Aissa Hillebrand ‘27 spoke to Crossings about showing up exactly as she is. | Photo courtesy of Hillebrand
Contemplation Drives Inquiry:
Psalm 27 and the rhythms of seminary community By Dr. Stephen Fowl President & Dean
I’m writing this column in the very early days of the fall semester. I’ve always faced these days with a mix of excitement and apprehension. Those feelings were heightened this year, surely due to my significant new beginning at CDSP.
shape this desire according to our individual, specific temperaments. Our lives of contemplation will fit each of us perfectly, like a well-tailored garment. God will see to it that this end will be the fulfillment of our deepest desires, not their obliteration.
We began with our Tuesday morning Community Eucharist. As I sat waiting for the service to begin, I was deeply moved watching faculty and residential students file into the chapel. It was so clear that they were happy and excited to be together again: hugs, smiles, laughter, reconnection. Worship amid joyful reunion is always an extraordinary event.
Particularly at the beginning of the academic year, God’s invitation to each of us is to remember to take time throughout to practice those ways of dwelling in God’s beauty that seem best suited to each of us. Praying, singing, reading, feeding people who are hungry, binding up broken hearts—all these are ways in which we may contemplate the beauty of the Lord. Indeed, Jesus says that in feeding the hungry and binding the brokenhearted, we can best see the true beauty of God.
Psalm 27 was appointed for the day. In verse 4, the psalmist expresses a single overriding desire: “To dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to contemplate the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in the Lord’s temple.” This is an excellent verse to focus on at the beginning of the year.
Worship amid joyful reunion is always an extraordinary event.
Contemplating the beauty of the Lord is one of the most enduring images Christians have for thinking about our ultimate end in God, the ultimate destination of our spiritual journey. At that time, we will be in the presence of the God who loves us fully without hesitation or reservation. We will have nothing more to do except welcome that presence, to be absorbed into it without in any way losing our true selves, and to worship the God who offers us this gift of participating in God’s own life. This is where, according to the New Testament, all things are leading. Our destination is not because of our own innate goodness, or our outstanding academic gifts, or our unrelenting efforts to succeed. We are heading this way because that is God’s deepest desire for us. God will
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As a seminary community, we are an unusual worshipping body. All of us, to one degree or another, are engaged in a disciplined, communal approach to faith seeking understanding. I realize that the poetry of the psalm does not inevitably lead this way, but it strikes me that the psalmist’s desire for contemplating the beauty of God and its connection to inquiring in the Temple is what our pursuits here are all about. Faith seeking understanding, or contemplation driving inquiry, reflects the deep structure of Christian knowledge and the ground of seminary education. By the time you read this, the beginning of the academic year will be a distant memory. If our residential students’ joy at reconvening is any sort of barometer, I have every reason to hope that our time together on campus will have been well spent contemplating the beauty of God and deepening our inquiry after God. Our prayer and our study will enrich our love of God and each other.
4 Integration Every Day
16 ‘A Soft Place to Land’
Full-time ministry enriched seminary learning for these hybrid alums
CDSP classmates and community ‘a huge comfort’ for incoming students
8 Meet the Dean
20 Community News
A wide-ranging conversation with Dr. Stephen Fowl
Publications, new calls, ordinations, and more from the CDSP family
12 Charting the Course(s)
22 Your Response Needed
Reshaping our curriculum for the future of CDSP & the Church
14 ‘A Family Conversation’ Seminary hosts Northern California leaders to revisit communion controversy
Crossings FALL 2023
Toward a new rhythm of communication for our new model
Dr. Stephen Fowl, President and Dean Editorial: The Rev. Kyle Oliver, EdD, with assistance from the Rev. Edward Lowe Design: Trinity Church Wall Street Crossings is published by Church Divinity School of the Pacific 2450 Le Conte Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709-1249 © Church Divinity School of the Pacific, all rights reserved. For additional print copies, e-mail communications@cdsp.edu. Crossings also is published as a pdf online, at www.cdsp.edu/news/crossings, with archive copies available. We want to know what you think of our magazine. Please send your comments, story ideas, and suggestions to communications@cdsp.edu.
On the cover: In this issue, we profile three women who served in full-time ministry roles while completing the CDSP Hybrid Program (clockwise from upper-right): the Rev. Nora Boerner ‘22, the Rev. Katherine Frederick ‘23, the Rev. Jessica Frederick ‘23.
|T op photos courtesy of those pictured (except Katherine Frederick photo by Jason Tinacci); bottom photo courtesy of Boerner
Go Green with CDSP: Email communications@cdsp.edu to subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, and stay connected on Facebook at /cdspfans. Fall 2023 C R O S S I N G S | 3