“Lord, Have Mercy” is tattooed across my wrist— etched in Greek to recall my days of staring down the letters at the beginning and end of the words to puzzle out the meaning, poring over ancient text and careful exegesis, that the good news might be preached and practiced and taught in all the years of ministry ahead. It’s on my right hand, shining out to the congregations I bless from the words that settled in my bones as I recited them time and again in the Liturgy Lab—knowing they are the most important words I will ever say— words washed in mercy and forgiveness. The words are tattooed because it was one of those seminary nights where enough of us got a wild hair and went downtown to “get inked,” and then cheers-ed our decision over beers at the Local—the other place where we broke liquid bread. The rest of the times were in the chapel, where I practiced making holy, welcoming space over and over again being the tried and true beadle I feel like I was born to be, reaching peak liturgical nerd-dom in sacred space every chance it came about. Kyrie Eleison is sung and spoken from chapel to church and across the years as its meaning expands and contracts, morphs and mingles through every handshake I give, every marriage I perform, every stranger and friend I greet, every hand I hold in their final moments—words tattooed across my wrist during a sacred time, in a holy space, in the midst of the world buzzing around us as we sought out the holy, and as we practiced extending mercy, that we might choose to do so for all of our lives. – Lindsay Conrad Jacaruso (MDiv’13) 12 | Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
By Cynthia L Rigby
F
irst, a confession: When I came to Austin Seminary in 1995, I had to look up the word “winsome.” It was in our mission statement, that Austin Seminary is a “winsome and exemplary community” of faith, and I had the feeling I was somehow expected simply to know what it would look like and had the good sense not to ask and thus reveal my ignorance. And I did have a vague sense of the term, associating it with tall willowy Jane Austintype figures.
Over the twenty-eight years that I have had the privilege to serve as a professor at Austin Seminary, I have sat on a number of faculty and trustee committees that reconsidered our mission. Never, in my recollection, have we ever given consideration to taking out “winsome.” It is an untouchable, formative concept for us. Still, what does it mean? Webster says, along these lines, that someone who is winsome is “pleasing and engaging” and who has childlike charm and innocence: and a “winsome smile,” someone w h o is “cheerful and lighthearted … inspiring trust.” OK, but frankly I’ve come to a place where I don’t think I, or the world, needs innocence and lightheartedness as much as it needs a deep-seeded wisdom and The Reverend Dr. Cynthia L. Rigby, The W.C. Brown Professor of Theology, might have been the kind of professor Board Chair Clarence Frierson had in mind when he (allegedly) offered the phrase “winsome and exemplary community of God’s people” for Austin Seminary’s mission statement.
