First it was everything due the week before midterm break. Then it was the bustly week of Dublin travel over break. Then it was everything due the week after midterm break, plus jet-lag, plus my inner exhaustion from having taken no meditation or writing time in Dublin. After that, it’s been… well… what has it […]
It’s All Hallows’ Eve. A few days ago I got to explain to a classmate — he’s from South Africa — “what the big deal is” with Halloween in the US. Fresh from my visit to Dublin, I noted that Anglo-Irish-Scots folk planted on the eastern seaboard from our earliest nation-years have shaped a lot […]
(written for a spiritual formation exercise, APTS, Fall 2018) I’m standing at our worktable, cool air wreathing my ankles. The sliding doors are open; the mild September day is now a chilly evening, and my husband and I are taking advantage. Idly, I hear a first-responder’s siren. We don’t live far from the highway, after […]
(submitted to Th.204, APTS, Fall 2018) Our news continues to bring forward stories of the increasing difficulty immigrants of color have in gaining — and sustaining — access to the US. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter might have faded, but is far from forgotten. In media, US inhabitants are steadily confronted with the statistics of our increasing […]
I’m still reading The Sacred Enneagram. (You think, “Of course you are; you just picked it up a few days ago.” Au contraire, mon frère; if I hadn’t been behind in Hebrew and felt my History midterm loom, I’d’ve finished it the day I got it. So GOOD.) Yesterday I was reading/not-reading it while preparing […]
“Okay! So we need a coach for our small group shepherds. Wait. Coach; shepherd. Can you coach shepherds? Is that a thing? How does that work for shepherds; aren’t they pretty isolated out in the fields?” True conversation. And we steer the Christian education for our folks: is this a good thing? You decide!
Hebrew homework is preying on my mind, enough that it bubbled up as the center of an “unprepared” dream also involving kind and gracious military veterans (all men) whom I didn’t know. Yeah, I do need to look that up. So in an effort to write more than yesterday (e.g., nil) but herd myself back […]
I attended my first Muslim worship gathering today. It was about as I thought it might be (see: college student faith outreach center). I didn’t stop to consider how much I’d wish I knew Arabic… evidently understanding what’s said in worship is a deeply-embedded custom for me. ** By the time I made it back […]
“How do we protect the vulnerable, and fight for the common good without turning on ourselves? How do we do the right thing and speak the truth?” —Nadia Boltz-Weber, known on Twitter as @Sarcasticluther Today in my World Religions discussion section we tried to talk about violence and Islam. And violence and the US, and […]
…so instead I’m reading. But what do we mean by identity? The missiologist-theologians Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden, who have studied identity and dignity, nuance the differences between the two as those of substance and value, suggesting, “Identity answers the question ‘Who am I?’, while dignity answers the question, ‘What am I worth?’” […] Within […]
