The Names of Christ
The stacks at San Anselmo.
My new home an hour a day.
Preface: I attended this school in 1991. At the time I wanted to live in San Anselmo and study here, but it was too expensive. Fifteen years later, in near poverty I moved to the Bay Area and got significant work (after the dot.com crash of 2001).
Where do I end up?
San Anselmo.
Apparently I could have afforded it all along.
But my daily trips up to the Seminary now are not related to vocation or any desire to do professional ministry. In fact, I note that when I walk in the back door I get a stare or two. I am too old to be a student; and not dressed like a professor.
Worse, the building was built in the late 1880's and so I hit my head on the EXIT sign repeatedly because there were no 6'7" theologians here in 1876.
I doubt there are any now. So BANG! (twice yesterday).
Today I got a stare or two because I was wearing my McMenamins T-shirt from Portland (Tabs you can smile). I look like an aging hippie ..or like Nick Nolte on a good day.
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But Christ is the deal. The Center and the Core and the One in Whom we where created. The Alpha and Omega.
It is notable that the great majority of books about Christ in the stacks are very old. They have largely been untouched for decades. I perused them and found Luis deLeon's book on the Names of Christ. I found rare book by Shusaku Endo, the great Japanese fiction writer, on Jesus and the Gospels..and Edersheim's classic work on the Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.
But my job now is to take a name of Christ each day I can and write a meditiation on that.
I have decided not to be too scholarly and anal about it. I'm a poet at heart and so I will do the research but not bore you with that.
So I will be more poetic than my usual writings. And I will go deeper because Christ is unfathomable.
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Next.... the first name.
posted by Obi-Mac BakDon @ 3:12 PM
Comments: 2
