January 2014
Bloy House News
The Episcopal Theological School at Claremont


Greetings from Bloy House, the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont, where the spring term is just beginning. Thank you for considering Bloy House/ETSC for theological coursework and continuing education alike. For information, phone 909.621.2419 or email [email protected].

Faithfully in Christ, 
(The Very Rev.) Sylvia Sweeney, Ph.D.
Bloy House Dean and President

  What's New
Late registration continues:
Fresh Start classes begin January 25
Those who are interested in attending classes at Bloy House in the spring semester are invited to make application for that term before registration closes on January 23.  For those who are taking Fresh Start for Lay Leaders or entering the Education for Episcopal Leadership not-for-credit track at Bloy House, simplified applications to the school are available online at our website.

Courses to be offered this spring that are still open to enrollment if one registers before January 24 are listed below.  (The Scripture and theology classes taught this spring require prior participation in the fall course work and so they are not open to incoming students.)
  • Latino Spiritualities, taught from 7 to 10 p.m. on Fridays by Dr. Jennifer Hughes.
  • Anglicanism II, taught from 8 to 11 a.m. on Saturdays by
    Dr. Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook. (Anglicanism I is not a prerequisite for this class on the history of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion)
  • Preaching, taught from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturdays by Dean Sweeney (Seminary or EfM-level course work in Holy Scripture are required in order to take this class, and only two more slots are available for this spring)
  • Fresh Start for Lay Leaders meets on Saturdays, beginning January 25,  from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on teaching weekends and is taught by Canon Joanna Satorius.
Being the Light: Spring Retreat exploring
Ignatian Spirituality Practices

March 1 & 2

A retreat to bring us closer to the One who wishes
to live so fully in us as to transform us into
the Love and Light of the world.

Join us for a contemporary version of Ignatian spiritual exercises which will help us to get in touch with some of the obstacles we all face which prevent us from enjoying the abundant life promised to us; and also to draw closer to the experience of the presence of the Source of all Love and Life.

This retreat will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 1 and end at 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon.  On-campus housing is available at the cost of $45 for those who do not wish to commute. The cost of the retreat is $55 for Bloy House and Instituto students and $65 for those who are not currently attending Bloy House but would like to participate.

Pippi Currey Philippa (Pippi) Currey is our retreat leader this year at Bloy House.  Pippi is an experienced spiritual director, having gone through formation training at both Stillpoint: The Center for Christian Spirituality and the Institute in Retreat/Spiritual Direction at Mt. St. Mary's College in Los Angeles. She is a long-time practitioner of Centering Prayer and has been introducing churches and groups to Centering Prayer since 2004 as an Introductory Workshop Presenter for Contemplative Outreach. She is also a mentor for new practitioners, and has led numerous retreats on bringing Christian contemplative practices into daily life. She lives in Monrovia with her husband, Chuck, and two daughters, Molly and Madeline.
Dean Sweeney to attend gathering on the
future of theological education in the church

Dean Sweeney has been invited to be a part of a two day gathering with Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori to explore the future of theological education. This group made up of seminary professors and clergy and lay leaders with expertise in various models for theological education will have the opportunity to discuss the growing interest across the church in alternative distribution models for theological education, in addition to the strengths of our traditional residential models. At a time when theological education is becoming increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible to many in our church, we must explore alternative models that celebrate the value of theological formation for all ministries within the church. Bloy House has created a model that works, and we will be honored to take your stories to this gathering in New York.
We need your help:
Please consider a gift to Bloy House

"For Want of a Nail" is a wonderful old poem that reminds us that sometimes small things can matter in very big ways. Nowhere is that more true than here at Bloy House where we find ourselves counting every penny when making day to day decisions about the school. On many a day the board, Lydia, and I play the "if only" game because there is so much more we can see as our mission than what we can financially afford to accomplish.

As the new year opens and many of you are considering where to give your tax deductible contributions for 2014, we invite you to consider making a gift to Bloy House. Bloy House is on the cusp of an exciting and rewarding transition, a move to broaden our focus to reach out to clergy and lay leaders in the church while continuing to form those for holy orders with a truly top-drawer theological education. We have arrived at a question. Why just a handful of people for a handful of years?  Why not even more fully embrace our mission to form leaders for the church by doing everything we can to make theological education accessible and affordable for all who yearn to learn and grow in their faith? With your financial help we can 1) continue to keep our tuition costs well below other seminaries so that all those God chooses can afford to receive theological educations for ordained ministry; 2) we can create the possibility of offering clergy on limited incomes and lay persons whose ministries receive no financial support the opportunity to experience all the joys and riches that come with lifelong theological formation.

This includes adding new courses to the curriculum, providing additional scholarship help for all our students, and offering more special events, satellite programs, online resources, and workshops for those interested in participating in short term learning opportunities.  

If you would like to make a gift to Bloy House, please send a check to Bloy House. Make the check out to Bloy House, ETSC.  Or if you would prefer, you can give electronically by clicking the donate button on the Bloy House website. Your gift is tax deductible, and we will send you a thank you letter to add to your financial records as well.

  Ordinations
Bloy House well represented
in January ordination services

Ordinands
On January 11, Bishop Mary Glasspool and Bishop Diane Jardine Bruce ordained twelve new priests to the sacred order of the priesthood.  We celebrate with all those newly ordained and give special thanks for the five Bloy House alumni/ae  who were a part of this group. George Daisa, Michael Foley, Nancy Frausto, Francisco Garcia, and Marianne Zahn, we are so proud of you and we delight at the gifts you are bringing to our church through your priestly ministry!

Valerie Ward and Bishop Bruno On January 5, Bishop J. Jon Bruno ordained Valerie Ward to the sacred order of deacons at St. Peter's Church, Santa Maria. Congratulations, Valerie!  What a wonderful and courageous new deacon God has given this diocese!


Photos:
Top: Janet Kawamoto
Left: Bob Williams
  Save the date 
Jim Sanders Fall 2013:
Wisdom and the Prophets
Dr. James Sanders offers "Wisdom and the Prophets" from 2 to 5 p.m. on Friday afternoon.  This class will explore ways in which the wisdom tradition within Judaism helped the major prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures to craft a new vision of redemption built around a universal view of salvation.  If you have ever wanted to do in-depth exploration of Isaiah and Jeremiah, mark your calendars now so you can come join us for this class in fall.

Bob Williams Media in Ministry class
to return Fall 2014

What are best practices for strategic communication of faith in this digital age? In what ways is community built and meaning made as these technologies meet time-honored traditions? Come explore practical, hands-on methods of communication in congregations and other contexts in "Media in Ministry"' class open to all Saturday mornings, Fall 2014 semester, at Bloy House. Course is open to laity and clergy alike, continuing-ed as well as ongoing theological program students. Instructor is Robert Williams, canon for community relations in the Diocese of Los Angeles and a former communication director of the Episcopal Church. Now in its fourth year, Media in Ministry course curriculum is fully updated to address current and emerging trends.

May 25 to June 5, 2015:
Celtic Pilgrimage
Bloy House will be offering a Celtic Pilgrimage to Scotland with Dr. Frank and Teresa Shirbroun as our tour guides. Sites to be visited include the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, Iona, Durum, Glasgow and other locations. Celtic Spirituality is rich with images and theology that resonate deeply with the needs of our contemporary fast-paced technological world. Come be a part of a time out of time led by a beloved alumnus of the Bloy House faculty. Cost of the pilgrimage will be approximately $4,000 not including airfare. For more details on this wonderful opportunity see the February Bloy House News.

  From the Dean
Dean Sylvia SweeneyWalking the unlit path

By Sylvia Sweeney

When I began seminary in the 1980s the first book our theology professor had us read was a little book by John Dominic Crossan about the nature of parable, called The Dark Interval. With this book Crossan invited us to a kind of healthy agnosticism that is not so much about not being sure about God as not being sure what it is about God we can rightfully from our precarious and limited perch in human history be sure about. I have just returned, now some 30+ years after reading that book, from the North American Academy of Liturgy where I had the wonderful joy of sitting in conversation with some of the finest liturgical minds in our country as we together struggled to ponder what it was we could say about God and to God when we know in our heart of hearts we have no right to certitude about anything besides our own desire for the One who is beyond us and beyond our knowing.  And yet, there is much we need to say to a world in deep pain, much we need to trust in even when we can't know for certain. 

Faith is, I think, a lot like making our way across a pitch black room with our arms outstretched to ward off unnecessary collisions and our toes inching across the floor in momentary toeholds that feel substantial and trustworthy.  We are all inching toward God ... sometimes in moments that feel like pitch black darkness and at other times in the disorientation that comes from a blinding light. In either case, we are wise to allow our eyes time to adjust and to venture slowly and yet courageously, listening for a clue as to what direction we are facing, a clue most often provided by something or someone external to ourselves. It's not enough to trust ourselves: to be confident in our rightness. It's not enough to be sure which way is north when our compass fails us. We all need moss on trees to point the way, a crack of light coming through a closed door.

As we enter a new year of life, of faith, of ministry, I invite you to a year with less certainty and more humility, less Katie-bar-the-door! and more step-by-step, inch-by-inch. I invite you to a year where whatever you know about yourself, your world, and your God is not enough. Because it is never enough! As we stand in all our humanness, we are never enough ... and yet our faith says that God says we are quite enough for this moment. Good, even. Trust yourself to be quite enough for this moment and never enough for what's to come. Wherever God leads you, make it a pilgrimage toward the God whose name we dare not speak and cannot keep silent about.  Believe in a God worth believing in and search for a God worth knowing. And perhaps, in the searching and the seeking, the wondering and the wanting, the hoping, and the unutterable prayers ... perhaps in all that, you will be blessed so that you might be a blessing. This year, seek your blessing so that you may be a blessing to those you bump into on this unlit path called life.

  Book talk with the dean 
Praying Shapes Believing cover Praying Shapes Believing: A Theological Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer
By Leonel Mitchell
Morehouse Publishing

It's an old book, but perhaps with new life.  In the early 1980's Leonel Mitchell, then Professor of Liturgical Studies at Seabury-Western set out to craft for the church a resource that was desperately needed by many.  For those who had been raised on the 1928 Prayer Book and then been presented by the 1979 General Convention with a brand new prayer book, there was a real and observable need to explain why our 1979 Book of Common Prayer was written in the form it was written in and what the deep theological principles undergirding that book were.  To that end, Lee wrote Praying Shapes Believing: a Theological Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer.  Praying Shapes Believing guides its readers step by step through the prayer book and explains the significance of each of the sections of the BCP to the life of faith and the life of the church.  

Fast forward now 30 years and we have a new age when fewer and fewer people remember the discussions and debates that framed the decision to create a "new" prayer book.  If those persons who were raised on the 1928 BCP had been formed with a somewhat different Anglican theology than that presented in the '79 Prayer Book, those raised in the church (and completely outside the church) since 1979 were often without any liturgical theology to explain and ground their liturgical actions.  And now we have a new generation of liturgical resources being developed, resources firmly built upon the theology inherent in our 1979 prayer book.  Our liturgical life is one more generation deeper into the theological assertions of the 1979 BCP.  And our questions are moving us to new questions about what it means to be the people of God gathered at Christ's table, seeking to serve him in all persons and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

If you have ever wondered why Episcopalians believe what we believe, pray what we pray, and worship in the way we worship, you might want to pick up an old classic and read (or reread) about what it means to be an Episcopalian in an ever brand new world.
 Book TAlk 
See the new ad for Bloy House
in Anglican Theological Review

One of the benefits that came to Bloy House by joining the Board of the Anglican Theological Review was the opportunity to place (for free) the first ever ad for Bloy House in this church wide publication.  In case you don't receive the Anglican Theological Review, we've included a copy of the ad here.

Bloy House ad
 Your support is appreciated 
Financial contributions to support the work of Bloy House are appreciated year-round. Thank you for your consideration and generosity. Gifts may be mailed to Bloy House, the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont, 1325 N. College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711.
In this issue: Please scroll down for more on upcoming courses and student and faculty activities.

Join Our Mailing List

 Spring Schedule

Spring 2014 Teaching Weekends, Academic Calendar 

 

January 10 - 11
January 24 - 25
January 31 - February 1*
February 14 - 15
February 28 - March 1  

   (Long Retreat Weekend)
March 14 - 15
March 28 - 29
April 11 - 12
April 25 - 26
May 9 - 10  

   (Graduation Weekend)

 

*Second of back-to-back weekends. 

 

 Announcements
Task Force on Marriage seeks input
The General Convention Task Force on Marriage has been charged with the work of examining the historical, theological, pastoral and canonical issues surrounding the sacramental action of Christian Marriage. The group would like to hear from all sectors of the church about what you feel it is most important for the church to stress as it seeks to lay out a historical and theological roadmap for the church to follow in future discernment work around the nature of Christian Marriage. There is particular need for that task force to hear from members of Native American, Asian, and Latino communities within the church -- groups that have thus far largely been silent as we have begun to explore these issues. While the issue of gay marriage is being discussed within the group, the real focus of our work is around building a comprehensive pastoral approach to the issue of marriage in an age when the traditional models of marriage are being reexamined across our society. If you would like to provide input to this group you are more than welcome to do so by contacting Dean Sweeney at the seminary [email protected]  or the Rev. Susan Russell at All Saints, Pasadena; [email protected].
subscribe
Subscribe to
Bloy House News...

To add your name to our email list, please click here or send an email note to