Guest Blogger Critiques a Vintage Recipe: Santa Fe Soup
Guest blogger: Sarah Salinas, Theological Horizons Intern and lover of all foods Students were welcomed into the Bonhoeffer House this afternoon after one of the cooler weeks we've had in Charlottesville in a while. Karen mentioned that she'd be making soup on Tuesday, and I hadn't realized until I walked into the house today that I've missed that home comfort. After a long week of classes, soup can be a simple but effective remedy for stressful minds. I'm here to share the recipe, because this hearty soup should be a staple in everyone's kitchen this fall!
Santa Fe Soup
- 2 lbs ground turkey or beef
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 5-oz. envelopes ranch-style dressing mix
- 2 1.25-oz. envelopes taco seasoning mix
- 1 16-oz can black beans
- 1 16-oz. can kidney beans
- 1 16-oz. can pinto beans
- 1 16-oz. diced tomatoes with chiles, undrained
- 1 16-oz. can tomato wedges, undrained
- 2 16-oz cans white corn, undrained
- 2 cups water
- Sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese, and sliced green onions for garnish
Cook the meat & onion together until the meat is browned. Stir the ranch-style dressing mix & the taco seasoning into the meat. Add the remaining ingredients with their juices. Add the water and simmer for two hours. If the mixture is too thick, add more water. Garnish each serving with sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese, and sliced green onions, if desired. Serve with tortilla chips.
Celebrate! Party Pics and News
There’s nothing we love more than to see the Bonhoeffer House filled with friends--so imagine how delighted we were to welcome more than 100 students, faculty and friends for the Celebrate! event on Sept. 16. With the generous help of a great host committee, board members, and student volunteers, we celebrated 12 years of the Bonhoeffer House and the warm community that God has created here.
Remarks by Karen Wright Marsh, executive director:
This place was a dream once. It was named before we even saw it: the Bonhoeffer House. We were inspired by the heroic German pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who called Christians to live their faith at the center of the world. Bonhoeffer embodied a very personal witness to God’s grace and truth, as “Christ for others” and in his life he showed us how powerful, how beautiful life in community can be.
Charles and I were living in Baltimore, where he was teaching at Loyola. The two of us had founded Theological Horizons ten years before and begun the lifelong work of encouraging Christians in academia. Charles, ever the visionary, began talking about this Bonhoeffer House and we wondered what this dream might become.
When Charles accepted the faculty position at the University of Virginia in 1999, we searched Charlottesville for a “Bonhoeffer House”, this dream on our hearts.
We were looking for a place where faculty could talk about how their faith connected to their intellectual work and their teaching;
We were looking for a center of support the promising professors of tomorrow---graduate students following God’s call into academia;
We were looking for a home for our own family where we bring along students on their spiritual journeys, welcoming their questions and speaking God’s truth;
We hoping to create a mentoring community within the university--a Bonhoeffer House which would be “a welcoming home for engaging faith, thought and life”.
With the board of directors of Theological Horizons, Charles and I affirmed something that Dietrich Bonhoeffer himself said once: “I believe that God is about to accomplish something that we can only receive with the greatest wonder and awe.”
When we walked through the door at 1841 University Circle that autumn morning, we knew we’d found it. A place for community. A place for conversation, peace and friendship. A place for Christians and for seekers, too, inviting questions about spirit and life at the heart of the University. It was crystal clear—with its red tile roof and stucco walls it even looked like the Bonhoeffer home in Berlin-- which had us saying, “Wow! This IS a God thing!” We knew we were standing in the Bonhoeffer House.
Our family put in all we had to make this vision reality. The Theological Horizons board of directors and many partners invested generously, too. Together we claimed this Bonhoeffer House and put that plaque on the door, confident that God would provide for the future of the house.
Over the past 12 years, thousands of others have walked through this Bonhoeffer House door and stepped into God’s grace. While there’s nothing uncommon about the cooking here-- the theological insights we offer echo what Christians have believed through the century, there’s the welcoming fulfillment of Jesus’ promise: “Where two or three have come together in my name, I am there among them." (Matthew 18:20) Every time we offer up this space, we have truly opened the door for Christ.
And this happens often—just take the past four days. God was present on Thursday night when summer interns, community friends and graduate students discussed experiences of theology lived out in Kenya and Richmond. On Friday, Christ ministered among 35 college students reading C.S. Lewis over lunch in the living and then as a pack of middle school girls came for a Bible study. Yesterday, 5 friends arrived with armloads of flowers and tablecloths to create a welcome for you today. And so it goes.
It is our hope that all who come receive a spirit-filled embrace that Christ gives so generously. Even while the Bonhoeffer House echoes with the everyday sounds of our family and the barking dog, the antisocial cat, it has become something far more: the Bonhoeffer House is one small response to God’s call to be “Christ for others”.
You friends have been and continue to be critical to keeping the doors of the Bonhoeffer House open. Your friendship and your involvement sustain Theological Horizons, with its heart at the Bonhoeffer House and its programs reaching lives far beyond these walls. Today we thank you—and we offer gratitude for many partners who have walked with us all along the way-- for your prayers, for living this dream with us, in making this welcome for Christ over the past 12 years.
Sometimes when the roof is leaking, lunch is overcooked or resources are tight, we ask if we’re making a difference in the midst of the American university?
The writer Andy Crouch has an answer I love. He tells us to look to the fruit of our work. “Do we see a divine multiplication after we have done our best? Does a riotous abundance of grain spring up from a tiny, compact seed? This is grace: unearned, unexpected abundance that can leave us dizzy with joy. It is a return on investment that exceeds anything we could explain by our own effectiveness or efforts.”
Vintage, Bible Study & Morning Prayer are happening
Now you can see the flyer for our fall semester programs! Wow, these days are rich and full...Join us.
Step in for Morning Prayer in the UVa Chapel on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:15-8:45 am. God, music, friends--the best way to start the day.
The Breakfast Bible Study is on Wednesdays at 9 am. Saranell is teaching a series guided by the book Fresh Air, The Holy Spirit for an Inspired Life by Jack Levison. We are studying the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and will learn from Job, Daniel, Simeon, Chloe, Ezekiel, Jesus and Peter. Come and expect to encounter God in unexpected places. All are welcome! Students, faculty, community folks.
We've had one Vintage lunch so far (BBQ chicken & Augustine!) and are really excited about the theme for the fall: The Vintage Life. Each week we look at the lives of "Vintage" Christians throughout the centuries, enter their stories, read their words and seek to understand what they experienced. We're discovering how they encountered God in their doubts, joys, conflicts, questions and pleasures--and asking the question, "What elements of the Vintage Life are fruitful for us today?" Can't be here? Become a member (it's free) and you can read along with us as we post the texts for each week.
There are lots of other things going on--lectures, brown bag lunch workshops, student presentations and discussions.
Check out our calendar--and add it to you google calendar--and you won't miss anything.
Wahoo Welcomes (are you in the photo?)
Our intrepid team of upperclassmen & grad students delivered cookies to 57 first years in their dorms on Move In Day. The welcome continued as we hosted our annual Wahoo Welcome Lunch on August 31. More than 86 students dropped by for the traditional Bonhoeffer House lunch offerings: homemade iced tea, crunchy romaine salad, Cane's chicken strips and chocolate dessert...A great beginning to a new year! Our weekly Vintage lunch and conversation group begins the following Friday, Sept. 7 from 1-2 pm and features our favorite readings from the classic Christian tradition. All students are welcome! To see a map to the Bonhoeffer House
Night Prayer in the UVa Chapel - Aug 19
Our last summer Sunday evening prayer is this Sunday at 8 pm! Chris Campanelli will be bringing music as Saranell Hartman leads us in prayer and Scripture. Come as you are - if you've been moving into your student apartment, just driving back from vacation or enjoying one of the last days of summer. Hope to see you in the University of Virginia Chapel. (And Morning Prayer begins again on September 10 - every Monday/Tuesday/Thursday morning at 8:15)
Morning Prayer in the Chapel begins September 10
Morning Prayer in the UVa Chapel begins on Monday, September 10 and will continue each Monday, Tuesday and Thursday morning from 8:15 till 8:45. Cameron Archer will bring the music again and we've got a great core group of students and other from the UVa community joining with us for another year of meaningful mornings. Join us! Learn more
Hoo’s New at UVa? Move In Day Cookie Delivery
It’s tough to be the new kid at school, especially when your parents have just driven off in their minivan and left you alone in the enormous new world of college. (We know, you can hardly wait!) But before you make a thousand new friends, scale new intellectual heights and check out every cool activity that UVa has to offer, YOU NEED CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES.
That’s where we come in. There is a team of current Horizons Hoos ready to come by your dorm room on Move In Day with homemade cookies and a WARM WELCOME—along with directions to the Bonhoeffer House, your most promising source of free lunches and fellowship for the next four years. Our big Welcome Lunch is on Friday, August 31, by the way, so save that date.
If you are an incoming student—or know of a new student—send us a quick email right now (to info@theologicalhorizons.org) and give us NAME, DORM and ROOM NUMBER…and we’ll deliver those cookies (and enough for your roommate) on Saturday, August 25. We cannot wait to meet you!
Welcome to the new Theological Horizons website!
How have we been spending our summer, you ask? Redesigning the website! We hope that this will be the place you turn to for Christian scholarship—with lots of archived lectures, readings and resources—and a home for Christian community—with a current calendar of events, newsy blog and ways to get personal invitations to all that we do. (Click on the “ TH Members” flag to join for free and you won’t miss anything!) The new site was made possible by a special gift form Cantey and David Deeter and Anne and Chad Zimmerman in honor of Myra and Bob Marsh, in celebration of Bob’s 80th birthday. Bob is an emeritus board member and Myra and Bob are longtime partners in ministry. Happy birthday and many blessings, Bob!