Maybe some of my associates are correct in asking me to take a deep breath and chill out. I hope that my recent rants are not taken to be characteristic of my temperament. (I can assure you, they're not!) Well, just to let you know that I'm letting off a little steam, let me relate a bit about my vacation this weekend.

I accompanied the youth from the parish I've been doing my field education at (worship assistance, teaching, etc.) on their trip to the beach near Charleston. Asked to prepare a couple of Bible studies, I chose the Noah narrative from Genesis 6-8, and the story of the shipwreck from the latter portion of Acts (ch. 27, I think). The ark narrative has captivated me for as long as I can remember. Of course, as I child I was very interested in the physical, historical details of the story (how did all those animals fit? what did they all eat? Noah: 600!?).

But now this story takes on a much more allusive gradeur for me, especially as I try to read it typologically. The earliest Christians saw in this story a prefiguration of the Church-- this boat rescues us from the deadly waters of sin & death. We are preserved from the dangers of the world here.

I see much the same motif in the story of Paul's shipwreck. This narrative, though, is focused on mission. Paul knows that God's providence will preserve him, and his companions. They simply need to stay aboard ship; tempted as some are to abandon ship in the lifeboats, Paul asks them to stay. What's more, Paul reminds his associates of the Lord's presence among them, breaking bread in their midst, and urging them to join him in giving thanks to God. I think that we could hardly ask for a better model of ecclesial life. We, too, should stay aboard ship. We should break the Eucharistic bread together that makes us one. We should give thanks and trust that our deliverance is in the hand of God.

At times, I feel as though my denomination is doing a great disservice to those who seek to be formed into servants of the Church. I fail to see great value in Clinical Pastoral Education as it is. Of course, much of the model (the "process" as they call it) is useful to challenge future pastors to be critical of themselves and of their ministerial practices. But this institution seems so commited to being a non-ecclesial body. All theology, all practice, all "identities" are purely personal. There is no (unqualified) reference made to apostolic or Biblical authority.

I am convinced, after seeing (and participating in) many other ways of doing theology-- as a rebellious undergraduate student of Christian ethics, as a long-time attendee of a Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship, as an aspiring practitioner of Zen-- that theology must happen within the Church. We must be accountable to scriptural authority, and to the communion of the saints, most of whom have been orthodox.

This is not to succumb to some "prison of doctrine," as my supervisors may very well accuse me of. On the fact that orthodoxy is neither a prison nor a repressive political apparatus (as so many revisionists peg it), see Robert Louis Wilken's essay "The Durability of Orthodoxy." To be accountable to catholicity, to be orthodox, is to listen to the wisdom of my forbears, and to the tradition going back to the men & women who knew Jesus and walked with Him, and witnessed the resurrection. This ancient Wisdom is alive in the Church today. To trust it is to trust that God speaks through concrete means-- Word & sacrament. I am convinced that God has disclosed himself fully and unambiguously within the Church, and within its means of grace.

It is telling to me that most of the supervisors or administrators of the CPE movement are not sacramental. This isn't to say that we don't agree in principle on very many other things. However, perhaps CPE is a special temptation to modern "spiritualists"

It frequently seems evident to me that CPE is a lifeboat that has attempted to cut loose from the ship of the Church, to go it on its own over the world's rough waters. I think that the Church could use the gifts of these men and women who are part of CPE. Yet the framework of CPE still seems largely to exist outside the parameters of Christian theology's givenness. My teacher David Yeago says of those who are "orthodox," that they "care enough about the apostolic legacy to pay attention to it and [strive] to follow its inner logic as closely as possible, however odd and unsettling the places which we are led" (Apostolic Faith 49). I don't sense that love of the apostolic tradition from the representatives of CPE whom I've met. Now, perhaps that's not warrant enough to condemn the whole enterprise, but it's sufficient to cause ire.

So. Should I dive into the straying lifeboat to salvage what I can these last three weeks, and try to drag them back to the ship?

Should I grit my teeth and bear it, hoping to learn more on internship-- and bring my scars with me as memento mori to think on for a while?

Certainly, my ranting is probably not going to produce much of value. I say "probably" because a friend of mine responded to my previous post with hope that we can "someday replace it with something better." I'm very much in favor of that.