A couple weeks ago, Prof. Goldingay gave our class an assignment to write a lament psalm following the general patterns of biblical laments, especially in the Psalter. There was a fair amount of freedom to the assignment and I chose to write a lament as another person, which is a significant theme in biblical laments. It was partially inspired by stories I hear from my wife, who is a public health dietitian. So, this is the resulting psalm:

A Psalm of the Hungry Single Mother in a U.S. City.

Great God, you are the sustainer of the earth,
You have provided the earth with resources to survive.
Living bread, you are the reason I am still breathing,
I don’t go a day without acknowledging the life that flows through my veins.

Yet, my awareness of life is fed by the threat it faces.
The earth is plentiful, but my house is empty.
Because of the geography of my birth, I do not have access to your bounty,
Due to the color of my skin, I have been imprisoned, hidden from salvation.

You apparently are blind to my world,
Unable to see my indestructible obstacles.
My enemies are those who fatten themselves while my children hunger,
They have raped your creation of its goods for their own enjoyment.
They look at me and I am sin, responsible for my own demise,
But their fathers delivered me into this place of darkness.

When their government hands me a few dollars, they give me barely a hope,
When I cash their checks at my grocer, I am spat upon as a parasite.
They have trapped me in their “cycle of poverty,” giving and taking from me as they please,
I am without a hope, dying and passing on death to my children.

Don’t you see what has been done to your provision?
Can’t you understand that they have stolen my food and drink?
When will you be my savior in life?
Did you end your rescuing in Egypt?

The laughter of my children is the source of my tears,
For they will soon see this world without joy.
They will be slaves to the powerful,
Endlessly working to no profit.
If you do not act now, have you given up?
If you do not act now, I can no longer trust.

Well, I guess I’ve had my first summer vacation away from blogging. I took a break to go save the world as an intern with Bread for the World, as we all know how much of a global difference interns at nonprofits can make. My self-evaluation form for Fuller’s Field Education office questioned what I thought my biggest accomplishment was in this internship. I’d have to say the full-scale initiation of world peace, though my supervisor reminds me that there were a few others involved in that endeavor. I also baked some fine chocolate chip cookies that I shared with my officemates, which may be a close second to global shalom.

In all seriousness, it was a challenging internship and it forced me to gather and put to good use the theological and biblical resources I have developed in seminary and as an undergrad. I developed Bible studies related to issues of hunger and poverty. I will be giving a sermon at a church in the area about some of my reflections. I will be recording a few podcasts next month on the issues. Along the way, I was able to learn a great deal about policymaking and how politicking goes for these sorts of things, and how a nonprofit advocacy group responds to such challenges. I see this internship as the beginning of a deeper engagement with political advocacy, particularly with the mission of Bread for the World. I hope that even as I move towards an academic career in New Testament and early Christianity, I will always stay connected to present-day issues of justice. And someday, if I reach my dream of being an educator and mentor to undergraduate students, I hope to be able to connect them to the same kinds of opportunities for social engagement and evaluation. Even the Bible majors!

All of this said, I do actually miss my time in the classroom and I’m looking forward to getting back into gear this Fall. I will be a teaching assistant for Jim Butler, focusing mostly on grading Hebrew translations and word studies for an exegesis class on Jeremiah. As for my own education, I will be taking a couple classes with Marianne Meye Thompson and gleaning from her wisdom on John, with an exegesis course on the Gospel of John as well as a doctoral seminar on Johannine theology. It will be nice to balance out working on the more heavy theological concerns in Johannine literature with the Greek of John’s Gospel.

And to add to the drama (if you consider any of this to be drama), I will of course begin sending out those doctoral applications starting in November. The application due dates mostly span November to January. I will probably find out what schools have decided about me by late March-early April. I’m going to minimize the amount I publish of my thoughts on application strategy, at least while I’m going through the process, but I can tell you the basics. I will be going for schools that I consider top-class, including some institutions with great reputations but are less often considered by “New Testament” applicants (and some are not quite as competitive as others). I feel that all of these schools are a “good fit” for me (i.e., I’m not going for the brand name schools just for the heck of it). If I strike out with those, I will apply to a few Th.M. programs to prepare myself as a scholar one more year and then try another round of applications the next year.

It’s official. I’ve received approval from Fuller Seminary’s Field Education Office, and have registered for, a full-time ten-week internship (FE502) with Bread for the World. This fulfills the second internship requirement for my Master of Divinity. I am finishing up the first one (a part-time, three-quarter, church-based internship at Pasadena Mennonite Church) right now. The internship will run from June 18th to August 24th.

I will unfortunately not be able to make it to their national gathering in Washington, D.C., coming up in a couple weeks (too much money!), but I will be diving in head first via Bread’s Pasadena office, run by my friends David Gist (Regional Organizer – California) and Holly Hight (Outreach Organizer – Western Region and California). I will be doing a lot of theological education regarding hunger issues (including preaching as well as developing, testing, and partially implementing hunger-related Bible studies) and outreach regarding Bread’s advocacy work. For those unfamiliar with Bread for the World, you should check them out (and you can see their blog too). They are a uniquely cool organization, which works with churches and Christian leaders around the country to lobby the United States government to concentrate their efforts on specific hunger issues domestically and globally.

But, Pat, how does this relate with your vocational goals, you ask? First of all, I want to be connected with justice issues no matter where I end up. I never want to get lost in any career, forgetting the immense responsibility that I have as a disciple of Jesus and, frankly, as a “middle class” American. “Middle class” is in quotes because there is nothing “middle” about it in global perspective–no matter how poor I feel as a grad student, I am a rich Christian in an age of hunger. Secondly, this will help me develop my skills as an educator in developing lessons based upon my target audience, communicate to them in ways with which they can connect on a particular issue (hunger issues as related to the Bible and theology). Also, I hope to one day be a professor of undergraduate students, I imagine they’d be Christians studying the Bible, and I want to mentor these students and connect them to Bread and organizations like it, helping them integrate justice issues into their academic vocations.

I am sure the ten weeks will fly by and I don’t have any grand visions of single-handedly ending global hunger in that time period, but I’m sure I will learn quite a bit. Many thanks to David and Holly for taking me on, and to Pastor Katherine at Pasadena Mennonite who will continue theologically reflecting with me as I transition from one internship to the next.