Basics of Seminary Life

When I was a professional archaeologist trying to write for the general public, I always had to remind myself that people were less interested in the high-falutin’ theoretical debates I was immersed in than they were in the seemingly mundane details of daily life in the past. They were less interested in “what is the role of ritual in the development of complex chiefdoms” then they were in “what did they eat and how did they get the food?” My blogging here may veer towards the former, but in the interest of the latter, here are some of the details of my daily life at seminary.

I live in a dorm, Parsons Hall, right on the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP, in Berkeley, CA) campus. Thankfully, all the rooms are singles, and I don’t have a roommate though I do have to share a big communal (male) bathroom with two private showers. So far there have been no shower conflicts with the men, I can’t speak for the women who are greater in number and have the same number of shower stalls. My room is spacious enough for my twin bed, a bookcase, a huge desk, and a bedside table. I also have more closet space here than we do in our 1927 house in Salt Lake City.

The CDSP campus fits neatly on an irregularly shaped lot which is one block from the north edge of the U Cal Berkeley campus. I look out of my dorm room window at a lovely green courtyard and across to the CDSP Chapel. I can also see Gibbs Hall, a lovely brick building used as a guest house, and if I lean out a bit I can see Shires Hall, which is the main administration, classroom, faculty office, etc. building. Some days I could potentially get away with never leaving campus.

However, I do not eat on campus. Due to crumbling kitchen infrastructure at CDSP, we can no longer use the campus dining hall. Consequently, we now eat at the dining hall on the Pacific School of Religion (PSR) campus across the street. There are some advantages to this. The PSR dining hall has a balcony with a view of the bay and San Francisco. I also run into students from the other seminaries of the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in the dining hall. One morning I had a rollicking conversation with a Quaker about restorative justice whilst eating breakfast.

For exercise, I bought an inexpensive membership at the U Cal Berkeley gym. I take a short bike ride across campus to get there. The place is full of undergrads, who are considerably more cheery than the average “real” adult. Rather than trudging on the treadmill with a “workout, then job, then pick up kids, OMG what will I fix for dinner?”-look on their faces, their faces tend to say “workout, eat, sleep, drink beer.” I’m enjoying that little change of scenery.

As I finish this up, I can hear the bells from the Cal Berkeley carillon. The proximity of a bunch of nearby seminaries also means that I can hear their bells, for prayer, chapel, worship, throughout the day. There are a number of things that make going to seminary a challenge and a sacrifice, but the environment here is, for me, a source of abundance and blessing.