A Recollection of Genius

Yesterday's post about drum circles reminded me of a funny song lyric written by our genius friend Andrew Burnett. He wrote it for the comedy show we started together at PTS in 1992, Theologiggle. The lyric doesn't mention drumming explicitly, but the reference is there for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

The opening skit of the show was a spoof Gilbert & Sullivan musical number, "I Am the Very Model of a Princeton Seminarian." It consisted of a handful of seminarian caricatures each singing a verse introducing themselves.

• there was the brown-nosing, nerdy super-student, who sang: "I've memorized the dates and times significant in history/but the other kind of dating, I'm afraid, is still a mystery."
• the insufferably arrogant Old Testament Ph.D. candidate: "I gladly share my knowledge of the sources extra-biblical/That show the Hebrew scriptures for their time were pretty typical."
• the crunchy-granola eco-feminist: "I've done my best to rescue the rain forests of the Amazon/in winter I turn down the heat and put my wool pajamas on."
  
• the pragmatic, about-to-graduate senior: "I've got new glasses, done my hair to make my image glossier/I've heard it's the first thing they look at your dossier."

And the theological adventurer, whose whole verse goes thus:

I am the very model of a Princeton Seminarian.
When I arrived, it's true, I was a boring Trinitarian;
Confined within the constructs of my heritage confessional;
But now I can equivocate just like a real professional.

I've known the tension and the angst of circles hermeneutical;
My quest for authenticity has been so therapeutical;
I've been a fool; thought I was cool for being neo-orthodox;
But now I've seen the light while dancing naked at the equinox.

I used to think in black and white my doctrines Calvinistical;
But now I know to claim absolute truth is egotistical;
I thank thee, God, that I am not like Hodge predestinarian,
I am the very model of a Princeton Seminarian.

It's pretty cold in Michigan on March 21, but I make no promises about where I'll be that night. Especially if there's a full moon.