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Beginning, Again 4 February 2002 Dear CDSP Community Members: Christmas is long past, Epiphany too. The year 2002 seems too “old” to say Happy New Year very often. GOE’s are completed, intersession courses (including a tremendously successful Epiphany West!) are finished as well. And in the midst of all these “things done,” with not much of a breath possible for those involved in them, comes a new semester! There are many “new” things to look forward to: (1) new students in our midst to welcome, study and worship with; (2) new ideas about Gibbs Hall and the chapel which will no doubt excite, terrify, and energize us (Dick Snyder will have some special communication responsibilities in this area); (3) ongoing curricular evaluation and other activities by the faculty, including some new preparation for an accreditation visit (actually two of them!) in 2003; (4) saying goodbye to Louis Weil for the semester, hello to Linda Clader, and getting used to Lizette Larson-Miller’s hectic but necessary CPE schedule for the first half of the semester; and much more. But, for as many things which we know now will be new, there are so many more we don’t know, just that they will come: new jobs, new opportunities for ministry here at CDSP, new gifts of pastoral care and spiritual growth, new crises and new prayers, new relationships, changed relationships, and a lot of grace! As we begin this new semester we may have lots of hopes and new goals, just as we do for the beginning of the calendar year. It’s another time to hope for more organization, more time to pray, more time to play, more time to put things into perspective. And while I personally have just as many hopes for myself as anyone else, I also have some special hopes for this institution, for CDSP. We tend to speak of institutions impersonally, and we most often speak of our own individual hopes first, but CDSP, though not dependent upon or able to be equated with any “one” person, needs our specific hopes too. My hope for CDSP is that it will continue to grow into a learning community. I don’t mean a community of learning, for we are already that-a place where you and I learn together. Rather, my hope is that CDSP itself will learn, specifically that it will learn from other institutions and individuals not closely associated with it. This could and should be the Graduate Theological Union, to be sure, but I also hope for learning from dioceses, from other churches, from other organizations and individuals with which CDSP comes in contact. In becoming more of a learning community it just might be that the school itself can become a model for us, rather than just the result of what we do together. It just might be that we will be more open to others, more able to learn from those who are not our official teachers but from whom God may have much for us to hear. Such learning may not always come naturally and easily, but hopefully, with God’s grace, it will come to CDSP and to us as we begin this new phase of our theological education. I wish you all the best of beginnings, again! Faithfully yours, Donn F. Morgan |
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