Piece of the Puzzle

Went golfing yesterday… did pretty good on the front nine and pretty bad on the back nine. As frustrating as golf can be, it is still a nice way to get outside into the sunshine, though. I wish I could afford to golf more often. A few more times this year and I’m probably done until next Spring.

Seems like I’m bleeding money… school is going to be expensive… I need to find some income to get through, but I do kind of like the idea of not working this first semester. It’s been a long time since I’ve been back in school. I’m not sure how I’ll react when things actually start rolling next week.

Tigers are 5.5 games back… I thought they were going to get on a roll beating the Yankees 3 out of 4 but they can’t seem to keep it going. Oh well, doesn’t look like I’ll have the playoffs distracting me from school work 🙂

Thinking of taking some more shamanic training. I’ve learned shamanic journeying in the past and had a little bit of more advanced training. Now I have an opportunity to take some training on shamanic healing methods. I’m really interested, but there is the money factor… I also haven’t been keeping up my journeying so I’m a little rusty. I’m not sure if I should add this on top of school.

I think I need to step back from my local church stuff too. I’m on four committees, two of which are a significant commitment. Something has to go, I think.

I hope life settles down now. With getting ready for school and taking care of things for my Mom (who is now temporarily in a nursing facility to rehab the broken leg), I’ve been eating badly and spending too much money. Unfortunately, I have a feeling things will stay chaotic with classes starting Tuesday.

Finally getting around to some thoughts on Orientation for school. It was pretty interesting. The first few days were mainly a getting to know you exercise for the incoming students. We were asked to draw pictures and symbols that told our individual stories and then each person got up to 20 minutes to talk about their story. It was impressive how open people were right from the start. It was unfortunate that I had to leave when we were only through about 3/4 of the stories. I did tell mine though before I left.

I’m not sure what kind of sense of community will develop. The orientation was nice, but a lot of students are part time and/or commuters. I know for me, it seems like it will be hard to feel like part of the seminary community when I’ll be in and out of Chicago just for classes. But, everyone was nice and friendly. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m not sure there’s much more interesting to say about the orientation. After the get to know you thing, there was a couple of days of informational meetings and registering for classes. I missed one of those days so I’ll have a few things to take care of when I’m back in Chicago next week.

Just a quick note because I’m wore out… Orientation was good… I’ll try to record my thoughts on that soon. I was supposed to be at school for a retreat and orientation from last Thursday through Tuesday. Unfortunately, I had to come home due to a family emergency (my Mom broke her leg) so I missed most of Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday. I did make it back to register for classes on Monday. Most of my time has been taking care of Mom. I’m happy to do it, but worrying is stressful 🙂 I think everything is all right now.

Classes start next Tuesday. I have two classes on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. A full load is four classes, but I couldn’t find a fourth that fit into my commuting schedule. My classes are “People and Faith of Israel I”, “Theories of Change and Personal Transformation”, and “History of Christian Thought.” I’m really looking forward to it, but I expect it will be a big challenge to be back in college after 17 years.

My first official post… I’m probably about the last person anyone would expect to start a blog. I’m usually a very private person, but perhaps I’ve got something to say that others would be interested in… 🙂

About me… My name is Ken. I’m a 41 year old gay man. My occupation has always been computer related, but I’m about to start a new journey that has motivated me to create this online journal. In a couple of weeks, I’ll start seminary at Chicago Theological Seminary. I’ll be commuting one or two days a week from Michigan. I’m not currently working so I’ll probably be devoting all my time to this endeavor at least for the fall semester. I’ll be working on a Master of Divinity degree. I already have a MS from Western Michigan University in Computer Science (1990) and a BA from Kalamazoo College (1988). So it’s been 17 years since I’ve been a student in a formal college class! Should be interesting…

I probably should talk a little about my spiritual journey to this point and what led me to try seminary on for size. I think I’ll do that in another post.

Other interests of mine… GLBT issues, the Detroit Tigers, golf, movies, books… maybe I’ll chime in on some of those subjects as well 🙂

Anyway, I hope there’s something interesting and of value here. Please come back and visit.

Blessings to you!