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I’m still not sleeping well, as I wake up at 3:00 am repeatedly. With much of my focus going to learning Swedish, my mind is often caught up in trying to remember Swedish words. It doesn’t make for rolling over and going back to sleep.
Over the weekend, Anya worked diligently on her homework. I spent Friday night reading her AP world history text to here while she folded laundry. It gives us another connection and way for me to support her in her studies. The content often springboards into conversations, like the rise and fall of socialism in Tanzania and a friend from China who was sent for “re-education” in the countryside while her father was imprisoned for being a pastor. It connects the content with life.
On Saturday, I spent a lot of time reading my dissertation in preparation for the the trial lecture topic, which I knew I would receive on Monday. (Read on!) In the afternoon I drove to Stanwood listening to Swedish language audio and attended the Biblical Studies Get Together for Trinity Lutheran College. This is a semi-annual event where alumni and former faculty are invited to join in a time of fellowship with current faculty and students. However, this is the last one, as Trinity is closing its doors next month.
The great joy of being included is seeing some very dear students. I’ve been fortunate to be part of a learning community where faculty are able to care for students through existential crises, faith struggles, family issues, breakups, as well as sharing in the joys of relationships, graduate program acceptances, pregnancies. (My greatest joy was being asked to be a baptismal sponsor of one student in my year-long small group.)
One of the students there is also an INFJ (in the Myers-Briggs Temperament), so I’ve found that I am really able to connect with their struggles as I walked that path intensely at their age, though I’m still on a journey. However, at my farewell last fall, she called me “the professor of grace.” What a gift!
After church on Sunday, we went for pho (Vietnamese rice noodle soup) with our dear family friends, Peter, Kristi, Annaliese, and JaLynn. JaLynn just returned from Costa Rica with a school-related trip, so we heard stories of her wonderful experiences.
I finished reading my dissertation on Sunday, because I had to be ready for my trial lecture topic, which came Monday morning. I am to prepare an hour lecture on:
“Gender and Intercultural Criticism: The Book of Ruth and African Women”
The committee would like the institution to share the following quote with the candidate – meant as an inspiration:
The dilemma of the double struggle that women have to wage against both maintaining the patriarchal culture and being the victims of oppression, therein scores the need of a serious consideration of a feminist critique of culture. The book of Ruth is a suitable source of such a critique because it is like a mother hen: it gathers women from different traditions, cultures and faiths worldwide under its wing.
(Musimbi R.A. Kanyoro, Introducing Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics: An African Perspective. Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press. 2002:33-34).
So after my Global Entry interview at Sea-Tac airport (TSA pre-check and USA customs “fast pass”), I arranged to go to Trinity in Everett, where I could access the ATLA online database of theological and biblical studies journals. While on campus, several students greeted me with hugs, but I spent about one and a half hours talking with two former student in major life transition and faith issues. We talked, we laughed, there were some tears, but also we prayed. I miss this. This PhD journey is incredibly self-oriented with my time, my studies, and my concerns. I’m eager to get to the place where more of what I do touches others’ lives in meaningful ways. I’m yearning to be the teacher of grace again.
But before that happens, I need to get through this trial lecture and defense (while trying to push forward with Swedish). I emailed a former professor from Fuller seminary who has been a wonderful mentor and encouragement along this journey. I’m thinking through how to approach this trial lecture. Hermeneutics can be described as the philosophy of interpretation.
I’m pondering deeply now: I’ve been very clear that I’m not doing Maasai (African) hermeneutics, because I am not Maasai/African. Also, my intercultural model has been based on dialogue, which I can’t do for a lecture in 2 weeks. This title seems to require a lot of definitions, intercultural criticism, gender criticism, intercultural-gender criticism, and then an American-Caucasian-widow’s discussion of ancient Israelite and Moabite widows and how it speaks into African (way too diverse) women’s contexts. It needs to be strategically focused so there is some depth–and that it is a solid biblical exegetical lecture.