This post is about decluttering and tracking my own progress, tho it will seem to others like something else. It is particularly directed to a friend in this thread who knows who she is. (I place it here, not in PMs, because it's in these decluttering threads I so often look back to see how much time has elapsed or been lost as I progress toward goals.)

RE: My Old Testament studies this year.

Specifically, when hubby and I led the NTier's multi-parish EfM group (circa 2000), it was his role to guide the students' Scripture studies-- and mine to see to their leadership development, acting as discussion facilitator for topical theological reflections. Thus, my time to prep for weekly class meetings involved crafting the formats for the meetings, and thus I never had time THEN to READ the more academic material the students were studying in depth at their own paces.

At the time, the group discussions reflected a pretty good understanding, on my part, of the Scripture I'd been hearing from the pew, the studies I had done on my own previous to rejoining ECUSA when hubby and I married, and studies that had come with professional employment at a publisher here of various Christian study materials. I felt no need, in our EfM group then, to delve more deeply.

Since then (strokebrain), I have felt pulled strongly to dive into the OT. This began in Feb. 2010 with a personal issue. I had a good friend (far superior to me in Bible learning-- his verse-memorization background); he recommended some applicable OT passages, and I was hooked.

By summer vacation (July 2010) I was deeply into the Daily Office lectionary habit, keeping up with the lectionary at week's end pretty well despite the heavy schedule of a health-challenged NTier Presbytera. It started to occur to me that I had lost touch with some of the EfM discussion insights, and the EfM OT material itself was calling: "Find me, use me, dwell with Me."

By the end of vacation I was supplementing my own daily reading and journaling with the old, found EfM material. (Vacation was a lovely way to focus on the material! Long, sunny days in the dappled shade....)


As the lectionary continues to unfold in the coming year, I plan to complete my study of the 2000 edition of the EfM OT material. Sure enough, all those 2000-era insights are coming back to me with good recall, with the 2000 book open in front of me. I love this particularly as one of that group's more inspiring members is no longer with us: Edith V, who never stopped her book-larnin' until Alzheimer's closed her mind and sent her home to meet the God who had Called her. She is still inspiring and encouraging me to this day.


Doing this study in this way is a complicated application of the skills my chaotic childhood built in me-- the reception of not-connected, out-of-order schoolbook information, with the brain as the integrator seeking insight and finding connections. At the moment, on a study desk (my old autoharp stand) about 12" deep by 40" wide, I'm juggling:
<> 700 pages of EfM in two binders,
<> the lectionary readings,
<> several Bible translations,
<> and a number of supplemental texts--

.... for several hours each morning sitting in full sunlight.


So this is a useful place for me to notate progress through this "little" SDL "curriculum" I seem to be crafting.


EfM partly began, at the University of the South (AKA Sewanee), as an ed program for future clergy spouses in residence with their seminarian spouses preparing for ordination. It is the "Perfect Presbytera Bible Study," as far as I can tell. In that vein, I seem to be picking up formation for another future Diocesan role with clergy spouses which has long been dear to my heart, and for which I had not been well prepared previously.

The whole point of EfM's structural design is that one inhales it at one's own pace. And it works, even for me, and even with strokebrain.


I hope (but do not expect) that no confusion is created (or fed) in these threads, about where my EfM-studies-tracking fits in our group of declutterers.

With strokebrain, I often need to go over written material many times till it sticks. If I land in a formalized ed track (as I may next year), these studies will serve me well as a first-go thru the OT, if nothing else. They already serve me well as a Presbytera-- my first vocation.

And we Presbytera-women have no dean. There is nowhere else to receive and organize this information, or I would not be doing it here.


Today-- 10/08/2010-- post Clonidine, despite a nasty head-cold-- I completed Genesis, Patriarchs, Exodus/Sinai, and the theological survey of same, TBTG. An outcome was the production of a really nifty 1-page summary and annotated genealogy up to and covering the Patriarchs, to help me and others keep those people straight, with due attention to the women's point of view of it all as well.

That MAY be a lucrative product I have just drafted... we'll just have to see! :~)

~Susan