America letter # 4. The Wartburg Community.
November 11, 2007
Dear friends,
“We are a community,” is an often repeated phrase here at Wartburg. (In my Norwegian letter I translated with the word for religious community, which might be a bit “much”… Anyway, there is a focus on fellowship, and it is like a small society on its own living and studying here.)
The “Wartburg Community” does not only include students, but also many spouses and children. Some of the families with small children have told that the family-friendly environment was an important reason that they chose Wartburg. Most of the students live on campus; some in rooms in the main building, some in apartments nearby, and then we are some living in apartments down the hill.
The chapel and refectory (is there a better community name on a cafeteria?) is in the heart of the main building. We have chapel every day at 9:30. The liturgy varies according to the day. Monday there is a simple Worship service ending in remembering our baptism by the baptism font, Tuesday Morning Prayer, Wednesday Eucharist, Thursday Worship service, Friday Prayer around the Cross with lighting candles. Students and faculty are divided in groups having a chapel week each. The chapel weeks go from Thursday to Wednesday surrounding the Sunday. I had chapel week last week, and wore alb both Friday and Wednesday.
The services end with the sharing of peace, and the greetings often continue into the refectory where we have social time with announcements and coffee until 10:30. A couple of hours later it is time for lunch, and unlike MF where you make sure you find someone you know from the library to accompany you so that you do not need to sit alone, you here sit down at a random table and talk with those who sit there. The refectory is sometimes the place for an extra-lecture if you happen to sit beside a professor who did not feel he or she had the chance to answer properly to your question in class.
In addition to what happens of informal community building, the junior students have a course called spiritual practices. It consists of a lecture and a small group discussion each week. This spiritual formation is something I miss in the theology study in Norway. MF (my seminary in Norway) will not give me credits for junior courses, but I follow it for fun.
The rural plunge I attended this weekend is also a junior course according to the course code. No juniors took it though. Most of the students were middlers, and we also had some seniors among us. We have stayed with host families from Friday until today. Yesterday we visited a grain elevator and a meat packing, an orchard, a traditional and a large dairy farm, and a farmer with pigs and no-till-farming. The congregation where we were was founded by Norwegian immigrants, and after the worship service today I had the chance to speak Norwegian with some who have moved a bit between Norway and the USA.
This weekend Wartburg has 30 visitors to its conference on ministry. We have just had supper together, old and potential new students, and I had a nice chat with a college student who is planning to go to seminary. The community building is continuing.
Greetings from Hanne.
Dear friends,
“We are a community,” is an often repeated phrase here at Wartburg. (In my Norwegian letter I translated with the word for religious community, which might be a bit “much”… Anyway, there is a focus on fellowship, and it is like a small society on its own living and studying here.)
The “Wartburg Community” does not only include students, but also many spouses and children. Some of the families with small children have told that the family-friendly environment was an important reason that they chose Wartburg. Most of the students live on campus; some in rooms in the main building, some in apartments nearby, and then we are some living in apartments down the hill.
The chapel and refectory (is there a better community name on a cafeteria?) is in the heart of the main building. We have chapel every day at 9:30. The liturgy varies according to the day. Monday there is a simple Worship service ending in remembering our baptism by the baptism font, Tuesday Morning Prayer, Wednesday Eucharist, Thursday Worship service, Friday Prayer around the Cross with lighting candles. Students and faculty are divided in groups having a chapel week each. The chapel weeks go from Thursday to Wednesday surrounding the Sunday. I had chapel week last week, and wore alb both Friday and Wednesday.
The services end with the sharing of peace, and the greetings often continue into the refectory where we have social time with announcements and coffee until 10:30. A couple of hours later it is time for lunch, and unlike MF where you make sure you find someone you know from the library to accompany you so that you do not need to sit alone, you here sit down at a random table and talk with those who sit there. The refectory is sometimes the place for an extra-lecture if you happen to sit beside a professor who did not feel he or she had the chance to answer properly to your question in class.
In addition to what happens of informal community building, the junior students have a course called spiritual practices. It consists of a lecture and a small group discussion each week. This spiritual formation is something I miss in the theology study in Norway. MF (my seminary in Norway) will not give me credits for junior courses, but I follow it for fun.
The rural plunge I attended this weekend is also a junior course according to the course code. No juniors took it though. Most of the students were middlers, and we also had some seniors among us. We have stayed with host families from Friday until today. Yesterday we visited a grain elevator and a meat packing, an orchard, a traditional and a large dairy farm, and a farmer with pigs and no-till-farming. The congregation where we were was founded by Norwegian immigrants, and after the worship service today I had the chance to speak Norwegian with some who have moved a bit between Norway and the USA.
This weekend Wartburg has 30 visitors to its conference on ministry. We have just had supper together, old and potential new students, and I had a nice chat with a college student who is planning to go to seminary. The community building is continuing.
Greetings from Hanne.
posted by Hanne at 9:30 PM
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