First week of seminary is behind me now, I've got homework and reading and a head full of new names, new faces, and new experiences!

It has been a good week. On Monday morning everyone met at the Chapel for a Community Eucharist, then we traipsed over to the auditorium for a first orientation. There are nearly 80 people entering this year, about 57 M.Div. candidates -- it's a really big class, I think that the class ahead of us is a total of about 40. Everyone took a few minutes to introduce themselves... which took two hours! It looks to me like the class is about 1/3 women, which surprised me, I expected 50%. People of all ages, some with young children, some with grown children. Some retired, many in mid-life and changing careers. Maybe 20% are young people, nearly straight out of college. After lunch we met again for additional orientation on academic expectations and a brief session on community worship. And we finished the day with a picnic for students and their families, a chance to mingle.

Tuesday morning began with Morning Prayer, then about 60% of the students headed for Beginning Greek and the others to Beginning Hebrew. I'm in the Greek group, which is meeting every morning for 2.5 hours. It's great! We've learned the alphabet and our first verbs. We're using the first chapter of John for reference, and we're learning to say the Lord's Prayer. The professor is making it all fun, and I'm busy making flash cards! After lunch, I began another class, a six-meeting class called Oral Interpretation of Scripture. Basically a grounding in being a lecter. It meets for an hour and a half, begins with a 30 minute talk about the importance of reading, then we spend an hour in small groups reading and critiquing one another. There are five in my group, and it's a lot of fun. We read in different spaces each day, and we're becoming friends as we take risks in front of one another. It's a good experience with a lot of affirmation, a good thing for the seminary to schedule at the beginning. Finished Tuesday with an orientation to computing at the school. They've got a great wireless network, so I'm able to get online with my own laptop almost anywhere on campus. They gave me an email address (cbrock@vts.edu) but I think I will continue to use my Yahoo email primarily -- it won't be taken away from me in three years!

Wednesday morning began with Eucharist. Since the seminary community doesn't worship together on Sunday, Wednesday is the regular day that we share the Eucharistic meal. Greek, then lunch. Lunch in the refectory every day is a mixing opportunity, a time to find somebody new to sit with and to learn about. All the faculty and staff eat at the refectory too. It's a great community gathering every day. Then Scripture. Then another orientation to Worship in the Chapel, a recognition of how it is different from most of our experiences, and an overview of how we will all have opportunities to participate.

Thursday. Morning Prayer, Greek, lunch, Scripture. And that was all! I settled into an empty classroom, and did homework until 5:30, and I was able to go home and have a sociable evening with Heidi. Hurrah!

Friday. Morning Prayer, Greek, lunch, Scripture. Beginning to feel like a routine! The end of the day was an orientation to Community Life and Spiritual Formation. The expectations of community life are that we all participate in it. Seems obvious, but stating it as a clear expectation really helps everyone carry it as a clear intention. The orientation to Spiritual Formation encouraged us to form small groups for prayer and mutual support. We also learned (surprise!) that the seminary provides spiritual direction opportunities for all students and their partners -- what a great gift for both Heid and me!

So that's the first week. The seminary explains its expectations of students like this: "go to chapel, go to class, go to lunch." And that's clearly what we'll be doing!

The next two weeks will look pretty similar to this week, but we'll do more small group work, and we'll be planning our full course loads for the fall semester.

I hope to keep you up to date like this -- it's a great way for me to reflect and remember what's going on for me, too. If you don't hear from me every week or two, remind me!

Love to you all

Charlie