Monday, July 26, 2004

first year in seminary

A friend recently shared with me a copy of the Reverend Chloe Breyer's book, The Close: A Young Woman's First Year at Seminary.  This is a spiritual memoir about her first year as a seminarian at General Theological Seminary in New York.

I am surprised at how little most of us as laity know about seminaries and the work and life that goes on there.   By its very nature of both learning and evaluating, a seminarian is spending in a concentrated time period the work that all of us as Christians are called toward, to pray, to learn, to study,  to reflect,  to struggle,  to act --  with an openness to question preconceptions, internal attitudes and conventional wisdom, while learning to understand the traditions and teachings of the church.

The themes and stories that Breyer covers in The Close track much that is written in the blogs written by seminarians.  I enjoyed reading her book -- sadly, there are not many blogs being written by General seminarians -- I've only found the Virginia High Churchman linked to the right. 

All those who share these experiences do so with a great generosity, and I would be remiss to not share my appreciation.

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