Fall mid-term at SVOTS Update
Here we are, just past the midterm of the Fall 2021 Semester at St. Vladimir’s and I realize that I have yet to write an update post. This is half due to authentic busyness (I am taking an extra class this semester and my wife Megan had a pretty big surgery right after the start of the semester which also was temporally costly) but also to ennui since I’ve created multiple update platforms (Substack, a Facebook group, a WordPress blog, and a YouTube channel) which means posting something somewhere means I also need to post it everywhere, which means finding featured images, links to various things mentioned, etc. so that it becomes a job of sorts by itself. Why did I do all of this? I think it has to do with being a previous professional blogger and not wanting to publish something that doesn’t meet my standards, so it makes it easier to procrastinate.
In any event, here is an update on the Fall. We’re going to look at Family Life, Academics, and Miscellaneous happenings here this Fall.
Family Life
Like I said earlier, Megan had a surgery at the beginning of the year, a correction to a previous stomach surgery she had years ago that had developed a few complications giving her awful reflux. After two weeks or so of recovery, she’s doing quite well!
The girls both enjoy life here at St. Vlad’s. They have become friends with several other children, but especially with the the four kids of one particular family of third-year students and it will be difficult for them next fall when it’s our third year and they’re gone. Thankfully, that family is also in the Diocese of the South so we should continue to see them once a year at least at diocesan assemblies.
Megan and I don’t get a lot of date nights, but thankfully we have a couple of “kid exchanges” where we can drop off our kids with one of a few families to have a date. We did this last week to see Dune (great movie and my first time going to Alamo Drafthouse, which has now ruined me for most other cinemas).
Monday nights have become “Mommy’s nights” - every other Monday SVS has a ‘St. Juliana Society’ for seminarian wives and female seminarians to help with their own formation to serve in the ministry, and on the off-Mondays Megan gets together with a few of the ladies in our building to knit and converse. Friday nights have become our “Pub Night” where after the kids go to bed, we gather at the table outside our apartment building to make a fire and share a pint or two, sing songs, and converse. We haven’t gotten back to a regular coffee hour following Sunday liturgy, but we’ve made our own impromptu coffee hour by inviting a few people over for breakfast or coffee. Normally we also try to invite single seminarians over for dinner every couple of weeks or so, but with Megan’s surgery we haven’t been able to do that yet. We are having two nuns over for dinner in two weeks (first year students), so it’ll be nice to get back to our tradition. All in all, the family is doing quite well.
Academic Life
The normal course-load here at SVS is four 3-hour weekly classes along with various optional hour-long Mid-day Meeting (MDM) groups, participating in one of the three choirs (Male Choir, Mixed Choir, Byzantine Choir), taking turns at reading and serving the altar (on average around two services each per month), and taking on an obedience (a community service “job” that takes 10 hours or so a month, mine is making prosphora—the loaves of bread we use for the Eucharist). And this on top of 10+ chapel services per week and various events. It’s a busy-but-not-overwhelming life for me, and I seem to be in the median in this. There are some who find it all too much to handle and others who handle all of this plus teaching part-time remotely.
This semester, I am taking an extra fifth class. I am a big fan of Fr. Silviu Bunta who is on sabbatical from his normal work at the University of Dayton and wanted to be in both of his classes. Here’s how the classes are going:
Advanced Liturgical Skills - this class is basically “how to be a Deacon” we learn the liturgics of serving as a deacon, singing diaconate parts (intoning Many Years/Memory Eternal, singing Magnifications), and memorizing prayers needed for Deacons at times when it would be impractical to hold a service book (when censing, during entrances, etc). I very much enjoy this class and it seems to be going quite well.
Systematic Theology: Dogmatic Theology in Christ - An interesting aspect of this class is in the tension between Systematic Theology (a construct of 19th century European Protestant scholarship making closed theological systems to explain all aspects of faith) and Dogmatic Theology in the Orthodox tradition (where we have a few certain dogmas that are fixed and are required to be an Orthodox Christian in good standing, but these are outnumbered by the theological opinions for issues for which no dogma has been developed). The consensus by the professor is that the class is Dogmatic Theology taught in a systematic format, but it is being transitioned into a purely dogmatic theology, so perhaps the experiment with systematic categorization is coming to an end? Regardless of this tension, this is a nice median class covering many important ideas and topics I have studied in other classes and in my own reading in a focused way.
Liturgical Theology: Liturgy of Initiation - This is the only required Liturgical Theology class in my program, and it is built around the Paschal Triduum model by Fr. Alexander Schmemann in Of Water and the Spirit, teaching us about Baptism, Chrismation, and the Eucharist starting with how it was originally taught in the early Church and in subsequent developments in the various typikons. My only real complaint with this class is that while the core of it is based on that most notable book that we had to read and write a paper about, none of our class discussion has spent any time thusfar on it or on the theological implications of Schmemann’s work. 95% of our class time is purely on the historical liturgiology itself. While I find that aspect interesting, I think promoting liturgiology over liturgical theology does a disservice to future clergy and I hope the seminary considers altering this focus for future classes.
Beginning Hebrew - this is one of my two Fr. Silviu classes. I’m not sure that I will pursue Hebrew much further once this is complete, but it is nice to be able to use the alphabet, read it aloud, and be able to engage with the language for research. It has been quite useful for those purposes even if I never progress much beyond this level.
The Inner Hermeneutics of the Psalter - This one requires more explanation - it’s a Psalms class, but based on the idea that the goal of the Psalter is for it to shape our heart so that it could very well have been written by ourselves by the time we have internalized it. Fr. Silviu likes to say that Scripture is written “for me, to me, about me, in me, and by me” in the ways we are shaped by the Psalms. Other than this vaguely esoteric introduction, we study the psalms structure, textual “irritants” where incorrect Hebrew or Greek (LXX) is smoothed over into flowing English that ends up reducing the possible meanings, the Patristic views of the Psalter, Liturgical uses, and Psychological/Literary uses. This is by far my favorite class this semester.
I also started out in three MDM groups: Hebrew Reading Group (w/ Fr. Silviu), Greek Reading Group (w/ Fr. Silviu), and Conducting Lessons (w/ Dr. Harrison Russin), but I dropped the two language groups since it became too much of a load for me that I wasn’t spending enough time with my family.
Miscellaneous
I sang in the SVS Octet at an impromptu concert with the famous Romanian Tronos Byzantine Choir. Here’s the YouTube link to the three hymns we sang, but if you only are interested in one, listen to us sing Chesnokov’s communion hymn “Salvation is Created in the Midst of the Earth” in Slavonic. You might not understand the words, but the harmonies are sublime.
I didn’t write about my summer CPE chaplain internship at Greenville Memorial Hospital. It’s too much to summarize here, but I’ll revisit it hopefully soon!
Megan and the girls came back to NY two weeks before I finished my CPE program, so I returned by dropping off a borrowed car in Raleigh, NC and took an Amtrak train from there to NYC. A wonderful short trip where I was able to spend time with my oldest friend Jacob, Fr. Chris Foley and Dn. Daniel Johnson in the NC Triad, and go to liturgy at the beautiful Holy Transfiguration parish in Raleigh. All while having wonderful NC barbecue and visiting The Pipe and Pint.