Y’all might have noticed that over the past few months I’ve made the occasional reference to applying for seminary. I first thought about the idea I think almost two years ago now, and spent a lot of time researching options. I tried to apply to a few places, but kept bumping into a few roadblocks– namely, the fact that my undergraduate degree is unaccredited. Most of the seminaries I wanted to apply at wouldn’t even consider me. Some that would, like Calvin or Fuller, where just … a little too conservative.
But, in January I found out about United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities when I was at the Gay Christian Network conference. I explained my situation to the spokesperson there, and he gave me the Director of Admission’s number directly so I could talk about it with him. Our phone conversation was promising– he understood where I was coming from, and he said I could apply without worrying that my lack-of-an-accredited-degree would affect me.
Well, last week, I was admitted!
Starting September 1st, I will be a student again. It’s exciting and terrifying, but I’m happy and grateful. I’m looking at course lists and the like, and seeing possible course offerings such as Comparative Religious Bioethics is tickling me silly. I’ll be pursuing the Social Transformation concentration, and I think it’s going to be fantastic. I’m not sure what my course load is going to look like over the next few years– I think I’m going to start out with two courses at a time and see what happens.
There’s also another thing being added to my plate: for the next few months my workload at the bookstore is basically doubling. Not to unmanageable levels, and overall I’m happy about it, but between seminary, managing a bookstore, dealing with all the travel I’ll be doing, and trying to make sure my fibromyalgia doesn’t wipe me out, the one thing that’s going to have to give is the blog.
I’m going to keep up the Redeeming Love review– I’ll have a post up today, in fact– and I might write a few posts when I can, but the schedule is probably going to be a little bit inconsistent until I figure out what life is going to be like and my schedule returns to normal at the bookstore. It’s possible the papers I’ll be writing for seminary classes can be recycled into blog posts– let me know if you’d be interested in seeing those!
Anyway, I’m very excited to be stepping into this new chapter. Hopefully it’s a good one.