basically the same advice: If you aren’t spiritually centered, ministry will be reduced to a set of tasks that won’t make much difference, no matter how skilled you are at performing them. Thus the underlying task of seminary is to find and keep an eye on your spiritual center—the point at which all that you are learning and observing comes together to shape your own spiritual development. This is good counsel for theological students anywhere, but the rationale given for it perhaps reflects a cultural difference. North American seminarians might be told that if they don’t do this, they risk burnout. But the Dominicans were told that if they don’t, they won’t have anything of substance to offer the people to whom they minister.

Right now there are only seven seminarians, but there are several more finishing the diocesan approval process who will join us next semester. Students don’t necessarily need a university degree to enter CET—the US is about the only place in the world where theological education means graduate school (right). However, most of them need preparation of some kind. So there is a year of preliminary studies, including introductory philosophy, Spanish composition, and research skills, etc., before they start the three years of theology proper. The three-year theology curriculum is much like those of US seminaries—Bible, theology, history, liturgy, pastoral ministry, etc. One main difference is the emphasis on Anglican studies and local church history. Because Dominican culture has such a heavy Catholic influence, it is important for church leaders to have a clear and distinctive sense of Anglican identity. And the Dominican Episcopal Church’s strong sense of mission grows directly out of its own history (see the August Chronicle where this is discussed). Students graduate with a licenciatura, which is more or less equivalent to a first professional graduate degree in the US.

The seminarians’ day is framed by chapel at 7:30 AM and 5:00 PM (right). Breakfast is served at 8:15 and lunch at noon, and they cook supper for themselves in the evenings. Classes go from 9:00 to 12:00 AM and from 3:00 to 5:00 PM Tuesday through Friday (below right). (We are glad that the schedule preserves the highly civilized custom of the siesta!) The evening is prime time for the library, though students can go there at other hours too. There are no classes on Mondays because students need this day for the transition from their weekend fieldwork back to the seminary routine. All are assigned to parishes, some pretty far from Santo Domingo. They travel to their fieldwork sites on Saturday, usually by bus, and don’t return until late Sunday night or Monday morning. They use Monday for errands, doing laundry, and getting caught up with their course work, etc. We two get up pretty early, in time to practice yoga and meditate before chapel. Michael has classes on Tuesday and Thursday
mornings and on Wednesday afternoons (below). Class preparation takes up a lot of the intervening time because at least for now he is writing out most of his lectures—not to read them (ugh!) but to make sure beforehand that he can say in Spanish what needs to be said. On Sunday mornings he periodically has duties at the Church of the Epiphany (below), where there is an English service at 8:30 and a Spanish service at 10:30 (below). There is also a 5:30 service in French for a small Haitian congregation, but Spanish is enough of a challenge for us right now. The Pastor of the congregation is Father Jean Monique Bruno, a priest originally from Haiti, who can handle all three languages very well—and also speaks Creole (below). Epiphany is unusual in having a pipe organ, one that was originally built 100 years ago for a church in upstate New York. It miraculously survived the transplant to this climate, and is well maintained and played by Micheil MacLennan, who teaches scuba-diving during the week (below). There is special music from time to time (below). The congregation hosts a preschool, Ovejitas de la Epifanía (below), and the Damas de la Epifanía really know how to throw a party (below).

Classes	Church of the Epiphany

English service	Spanish service

Father Jean Monique Bruno	Father Jean Monique Bruno

Micheil MacLennan on the pipe organ

Ovejitas de la Epifanía preschool (left) Damas de la Epifanía preschool (right)

April has Spanish classes with Señorita Lidia García on Tuesday and Thursday evenings (right), and she helps one of the seminarians with his English on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Each day she spends some time the library which—in addition to working on her Spanish—she has made her first project. The library has gone for several years without close supervision, and it needs considerable reorganizing. April and a couple of students who have work-study assignments in the library are putting things back in order (below right).
Monday through Friday we eat lunch with the seminarians (below left). This is a time for fellowship as well as food. Señora Digna Cuevas, who is an awesome mother figure as well as a good cook, reigns over the kitchen and dining hall (below middle). Other faculty members and guests are sometimes present. The conversation is usually lively and jovial—but
often also frustrating for us because, although our use of utilitarian Spanish is improving daily, our grasp of this kind of chit-chat remains pretty weak. Before leaving we scan the daily newspapers to find out what’s happening and check the entertainment listings. After lunch there is usually time for at least a brief siesta, often preceded by a cold shower, which is a godsend in this heat.
The rest of our time is largely spent preparing the other meals and running errands. Several days a week we walk a few blocks to a small supermarket where we buy food (below right). (The baggers were at first startled, but are by now only amused, when we ask them to use our canvas bags instead of their plastic ones. The DR is drowning in a flood of plastic and styrofoam, but few seem to notice.) At least once a week we also walk several blocks to the diocesan center, where we send out and pick up our mail, and occasionally have other business. Until we get our own internet connection, we and the seminarians share the only computer that has online access, and part of the daily routine involves finding a time when we can take our turn—or visit a nearby internet café if the wait is too long. Another yoga session and evening prayers typically round out our day.

We have explored only a few of the entertainment and recreation opportunities that Santo Domingo offers. There are nearby multiplex cinemas, much like those in the US, and they mostly show US films—but a rather limited selection of the kinds we least like. We’ve been once. The Cinemateca Nacional, part of a large arts complex at the Plaza de la Cultura, usually has several series going at any given time. We’ve seen three films there, but none that we set out to see. Twice they changed the advertised program, and once we got mixed up on the time of the film we wanted. Luckily, all three of the films we did see were interesting. (And in the case of the one that didn’t have English subtitles, you didn’t need them to understand what was going on.) The film center also includes a restaurant and bar where the scene is young and hip, and the people-watching is great fun. We’ve also been to a classical guitar concert. We look forward to checking out the symphony season and dance events at the Teatro Nacional, as well as upcoming merengue festivals. We have a yoga class once a week, and Michael has found a gym where he can swim from time to time.

As a pattern of daily life begins to take shape, we find that the issue confronting us here is basically the same as it was back home. How do we find that balance of basic elements—work, study, recreation, and prayer—that best enables us to fulfill God’s call? A verse from a recently sung hymn hit the nail on the head, if somewhat quaintly:

            If on our daily course our mind
            Be set to hallow all we find,
            New treasures still, of countless price,
            God will provide for sacrifice…

            The trivial round, the common task,
            Will furnish all we ought to ask:
            Room to deny ourselves; a road
            To bring us daily nearer God. (The Hymnal 1982, #10)

The big difference is that we are now also in the process of integrating ourselves into a culturally different community, and we have a new call.

In our orientation last July, more than one presenter repeated the adage that missionaries should keep their mouth shut for the first six months. In other words, for the time being our main job is just to assimilate by living our daily life in rhythm with our new community—experiencing the cultural dislocations without yet trying to form much of an opinion. We won’t know how we can best fit in until we better know the overall shape of the place, and such knowledge requires receptive patience.

The experience that perhaps best represents our present situation of being betwixt and between, as we try to find our way into this new work, is the feeling that we get when we encounter hymns with Spanish words set to tunes we know from other contexts. These are not your generic hymn tunes that can go with just about any text in the same meter, but tunes that to us seem tied to particular words. For example, we’ve heard hymn texts set to “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “September Song,” and “The Happy Wanderer” (a hiking song we learned in Scouts). Tunes of African-American spirituals, including “It’s Me, O Lord,” “Go, Tell It on the Mountain,” and “My Lord, What a Morning!,” have also been given lyrics that are altogether different from the original words. The case that seems to us most incongruous is a paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer sung to “Sounds of Silence.” We cannot shake the connotations that this music has for us, and we wonder… Who decided to appropriate this music, and why did they choose these particular tunes? Did they have any idea of where these melodies came from? How many similarly odd adaptations are we unaware of in our own repertoire of English hymns?

This experience has become a kind of parable for us. Do similar incongruities result from our attempts to adapt ourselves to this cultural situation? As we try to integrate ourselves into this seminary community, does some of what we do strike them much like the Lord’s Prayer sung to “Sounds of Silence” strikes us? We suspect so, but fortunately our common task keeps us from worrying too much about it. The mysteries and foibles of intercultural interaction are things we need to be aware of and keep an eye on, lest they get in the way of what we are here for, but our main job is working together to advance the mission of the church. And doing this through our involvement in theological education is what it comes down to every day.

Peace,
Michael & April