwed on and I haven't jumped off the bandwagon.

1. I work 3 jobs.  Monday is a great day to get alot of work done.  I have a standing meeting with a planning team for 2 and a half hours every Monday.
2.  With the exception of that meeting, my day is free to plan as needed. But......
3.  I have a Greek quiz and worksheet due on Tuesday and a paper to finish as well.  I juggle three jobs, a great wife, and grad school (I am pursuing a Masters of Divinity at Asbury Theological right now).  Monday is going to suck.

So why am I subjecting myself to this.  Well I have alot to get done, but I know that I have surplus time (see previous post).  I want to find out how much I can get done, and still take advantage of the 30+ hours of surplus time my schedule says that I have.

I will post Monday night and let you know how this went.

Creative Thinking

I never really thought that I would get into creative thinking and productivity when I came to seminary.  But it pretty much fell in my lap, and it has made my life easier.  I guess it all started with my notebook fetish and how dis-organized I was before I worked at Wesley.  These are a few things I have learned.

1. You have to keep a schedule.
This was something that my mentor Scott Wright drilled into us as a staff.  Meredith thought that I would be really againist it, but I was so excited to soak up everything from that year that I went into it full force.  After several different attempts, I settled into the practice of keeping a notebook with me at all times, and that was what worked best for me.  It allowed me to write everything down that I had to do, and to help me process through ideas.  I use Moleskine, and you should too.  I have around 10 of them right now that I have filled up with various things. 

2. Getting Things Done.
David Allen's work was a big help for me.  When I learned about his process of having a mind dump I instantly was able to keep up with the idea's that I have for various things and actually start completing thought processes.

3. Write down everything you do.
I am better at procrastinating than anyone out there.  Trust me, if you challenge me to a competition in doing nothing I will win.  When I started writing down everything I did in a day (thanks again Scott), I realized how much time I was wasting. 

4. The practice of Sabbath.
I am sure that you are wondering what Sabbath has to do with all of this, but I can explain it.  Over the last few years I have been moving towards a more Jewish idea of Sabbath, meaning that I shut everything down for 24 hours once a week.  Since I am working at a church again I may have to re-shift my day, but it is working for me so I may not.

If one is truly going to have a planned day of doing nothing, you have to have a Biblical view of work as well.  This means not jacking around everyday whenever King of the Hill is on for 2 hours straight.  Productivity lets me feel better about Sabbath.  I know that I have worked good and hard all week on various things, and that makes for a better Sabbath.  I am not worried about what I should be doing, because I know exactly where I am on the things I am working with.

Keeping the head screwed on straight.

I keep a pretty busy schedule.  I also really don't use my laptop as much as some people think.  One of the ways that I am able to keep everything together is a real careful but chaotic paper system.  It is pretty non-linear, but it is a system that really works for me.  I have gone into this before, so you can check out these posts (labeled notebook).  This also ties into my love of all things Moleskine.

Since school is getting close to starting and I am even busier now that I am on staff at NBC, I really need to sit down and get my system cleaned out and re-started.  I found a great post today via Lifehacker, reposted from D.I.Y. Planner.  For anyone that is wanted to get started with a paper based system this is the best post I have ever seen on it.  Check it out here.

Listening: Loose Fur-Born again in the USA