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feature
BOB OSWALD discovers his inner seminarian at Mars Hill Graduate School High on the Hill 
STUDENTS AT MARS HILL GRADUATE SCHOOL act out a scene from Genesis (serpent at right). Photos by Louie Raffloer My favorite character from the Old Testament, not counting Ruth (who is everyone's favorite) or Jonah (patron saint of writers procrastinators), is Jacob. And not just because of his sneaky tenacious beginnings.  See, Jacob is a pretty cool guy because he wrestles with the Angel of the Lord. And while he doesn't quite win, he doesn't quite lose, either. I hope I turn out so lucky.
Mars Hill Graduate School (no affiliation with the local megaconglomochurch, but still hereafter, "Mars Hill," because I am lazy) is a visible but unassuming building on the corner of Elliott and Wall, a couple blocks from the Sculpture Garden, one from the waterfront, and right next to the Millionair [sic] Club and Belltown P-Patch.
Motto: Text, Soul, and Culture. (As a reformed English major, anything that makes reference to "text" or "texts" gives me a big postmodern hard-on).
Degrees offered: Master of Counseling Psychology, Master of Divinity (you can get a degree in being divine? Does actor/actress/closet Juggalo Divine have this degree?), and Master of Christian Studies.
[sound of record scratching to a halt]
Christians in Belltown?
I went down to M.H. (told you I was lazy) and met up with Director of Organization Development and Field Abbot (!) Paul Steinke. Let's just say this: Not what I was expecting. A guy not too much older than me, shaggy, shoulder length hair, with a bit of five-o-clock shadow blurring into a bit of six-o-clock goatee. The kind of person I used to look for at parties, back when I smoked pot. The kind of guy I (and everyone) lived with in the dorms. A Pretty Cool Guy?
Paul confers quickly with the receptionist and retrieves a security lanyard for me... this thing unlocks classroom doors, allows access to inner sanctums, and god knows what else. Holy cow, for the first time in my journalistic career, I've got privileged access. The Mars Hill building. Have you guys seen this place? Holy cow (in some polytheistic religions more than one cow can be holy), it's amazing. Hardwood floors and sloping walls that, as Steinke explains, "break up the space and make it less square."
Double entendre?
On the bottom floor, the walls are decorated with local art. Right now, the drawings, poems, and prayers of a Holocaust victim related to a neighborhood artist. On the second floor, also with the sloping walls, art by Mars Hill students. Art?
"Mars Hill Graduate School exists to train students in text, soul, and culture, for the sake of transforming relationships," Paul explains, and I immediately recognize I'm in the presence of something who can remember more than 18 words in sequence... someone... smart.
As a (reformed) English major, I've learned to avoid people more intelligent or well-versed-in-the-canon than me. I'm gonna have to be careful here.
Text, soul, and culture... what's that s'posta mean? One area of impact of the "postmodern Christianity" that has emerged over the last decade or so is the burgeoning number of unaffiliated churches and institutions called "Mars Hill." Mars Hill? Not wanting to openly display my ignorance, I shrewdly played dumb until Paul explaine.
The reference is to a chapter of Acts in which the apostle Paul (my most favorite apostle... and least favorite Beatle) preaches in a part of Athens known for attracting philosophers, spiritualists, and the ancient Greek equivalent of the "Seattle Police Are Communists" guy. A place where ideas were exchanged and debated, and different cultures, worldviews, and beliefs intersect. A place called Mars Hill.
"Paul pointed to a statue, an idol to the ‘unknown God,'" Mr. Steinke explained, "and said ‘Jesus is the unknown God.'"
The idea being that religion has to move out into society, to occupy a place and engage with others... that God is alive, still moving within our culture. Mars Hill Graduate School used to reside at an office park in Bothell. Moving to Belltown, Steinke says, involved "learning what it means to be a good neighbor here."
"It seems like what it means to be a neighbor in Bothell is drastically different than what it means to be a neighbor here," I said noncommittally.
Paul agrees.
"We love Belltown. And we love Seattle."
---
O.K. Academia and faith are a double win for me. Throw in acute intoxication and you've got the Bob Oswald Trifecta. The way I live, think, and write... it doesn't involve actual events that take place in the actual world, so much.
But just to make it clear I'm not entirely ignorant... We're talking about the same Mars Hill Graduate School that recently paid out about 300 large to a former employee and co-founder in a sexual harassment suit. You can find out all about this on the Internet, where everybody and their mom (but not the moms' moms, who are too old to use the Internet) have posted their opinions about it. Maybe enough ink has been spilled on this or maybe I'm just apathetic, but this kind of thing doesn't hold much interest for me.
Look, there was this one time during my (turning my brain into) salad days, when I decided to take ecstasy every day for two weeks straight. At the beginning, I had a "reason" for this drastic action, but I can't remember it now. I guess what I'm saying is that people do stupid things and tragedy results. If this kind of thing is scintillating for you, by all means, google away. But in defense of my subject and my own craven disinclination to serve up the scandal-porn, it is also true that religious institutions, because they bear up the deepest hopes and fears of humankind, get judged a lot more harshly than their secular counterparts when this kind of thing happens, regardless of innocence, or guilt, or something in between. ‘Nuff said.
Like his eponymous apostle, Paul is a pretty cool guy. We took up a spot in an empty office and talked a little bit about what it was like to be a Christian school in town known for its lack of religion (but, as Steinke insists, "a deep spirituality.").
My experience at Mars Hill would not be complete without me meeting more Christians... The place was swarming with them. Normal looking Seattleites (albeit with a kind of... Christ-like gleam in their eyes) kept popping into the office to say goodbye, or "Peace" as they left for the day. People kept occasionally sprinkling their speech with "hell" and "damn" as if to prove that this kind of stuff was no longer important to God or anyone else (it isn't to me). Someone offered me chocolate, and, when I told her I was vegan, said she had some dark chocolate for me. Christians... pretty cool guys (and gals). Also Crystal Miller, director of recruitment and admissions, dropped by, to stay and chat. For good reason: The office we'd occupied was hers.
They've got a chapel at Mars Hill; they do communion there and everything. Like the $500,000 condo of every good educated person, the architecture is significant: The walls slope into the chapel, narrowing like the entrance to an ancient, painted cavern in Europe. And then, they explode into openness, huge windows, light. Becoming smaller and smaller as we go inward, into the sacred, and then bursting into the eternal possibility of the world. Any reason why from C.S. Lewis to Mark Z. Danielewski everything is "bigger on the inside than on the outside?" This is human life, this is how we go; narrowing, tightening, sloughing off all extraneous things until we reach a sacred place... and then, The Universe, and light... rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
"And the walls go against the grain of the wood," adds Crystal.
Double entendre? Later, when I ask if there is a meaning behind a page on the website that can be changed into a light or dark background, Crystal replies:
"I wouldn't be surprised. Everything has a meaning around here."
Sure does.
Check out the Mars Hill website at mhgs.edu. And take a gander at "The Other Journal." Latest issue is Atheism-themed for all us heathens. Seriously, take a look. It doesn't read like a "Christian" journal. Immediately eye-catching: A woman writing about how dating an atheist helped her understand Bulgakov. Bulgakov!!! (!)
Quick, what type of English major are you: studious Ph.D. track Jane Austen researcher, or drunken pilgrim on an experiential quest for a grand unified theory of Moby Dick? If you went for the latter, this stuff is going to be music to your ears (probably a Mastodon song). The point is, when you read people writing in the spirit of
honest inquiry, it's like finding a way in the wilderness, a river in the desert.
As for myself, as for now, when people ask, I say, "atheist." But I've never shaken the conviction that there is something inexplicable about human life... my life, anyway... that will remain eternally mysterious (someone once said we'll never figure ourselves out because if our brains were simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand them). I guess, really, I'm agnostic. Maybe. Don't quote me on that.
Look, normally I hate inspired, educated, intelligent young people. But the IEIYPs I met at
Mars Hill seemed earnest, which
is important to me. I don't know how you feel about religion in general or Christianity in specific, but I've already showed my hand
here, and I still left Mars Hill feeling like I had met people who were serious about the things they
were saying. That's important to me, too.
After wrestling the Angel Of The Lord, Jacob received a new name: "Israel." In turn, he renamed the place they tussled "Peniel," which, roughly (i.e. by the Internet) translated, means "I saw the face of God." Whether I mean it literally or as a metaphor, that's something I try to do every day.
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