What do you mean by that? How did you come to that thought? Do you really see that in the text? Our first-year students laughingly call seminary “the rock tumbler” because of all the ways in which they find themselves being challenged and changed by their peers, their professors, and the rigorous disciplines of theological study in community. When I first heard a student use the expression, I remembered seeing a rock tumbler at my uncle’s house when I was a child. He showed us how he placed some unremarkable rocks into the tumbler, put in some grit, and then turned it on and left it for a whole week, churning night and day in his basement. When at last we opened it up and rinsed off the rocks, they had become as smooth as a seal’s skin, and each vibrantly alive with color. Looking at them was not enough – you had to touch them, gasp at the colors that had emerged, feel their soft contours.
The formation that occurs over three years in seminary is very much like that rock tumbler. As commencement approaches every spring, I look at the seniors and marvel at the colors of faithfulness that have been revealed by countless instances of bumping up against others: in disagreement (“You really offended me in class today”), correction (“I think you need to practice your Spanish more before you lead the prayers of the people again”), in acts of compassionate service, reflection, repentance, amendment of life, all carried out amid the community’s rhythm of thrice-daily chapel.
But if truth be told, the seminary is only a rock tumbler because the Church itself is nothing but a giant rock tumbler, throwing our beliefs and values up hard against those of others, smoothing them, chipping some of them, but also revealing the colors hidden deep inside. If the rocks in the tumbler were always simply directly opposed to one another, they would all gradually break, and at the end of the week there would be nothing but gravel. The tumbler polishes because the stones encounter one another at all kinds of different angles, and because their direct confrontation is mediated by the grit among them.
Although we often describe our differences in the church as though they were directly opposed, that is actually rarely the case. All of us have experiences of working side by side in soup kitchens and homeless shelters with people we disagree with on some of the issues coming before General Convention. Or how many of us have taken communion to someone in their home, and discovered in the process that we disagree about, say, the needle exchange program at our church? Sometimes we are changed by persuasion. Sometimes we are provoked to articulate a position more clearly and firmly. I have leaned gratefully into the prayers of someone who disapproved of my decisions, listened with remorse to a woman who thought I was disrespectful in my teaching, comforted someone who had hurt me, learned to respect the devotion of someone who sent me a painful e-mail. The tumbling and polishing go on so much longer and at more profound levels than you thought you could endure or would choose to endure. But over time, you gradually begin to see the colors of discipleship emerging among the members of your community, and you give over to the process, all of you together tumbling into Christ. The grit that keeps us from destroying one another is our regular habit of worship, our common prayers, our reading of the scriptures, and our experiences of Holy Communion, elbow to elbow before the altar of God.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “When you come together it is not for the better but for the worse” (1 Cor 11:17).
Many people have that same feeling about General Convention: when we get together, we get worse. But my experience in the rock tumbler makes me wonder, what if that were not our assumption? What if, instead of setting our sights on merely tolerating one another, we drew closer to the people who might change us? I am not speaking here of a shallow gentility that ignores our substantial differences. I am speaking of fierce commitment to the reality of the Body of Christ as the place of our transformation, the place where encounter is not shattering, but revelatory. What if this year we came together for the better?
Can you tell a story about a time when you were changed in a way that you value, on account of having to live or work closely with someone whose beliefs or values are quite different from yours?
Jane Patterson (@JaneLPatterson1) served on the Adjunct Faculty since 2010 and was appointed assistant professor of New Testament beginning June 1, 2013. In the Master of Divinity program, she teaches courses in Bible and Spiritual Formation; in the Center for Christian Ministry and Vocation, she teaches a course on the Bible as a resource for pastoral caregivers. Outside the seminary, she is co-director of a ministry called The WorkShop that guides laity in the use of the scriptures for discerning how to live faithfully in all aspects of daily life.
