An Advent Story: The Peace of Hildegard
A winter solstice (900 years ago)...
Imagine yourself in the remote monastery of Disibodenberg, enduring the frozen German midwinter. Your church's Advent demands strict fasting and penitence. With nothing but a cloak and an extinguished candle, you shiver in the dark. On this longest night of the year, the surrounding forest teems with fearsome demons and evil magic. Will Christmas ever come?
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), was consigned to the church as a young, sickly girl and shut up in a cell with Jutta, an older, solitary nun.
By God's grace, Hildegard grew up to be an innovative leader of her community: a composer, theologian and natural scientist versed in healing arts.
To a fearful church that preached wrath and condemnation, Hildgard shared astonishing visions: cosmic images of creation's vitality and Christ's redeeming power. Of peace.
To us this Advent, Hildegard speaks peace to our own dark, troubled world. "O Branch, coming into leaf just as dawn advances. Rejoice, be glad, and deem us helpless ones worthy; free us from evil habits, and reach out your hand to lift us."
Words from Hildegard von Bingen
The Man of Peace
The most radiant star of all rose and flamed, and a light like dawn sparkled on earth. In the brightness of that morning, God’s Spirit rose…
Then I saw a Man of Peace walk out of this bright dawn. He emptied His light out into the darkness, and the darkness pushed back, until He bled.
The person who lay prostrate in death felt the warmth of His finger, started shimmering, got up, and walked out.
This Man of Peace who walked out of the sunrise kept walking until He came into His glory, where everything is illuminated by the light of love and perfumed with His holiness.
Mary, whatever is small and unnoticed is like you --
growing, the greenest twig stirring in the rainy gusts that were all those questions asked by those who lived before your time
and spent their lives looking for God’s son to come.
The sun warmed you, and when the time was ripe,
you blossomed, smelling like balsam,
and the fragrance of your Bloom
renewed the spices’ dry perfume.
The earth rejoiced when your body grew wheat.
The sky celebrated by giving the grass dew,
and the birds built nests in your wheat,
and the food of the Eucharist was made for all humanity.
We feast on it, full of joy!
An Advent Story: The Love of Ramabai
Advent in India...
The Syriac Christians of Kerala trace their ancient faith to the apostle Thomas, Jesus' own disciple, who brought the Gospel to southern India in the year 52 A.D.! Even this Christmas, their churches will echo with the language spoken by Jesus and Thomas.
A world away, in northern India, a high-caste Hindu girl named Ramabai was born in 1858. Ramabai would find her path to Jesus born in Bethlehem not by way of religous legacy, but out of longing, compassionate love. This is her story.
Ramabai broke nearly every rule confining the life of a 19th century Brahmin Hindu woman. Ramabai, called Pandita ("scholar), was taught to read sacred Sanskrit by a father who urged her to "serve God all her life." After losing her parents to famine, she was widowed, a young mother alone at 23. She decided, on her own, to convert to Christianity, convinced that the religion of Jesus promised spiritual life and personal liberation.
In defiance of custom, Ramabai travelled to England and the United States, where she spoke out about the plight of Hindu widows, considered "cursed" by society, truly "the least of these" in India. She returned to build a church and open the Home of Learning for widows, a Christian refuge where rescued girls and women were employed in gardening, carpentry, sewing, and dairy farming -- a community that continues today. In the name of Jesus, the One who loves best, Ramabai created a place of life-giving welcome for her sisters.
An Advent Story: The Courage of Nicholas
Advent is crowded with characters...
...from the visionary Hebrew prophets to the announcing Gabriel, brave Mary, loyal Joseph, expectant Elizabeth, silenced Zachariah, and wild John the Baptist. We will follow them to the stable, where startled shepherds, seeking magi and rejoicing angels complete the scene -- and welcome, at last, the long expected One: the infant Jesus, God Incarnate. This Advent, we are encouraged along by other guides, as well: brothers and sisters from across the centuries who have traced the path back to Bethlehem. As we tell their stories each week, may these Saints of the Season impart the gifts of Advent: courage, hope, love and joy.
Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, preached the Gospel simply, wanting even the poorest in his care to know the Good News of Christ's coming. For the sake of these vulnerable ones, Nicholas stood up to all who abused their power and position, and pursued justice for his people in tangible ways.
Though persecuted and imprisoned, Nicholas distributed his own inheritance to those in need, secured grain in time of famine, saved the lives of three men wrongly condemned, and secured lower taxes for the ordinary citizens of Myra. To spare young impoverished women from lives of sexual slavery, Nicholas secretly provided gold for their marriage dowries.
Nicholas shows us how to live with courage and creativity, committed to that Jesus who came to earth "to live and die as one of us."
10 x 10 Minutes: Refreshing Study Breaks for Exam Days
You need a break! It can be tough to step away from important assignments or materials for an important exam, but studies have shown that regular breaks will actually increase your potential for success.
Skip the Instagram feed for now: a recent survey by Huffington Post found that online activities can significantly increase stress. There are other ways to recharge your batteries.
Sleep is good! Researchers tell us that 10-20 minutes is the ideal ‘power nap’ duration. A 60-minute rest period helps when you are attempting to memorize facts, names, dates, and other important items. 90-minute naps boost creativity and emotion-driven memories.
Other ways to re-fresh and re-focus…
We’ve thought of ten creative ways to make the most of a ten minute pause—wherever you may find yourself around the Grounds of the University of Virginia.
#1 Stop in to the UVa Chapel. Walk along the windows and find a piece of stained glass that draws your eye. Sit down, set a timer on your phone if you like (then put it away), and take ten minutes doing nothing but gazing at the window. Let your eye wander deeply into the colors, the lines and the images. Breathe deeply and let the quiet of the chapel surround you.
#2 Open the gate into an empty Pavilion Garden (you’ll find them behind both the East and West Lawn rooms & Pavilions). Set a timer on your phone (then put it away) and take ten minutes walking the garden paths. Step slowly, taking time to notice the path, the plantings, light in the sky. Listen for the noises of animals. Breathe in the fresh air. Walk a bit further along the path.
#3 Walk into the Fralin Museum of Art on Rugby Road. Leave your backpack in the coat room and wander into the galleries upstairs. Find a painting that intrigues you and stop in front of it. Sit down if you like. Set a timer on your phone (then put it away) and take ten minutes to lose yourself in the painting--taking in the details, wondering about the scene, maybe even imagining yourself in the painting. There’s no hurry.
#4 Climb up to the top of the marble steps of the Rotunda. Put down you backpack and sit looking out on the view from that height. Set a timer on your phone (then put it away) and take ten minutes to notice what you see from there: the people, the light, the natural beauty. Listen for sounds around you. Relax to know that, for now, you’re not doing anything at all.
#5 Step into the lobby of Old Cabell Hall. You are surrounded by Lincoln Perry’s mural, “Students’ Progress”. Set a timer on your phone (then put it away) and take ten minutes to peruse the painting, stopping wherever an image or a color draws you in. You don’t have to examine the whole painting. Notice the details in the mural. Imagine yourself in the scene. Lose yourself for a little while.
#6 Stop at your favorite coffee shop or café. Buy your favorite drink (or make it for free in your room). Sit down in an inviting chair—or take your drink outside. Leave aside your phone or your book or your laptop. For now, only savor the warmth, the flavor of this treat. Take all the time you need to drink it. Feel free to close your eyes or look at your surroundings. Daydream about the coming break. How will you relax then?
#7 If you’re in the library, stand up and stretch. Set a timer on your phone (then put it away) and take ten minutes to wander along shelves of books. Stop along the way to notice the titles; pick up books that interest you and flip through the pages, reading if something draws your eye. Look for engaging illustrations. There’s nothing you need to study or remember here. Simply enjoy.
#8 Find a place to sit down. Anywhere that feels out of the way. Outside on a bench, in the grass. Or inside in a comfortable chair or on the floor. Set a timer on your phone (then put it away) and take ten minutes to close your eyes and let your body relax. Imagine yourself in a place you love—or with people you enjoy. Put yourself in the scene, picturing details that take you deeper into that welcoming space. Allow your eyes to stay closed; nobody is watching you. Just rest for a while.
#9 Choose a piece of music—or a favorite playlist--and listen to it with earbuds. Wherever you are, take a wandering walk, letting the sounds fill your mind and your body. Don’t check your phone or do anything else right now; there will be time for that later. For these ten minutes, let the music be the soundtrack for your walk.
#10 Pause wherever you are. Get comfortable. Use your phone or laptop to visit the website, Pray as You Go. Explore this link: https://pray-as-you-go.org/prayer-resources/imagining-the-nativity/
Here you will find a series of short guided reflections. Choose a character from the nativity story and listen to that very short podcast. Put yourself into the story.
Or try out their 4 minute guided breathing exercises: https://pray-as-you-go.org/prayer-resources/prepare/
Attention & Desire | Isabelle Andrews '20
In our meeting on "Calling and Longing," we read David Foster Wallace's "This is Water" and Chris Yates' "The Loss of Longing in the Age of Curated Reality. Two themes stood out to me: attention and desire, and the power of redirecting both towards God.
"This is Water" discusses the power of intentional "attention." David Foster Wallace says we need to cultivate this intentionality as a practice. It is "learning to exercise some control over how and what you think...Being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and choose how you construct meaning from experience" (Wallace 3). Wallace describes this as one of the hardest things to do, but it is the only way to "freedom." He says "freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom" (8). Chris framed this in our discussion as "not freedom from, but freedom for something." In Wallace's description, by exercising limitation, we actually find limitless life. In difficult daily discipline, we find an abundance: relationship, joy, surprise. This inverse logic is the paradox of Christianity. I truly can't get over this! It confounds and delights me. For some reason, it has felt fresh to me this semester.
Foster proposes us to direct our attention towards others in the midst of the banal everyday. To do so, we need to practice intervening in our default "self-talk" that tells us we're the center of the universe. Recently, I've tried to become more aware of the "constant monologue inside [my] own head" (Wallace 2). When I'm walking down the street, I now notice what I'm thinking about: is it how I'm late? or I'm tired? Or I'm stressed? Or I feel confident? Or I have a great thing I can't wait to tell someone? How am I paying attention to myself as my "default setting" (Wallace)? How can I redirect my attention outward, expand my scope of vision to other people, and care for them? How can I practice this daily discipline so I can "sacrifice for them, in myriad petty little unsexy ways" (Wallace 8). I love that Wallace encourages us to build habits in the quotidian and every-day. It reminds me of Annie Dillard: "how we spend our days, is in fact, how we spend our lives" (Dillard). This theme of daily discipline builds on other texts I've encountered this semester on "the Good Life." In "Nicomachean Ethics," Aristotle described the construction of good character as a practice of habits. Ben Franklin used to account for his virtues in a daily book: critically and consistently checking himself. Wallace's commencement address is so powerful because it meets us here and now. It focuses on how we can practice in the grocery line or in traffic. Wallace challenges us to pursue something incredibly difficult but immensely rewarding.
I find this theme of "attention" colliding with the theme of "desire." Yates calls "desire" a "possessive agenda of self-creation" (Yates). It consumes and expands, and it sees the self as author and end-game (Yates). In a TED Talk by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, he describes how desiring "attention" inhibits him. He reports how he has experienced two powerful feelings: the feeling of getting attention, and the feeling of paying attention. When he is acting, he is "paying attention": an intense focus on something outside himself. He says "that feeling, that is what I love. That is creativity." This creativity sounds a lot like Wallace's "freedom," which we can only achieve by directing our attention outward, away from ourselves. Gordon-Levitt warns that, "our creativity is becoming more and more of a means to an end. And that end is to get attention.... In my experience, the more I go after that powerful feeling of paying attention, the happier I am. The more I go after the powerful feeling of getting attention, the unhappier I am" (Gordon-Levitt). There's that Christian reverse-logic again. It reminds me of the motto from my high school: "What we keep we lose; only what we give remains our own." Gordon- Levitt demonstrates Yates' point that desire (in this case for attention) consumes infinitely, but will never make us happy. Yates proposes that instead, we purposefully live on the boundary of "longing and satisfaction" (Yates 49). He, like Wallace, demonstrates that this "practice of longing" is difficult and illogical by worldly standards. We have to change our default setting of paying attention to ourselves and desiring "counterfeits" of longing. Yet, through this mindful practice, we can direct ourselves to long for and pay attention to God.
In Reverence & Thankfulness | Fourth Year Class Giving
As fourth year is nearly halfway over, I have begun to reflect on my time at UVa and the groups that played a major part in it. Theological Horizons is an organization that has blessed me beyond measure over the past three years, so that's why I'm giving back through Class Giving. Countless meals, intentional conversations, and unique learning experiences are just a few ways TH has enriched my UVa experience. Join me in giving back to Theological Horizons!
To give, follow these 4 easy steps:
Follow this link and fill out your gift amount.
Under the “I want my gift to support” section scroll down to the last option, “Other”, and designate how much you would like to give to Theological Horizons.
At the bottom of the page, select the box next to “My gift has special instructions” and in the text box that appears, enter “Theological Horizons” (completely spelled out).
Hit next to move to the next page and complete your payment information.
The most common gift is $20.20, but any amount helps! There is no minimum or maximum and we know the Lord will bless all contributions. For a local organization like Theological Horizons, donations go even further making a difference and impacting future students for years to come!
Grief & Grace - Reflections by Hannah Gross '20
For the first two years of my college, I tended to measure my faith in quantitative categories. I tallied the number of people I could convince to come to Christian events, the amount of Bible verses I could memorize, or how many quiet times I was able to squeeze in.
These practices are acts of faith to the Lord and are inherently good. The problem emerged once I began to equate my relationship with God to the output I was able to show for it.
I found pride and identity in how well I was meeting unspoken ministry expectations in college.
Then, in September of my third year, my stability was uprooted by tragedy. I lost my hero, my Dad, unexpectedly while I was here at school. I can’t really recall that week, but I remember being carried through the ER and how bright the lights were.
Coming back to school, it felt like the lights were still shining down on me. I was no longer in a place with God to continue serving in the roles I was in. This was terrifying, as I wondered who I would be without a title affirming my faith and goodness. Who am I if not the empathetic Christian? What if I don’t fully believe the scripture I read today? If God truly is all powerful and knowing, why would he let this happen?
All of the ugly, hard parts that I wanted to hide had been cast out and illuminated whether I like it or not. My deficits and fears had blinding spotlights on them and every person asked, “How can I help?”
I consider myself the luckiest to have such wonderful, caring friendships at UVA. However, that didn’t make it any easier to accept their aid. I had nothing to offer them in return and a voice in my head told me that I was needy, selfish, and inferior. I wondered if one day those people would grow weary of waiting for me to grow into a place where I had the emotional and financial capacity to give back to them.
For the remainder of the fall semester I was attempting to come to terms with my grief and depression. The latter a word I kept close to myself. I would walk around in a haze, overhearing complaints of papers, busyness, and traveling. It all felt trivial. Sometimes the sadness would drag me down to where I felt I couldn’t get up in the morning. Other times it would fade to the background and using a little bit of wit and laughter I could pass as okay.
The institutions I had built my relationship with God upon in college, failed me. There is no room for healing or grace in places that demand a full emotional and spiritual capacity from twenty year olds. I didn’t finish the race I intended to and no longer fit into the community I chose first semester. My faith was stripped down to what it was all along, a messy relationship between myself, a sinner, and a God who loves me regardless.
No one voluntarily enters a liminal space. Yet in this default posture of surrender, I was able to experience some of the greatest love. I have been provided for, comforted, and pointed back to truth in countless ways. Assurance of my belovedness came in the form of dark chocolate peanut butter cups and long drives and song suggestions. When prayers no longer left my lips with ease, they found the words I was searching for. When I felt that joy and hope were scarce, they lovingly guided me back towards abundance.
“This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds. ...your spirits don't rise until you get way down. Maybe it's because this - the mud, the bottom - is where it all rises from. ...when someone enters that valley with you, that mud, it somehow saves you again.” (Anne Lamott, a queen).
I was deep in the mud with my palms were open and high, trust that I was bitter and embarrassed about it, but radical grace found me time after time. Healing isn’t linear, it’s more like a half step forward followed by two giant leaps in the wrong freaking direction. As the seasons turned, I began to wonder if people were looking for me to transition back into my old positions of leadership. It was a pressure created internally, the pursuit of being “fine” enough to pick up where I left off.
Then I was gently reminded by those who entered the valley, that I serve a God of freedom and mercy. The Lord can handle the grief, doubt, and anger that still resurfaces now and then even if the communities and organizations I previously was apart of are not able to.
I trust that everything belongs, and that perhaps He will take the parts of my story that hurt and use it to remind someone else of how loved they are. He has the power to take grief and brokenness and turn it into a gift, an offering, to those around us. You don’t need a leadership title to do that, the title Child of God will suffice.
For the college student who is struggling, my hope is that you see your worth separate from your spiritual performance. May you instead count hard conversations, stillness, joyful banter, shared vulnerability, and even those moments of complete surrender as a reminder of your belovedness. Ah, the mystery of grace.
Seeking to Understand Belovedness in a World of Self-Actualization - Reflections by Caroline Carr Grant '20
As a child every night one of my parents used to sit on the edge of my bed and say a prayer before I went to sleep - a kind of spiritual “wrap up” to the day. These sweet prayers usually followed some kind of pattern - thanking the Lord for the day, for our family and friends, and finally for the “wonderful plan He has for my life”. And while this may not seem unusual or even particularly noteworthy, for many parents or guardians partake in the same kind of ritual every night, as I navigate my last year of college and am finding myself in a season of constant change - I have been thinking of these prayers a lot.
Fourth year is a funny thing - knowing that our time in college has an “expiration date” of sorts. Knowing that I am moving in a couple of months - just not knowing where or why. And while this is a season filled with lots of excitement and joy, for me it has also been a season of just praying, quite desperately at times, for the Lord to reveal to me, even in some small glimpse - the “wonderful plan He has for my life”.
However, the great fallacy of this prayer may be that what I actually seem to be asking the Lord for is not for him to reveal His plan to me - but rather to give me the control or sense of agency in my own life that I so crave. What I am really asking for is for Him to hand it all over to me - because my pride has tricked me into believing that I alone know what is best for my life. What I am really searching for is not a path to discerning the Lord’s plan for me but rather a path to self-actualization.
Amidst all of these things, these misguided and intimately human prayers, I have come to find myself living in a season that may be most characterized by tension. A tension between the voice of grace that whispers in my ear that I am the beloved of the Lord and in that truth I am meant to rest, and the other voice of my pride that tells me that I need to do it all, and actualize this “great plan for my life” myself.
However, as all too many of us know - at the end of the day the business of self-actualization is nothing shy of soul crushing work. It is wholly exhausting, and unfailingly impossible. Which for someone as prideful and controlling as myself, is a huge (continual) blow to my ego.
If you have spent any time with me over the past year you may know that I have been reading and re-reading Henri Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved. Finishing it, and living on the high of the inspirational and comfortable words of belovedness for about half a day, to just then come crashing down - falling back into old patterns of seeking affirmation for the life I live and the person I believe myself to be. However, I pick up this text again and again because in each and every “crashing down” (note - not in the “high”) - I do indeed learn a little bit more about the ways the Lord has called me His beloved. The ways he has freed me from my own pride, even when I don't want to be freed.
Nouwen tells us that “we were intimately loved long before our parents, teachers, spouses, children and friends loved us or wounded us”, and that this is “the truth of our lives”. Nouwen insists here that we were loved and chosen by the Lord long before we could even conceive of achievement, or pride, or GPA’s, or “wonderful plans for our lives”. And while I thank the Lord that this is true, I don’t want to gloss over the ways that this can be a hard pill to swallow. It is hard work to look at yourself in the mirror and reconcile with yourself (and the success obsessed world that we live in) that the truth of our belovedness, in all honesty, has nothing to do with us - and everything to do with God.
This is hard work - but if we are to exist in this world and not be crushed by the weight of it - it is important work. For me, in this season of uncertainty and prideful searching for answers to what constitutes this “plan for my life” I have found that attempting to cling to the truth that no matter where I am headed ( or not headed) come graduation in the spring, and no matter how many times my attempts at prideful self actualization continue to fail - the fact that I was loved by the Lord long before I knew of things like “consulting jobs” or “research fellowships” is not only never failing, it is perpetually freeing.
Recently I heard someone say that “God does have a wonderful plan for your life. But blessedly that is not the point”. Praise be to the Lord that it is not the point - but that undertaking the lifelong journey of claiming the truth that we are beloved by God is.
Farmers & Hunters | Reflections by Horizons Fellow Callie Gaskins '20
The evening of our September Horizons Fellows gathering, one of my "fellow Fellows" shared a bit of advice that her mother had given her when she was growing up. "Some people," she said, "are farmers. They cultivate the ground where they are. Others are hunters, always chasing their prey to new places." We dwelt on this idea as a group for a while, easily relating it to this time in our lives—our fourth and final year at the University—in which imminent transition is never far from our minds. Some of us—the hunters—felt pulled forward to the "next thing," and the next, and the next, ambitious and hungry for the future. Others—the farmers—felt deeply rooted in the present, and hoped to avoid thinking about this "next thing" for fear that it would diminish the beauty of the now.
I immediately identified myself as a farmer. I'm a self-diagnosed homebody whose idea of fun is to clean the house so that I can revel in the joy of a sparkling kitchen as I wait for the tea kettle to brew. I've never been one to look too hard for new experiences, and when they do show up at my doorstep, I spend more time than necessary evaluating them and making sure that they won't disrupt my routine too much. Recently, I've found myself gritting my teeth when my peers exclaim with excitement that they're off to the career fair or a job interview. Just a minute, I want to tell them, this moment isn't over yet! Slow down!
Like so many others, I am all too inclined to think that my way is the right way, and this remains true in the farmer-hunter breakdown. As the hunters in my life have rejoiced in their steps towards the future, I haven't wholeheartedly celebrated these joys with them. There's a small part of me that believes that they're wrong. I begrudge them their excitement because I'm content with the way things are now, even though I know that change is inevitable.
As I've continued to ruminate on our evening together over the last few weeks —and this part of the conversation, in particular—I've realized that the farmer-hunter dichotomy isn't as clear cut as it initially seemed. Although I do long to remain wholly invested in this place and in its people, I feel my heart tugging me towards other places and other people. As much as I love devoting my time to the extracurriculars that I have been involved in for the past few years, I'm beginning to realize that I'm ready for new and different ways of spending my time. I still see beauty in my day-to-day, of course, but I've noticed myself longing for a new routine.
I'm no hunter, and I don't think I'll ever be one, but I'm beginning to learn that it's okay—even good!—to venture forth with anticipation, that doing so doesn't have to mean giving up on the present moment. So, I'll continue to till and plant seeds in the soil where I am, but eventually the crops will need to be rotated, and when they do, I'll be ready.
C.S. Lewis Onstage in Cville on November 14! $5 for students.
Thursday, November 14 at the Paramount.
UVa & PVCC student tickets are only $5! Buy before Nov. 1 & sit with us.
Get $5 tickets: Venmo @Theological-Horizons
or credit card https://donate.theologicalhorizons.org/
A Journey to Vulnerability at UVa | Reflections by Fellow Logan Tyree
When I came to UVa, I brought with me a story that had never been told. For all of my life, I had kept everything bottled up. I had never truly let my wall down with anyone, never opened up about the things I had been through or was going through, and certainly never let anyone see the real me. For me, I felt a lot of apprehension about opening up to people and letting them into my world. I was fearful of judgement and I definitely didn’t want to burden anyone else with my problems. Why would anyone care to hear about what I’ve been through? What good will come out of talking about all of the wrong I’ve experienced? I don’t want to cry in front of anyone! These were some of the thoughts that circulated in my mind when I even remotely began to think about sharing anything about my life. Needless to say, vulnerability was not something that I had practiced or enjoyed.
I continued to live my life this way for the first part of college. I wasn’t making good friends, I wasn’t making good decisions, and I felt like the people around me really didn’t care too much about what was actually going on in my life. I continued to walk these grounds feeling incredibly heavy, unknown, and acutely lonely. How could there be so many people around me, yet I still feel so lonely? However, something inside of me began to change when I joined the Christian community at UVa. I specifically remember the first small group I ever went to and how loved I felt by a bunch of strangers. I felt valued and known, which is something I hadn’t felt in the longest time. Slowly I began to realize that all of the stuff I had kept inside for so long needed to come out. I didn’t have to be alone in my struggles and I certainly didn’t have to carry all of this weight by myself. I had spent all of my life hiding my story out of fear and anxiety. All of that seemed to change when I was shown the love of Jesus through the love of others.
As I’ve journeyed through college, I have become more vulnerable and more emotional than I could have imagined. It feels good. It feels real. I have shared my story with people and groups a number of times and each time I do, I am reminded the importance of a story. I tell you about my journey because I would have never been able to get to this point if it were not for the Christian community at UVa. When we went on our retreat for the Horizon’s Fellows this fall, one thing we were asked to do was to share our story. I was admittedly a little nervous to share, but I knew that I would be welcomed, known, and loved—just as I had been many times before. I saw this moment as somewhat of a culmination of my four-year journey to vulnerability at UVa. I have spent a lot of time at this university learning the value of a story, learning what it meant to be vulnerable, learning what it meant to be a good listener and friend, and so much more. As I sat in my chair at the retreat and prepared myself to share, I thought to myself, “this is it.” While I know that moment didn’t mark the end of my journey, it did represent something significant to me. It represented all of those times I was scared to share and refrained. It represented the countless times I was reminded that I was loved. It represented a journey—something bigger than myself. I am thankful for the Christian community at UVA for helping me get to where I am today. I am stronger, a better lover, and more vulnerable than ever before. The journey continues.
Interview with Goodwin Prize Winner - Hina Khalid
The 2019 $1,000 Goodwin Prize has been awarded to Hina Khalid (University of Cambridge) for the essay, “At the bedside: a theological consideration of the role of silence and touch in the accompaniment of the dying.” More about the Goodwin Writing Prizes.
What inspired you to pursue an advanced degree in theology?
My journey to the vast and verdant tracts of theological thought finds its root in some rather mundane patterns of my childhood: listening to devotional songs on long car journeys, learning sacred Arabic formulas before learning to speak English, never eating a meal before first expressing gratitude to God. Growing up, then, religion was always something that subtly and visibly shaped the contours of my family life. Whether it was the hope of exam success, the wish for restored health, the anxieties of moving home, there was a specific prayer (which was often deeply poetic) for every conceivable eventuality: and it is this language of collective prayer, of song, of poetry, that constituted the religious fibers of my childhood. Over time, my interest in how religious thought shapes our relation to self, others, and the environment, deepened – and I have been fortunate, over the course of my undergraduate and postgraduate studies, to have encountered new ways of understanding and ‘inhabiting’ religious identity as a mode of both enriching personal devotional practice and sustaining (even deepening) outward, social action. More recently, I have returned to a few of the songs and prayers that formed some of my initial encounters with religious thought, in an effort to better understand how longings for the ‘transcendent’ become encoded in poetic verse and informed by cultural vernaculars.
What do you hope to do with your degree?
I hope to continue on to doctorate study and in a professional capacity, to seek new, creative ways of bringing the wisdom and insights of theological texts to our most pressing social and environmental issues today.
Where do you see connections between your personal faith, your intellectual work and the other aspects of your life?
My academic studies have constantly introduced me to new ways of conceptualizing, imagining, envisioning and indwelling the world - sometimes calling me to a renewed appreciation of my own personal and social relations, at other times eliciting a more attentive regard for the earth and its diverse creatures, and often compelling me to pause and ask, 'but how is God-talk possible from within our conditions of human finitude?’ I have been persistently drawn to mystical literature as presenting a mode of living with these questions, not always needing to resolve or dissolve them abstractly or conceptually at a single stroke, but bodying forth a devotional sensibility which recognizes that these questions can never admit of a final ‘closure’ (at least not in this life). Reading the utterances – at times broken, fragmented, and cryptic - of saints alongside the treatises – occasionally systematic, formulaic, and doctrinal - of theologians has imbued my own study with a kind of accepting uncertainty which patiently waits upon God; a recognition that however much we are called upon to consciously employ our God-given faculties of reason, often the most profound witness to God comes by way of a silent, faithful attentiveness to that which forever eludes our cognitive-experiential grasp.
How would you summarize your paper for someone without a theological background?
This paper is situated at the intersection of medical ethics and theology – more specifically, it sets forth a theological reading of certain practices in the realm of palliative care (care for the terminally ill and the dying). Cicely Saunders, who founded the first modern hospice, articulated her vision of good care for the dying as a profound mode of attentive presence, a being with the other even when he/she cannot be cured in the medical sense. I argue that the embodied practices of ‘silence’ i.e. sitting with a dying person in silence and ‘touch’ i.e. a gentle stroke of the hand, both constitute and make visible one’s love for the particular person, a love which is upheld by the sustaining foundation of God’s own love. Essentially, such concrete ways of being present to another tangibly affirm that we do not ‘drop’ or abandon others when they are no longer materially or economically productive: in this regard, the hospice ethos aligns with the Christian ethic of human personhood as determined ultimately, not by the person’s functional/material abilities, but to his/her abiding in the everlasting love of God. I thus draw on theological texts outlining the doctrine of creation and relationality, and bring these into dialogue with recent medical literature in the field of palliative care, to suggest that our embodied modes of lovingly attesting and bearing witness to the reality of an other, become finite reflections of and participations in the very ground of God’s love.
How might this award make a difference in your life?
The subject of this paper is one very close to my heart, and I am deeply humbled by this recognition - which suggests, for me, that some of its insights might be deemed practicable in contexts of care and in broader theological reflection on faith-based practice. The relational ethics that, I think, a Christian metaphysics makes possible, re-situates our personal and communal relations in the light of the infinite self-giving of God - and in doing so, endows those relations with a profound spiritual potency. Reflecting on how this dynamic bears on the specific context of palliative care has been thoroughly stimulating, and I am encouraged by this prize to continue thinking about these theological notions as well as striving to align my actions with them.
How do you spend your time when you are not studying?
In my free time, I enjoy both listening to music and (attempting to) play some songs on piano, playing board games, watching Bollywood films, exercising, and cooking. I am also a keen traveller.
Any other comments?
A huge thank you to the Theological Horizons team! And a huge thank you to my supervisors who have shown me just how scholarly rigor can co-exist with a generosity of heart and spirit. The inspiration for this essay came from my father, whose silent and humble faith continues to guide me in all my academic and personal endeavors today.
Interview with Goodwin Prize Winner Drew Masterson
Drew Masterson (Duke Divinity School) has been awarded $500 2019 Goodwin Prize for the essay, “Challenging Our Limits or Sacrificing Our Relationity? Karl Barth, Colin Gunton, and Transhumanist Anthropologies.” More about the Goodwin Prizes.
What inspired you to pursue an advanced degree in theology?
A few years ago, I came into contact with the Christian Study Center movement, and the knack these spaces had for bringing together intellectual rigor, spiritual formation, and radical hospitality immediately drew me in. I felt a strong sense of call to help spaces like that flourish, whether around college campuses or elsewhere, and one clear way I could do that was to pursue further study.
What do you hope to do with your degree?
I hope to be of service to God’s people in spaces that come alongside local churches and offer them ways to go deeper— intellectually, spiritually, and relationally— than their current capacities allow.
Where do you see connections between your personal faith, your intellectual work and the other aspects of your life?
“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (Ps 24:1)! I find it wonderfully energizing to know that working towards a deeper understanding of the world around us can (and should) at the same time equip me to worship the Creator God more faithfully and to work for the flourishing of God’s creation more joyfully.
How would you summarize your paper for someone without a theological background?
We are all aware that technology is everywhere in our culture. Something which we might not be as attuned is how this proliferation of technology has shaped the way we view our bodies. It is becoming more and more common to describe our bodies as if they are not much more than highly complicated computers; we are “hardwired” for this and only have “bandwidth” for that. These are simple examples, but they represent a stream of ideas that has been on the rise since the Enlightenment: the idea that the core of our humanity, what really makes us people, are our rational minds.
The first part of my paper explores the long history of this idea, how it arose within Christianity from a particular understanding of being “made in the image of God” and how it eventually broke from its Christian moorings after the Industrial Revolution and can be found most clearly articulated in the contemporary Transhumanist movement. I then wanted to point out some of the ethical repercussions that flow out of this idea. In essence, once we come to see our ourselves as our minds and our minds as computers, we can begin to see our messy, needy, and decaying bodies as the primary obstacles keeping us from the continued advancement and preservation of our cognitive selves. So we look for technological solutions to upgrade ourselves or our children; we “challenge our limits,” as Transhumanists like to say. But this can lead us to be so focused on the possible future we might one day achieve that we overlook the already-present needs of those around us. If we are truly able to advance our statuses as humans through technological means, what happens to those who don’t have the money or the access to these technologies? Many ethicists are worried that these programs of human advancement will result in the sub-humanizing of whole swaths of the global population.
The final part of my paper addresses how two Christian theologians from the 20th Century, Karl Barth and Colin Gunton, offer interpretations of being “made in the image of God” that could be helpful to the church as we seek to offer a Christian response to Transhumanism’s view of the person. Barth argues that if you want to know what it really means to be a human, look at Jesus. Through his willingness to become a suffering and dying body, his lived pattern of healing and reconciliation, and his vision of an embodied eternal communion with God, Jesus’ life offers a powerful counter to Transhumanist visions of the good life. For his part, Gunton stresses that we are made in the image of a Trinitarian God. Because God is “made up" of his relationships as Father, Son, and Spirit, anything that such a God creates will similarly be “made up” of their own relationships. This makes us deeply connected to the lives of other people and creatures around us, which means that our own flourishing must necessarily involve far more than simply each of our own individual lives. Taking Barth and Gunton together, we can gain a fundamentally relational and embodied vision of human life and flourishing that cuts against the grain of Transhumanism’s emphasis upon the preservation of individual collections of cognitive tissue.
How might this award make a difference in your life?
This is a deeply meaningful honor that will play an important role in helping me discern my vocation as a scholar.
How do you spend your time when you are not studying?
My wife and I love to hike, explore local cuisine, and host movie discussion nights at our house.
Any other comments?
I am deeply grateful to my thesis advisor at Duke Divinity, Daniel Train, whose generous gift of time, attention, and advice were critical to the development of this paper.
Interview with Goodwin Prize Winner, Jonathan Platter
The $2,500 2019 Goodwin Prize has been awarded to Jonathan M. Platter (University of Cambridge) for the essay, "Divine Simplicity and Scripture: A Theological Reading of Exodus 3:14." Platter’s faculty advisor, professor Ian McFarland, receives an award of $500. More about the Goodwin Prizes.
What inspired you to pursue an advanced degree in theology?
I genuinely love the work of theology. Looking back, I think this has to do with childhood experiences in a family that was active in the church and with parents who always took my siblings’ and my questions seriously by offering the best answers they could and helping us to find resources. My dad helped to build and maintain our city’s public library, so I remember spending a lot of time there while he worked. Books and the opportunities for exploration they provide became something of a natural habitat for me because of that. Pursuing an advanced degree in theology in particular springs from the twin convictions that thinking about God so outstrips our reach as to be unending and at the same time it is God’s infinite and generative love that makes all our thought and imagination possible. Consequently, the academic work of thinking about God is about being initiated into a life-long task, one that deserves to be disciplined with appropriate intellectual practices and habits of mind.
What do you hope to do with your degree?
I hope to teach theology in a university or seminary context.
Where do you see connections between your personal faith, your intellectual work and the other aspects of your life?
I think life, faith, and intellectual work are mutually implicated, perhaps most explicitly so when one’s intellectual work is theology. For a particularly transparent example, working to interpret and articulate the doctrine of creation is bound up with how one inhabits the world and relates to the Creator. Love and wonder for the world joins naturally with the intellectual work of thinking about the ongoing activity of God to give existence to each creature. And this latter thought doubles back to one’s vision of the world so that each creature can be perceived as the radiance of God’s generous love. In parenting, this also involves joining with my child to enact forms of attention, care, and imagination in relation to the things around us. Love and wonder for God and creation flow into the practices that we try to cultivate as a family, and these practices in turn cultivate new moments of love and wonder, which then further motivates the intellectual work of thinking about God’s creative activity. And so on… In this way, faith, intellectual work, and personal life together form a kind of ongoing spiritual exercise in which each aspect deepens the others.
How would you summarize your paper for someone without a theological background?
My paper addresses an aspect of the doctrine of God called divine simplicity, which is a concept that has a long tradition in theology but is not as much talked about recently. At its core, the doctrine of divine simplicity holds that God is not made up of parts—God is “simple” in the sense that God is not “composed” of more basic kinds of stuff. The doctrine can be rather philosophical, and most of the debates about it today are concerned with the metaphysics and ontology involved. Exodus 3:14, where God provides the name “I am who I am,” was important for pre-modern articulations of divine simplicity because it was taken to suggest that God is simply being-itself, an unlimited act of existence.
The verse is not typically interpreted this way anymore. This is partly because of some important questions about how to translate the original Hebrew, but it also has to do with the sense that using Exod. 3:14 to defend divine simplicity is an especially egregious example of “proof-texting”—using a verse to make a theological point far removed from the narrative context. I try to argue in my paper that divine simplicity is in fact relevant to the narrative context, because Moses is asking for God’s name in order to confirm that God can be trusted in the mission Moses is being called to and that God is capable of fulfilling the mission in and with Moses. By asking about God’s name, Moses is also asking about God’s reality or nature. The way that divine simplicity expresses the unique mode of God’s reality fits well in this context. If the name, “I am who I am,” resonates with an unlimited, qualitatively different mode of existence (like simply “being-itself”), then the name bears forth God’s reality in such a way as to disrupt the powers by which Egypt kept God’s people enslaved and to enable Moses’ vocation as an act of trust in the God so named.
So, trusting God is bound up with how we think of God’s reality. Divine simplicity, and Exod. 3:14, involve us in a radical vision of God, one that perpetually leads us to see God at the center of all things and beyond all things, to see God as the ultimate object of trust because God is the most intimate source of being.
How might this award make a difference in your life?
First, it is a significant encouragement. In academia, many of us experience the “imposter syndrome,” and I admit that I almost didn’t submit my essay to the contest because I was all too aware of its weaknesses and limitations. For me, then, this is a reminder to trust friends, peers, mentors, and myself, even when doing so requires an uncomfortable degree of vulnerability.
Second, the award will provide some financial cushion as I conclude my degree program. My wife and I are anticipating a transition period and don’t know what to expect on the other side. The prospect is a little less daunting because of the award money.
How do you spend your time when you are not studying?
I am the primary caregiver for our 2.5 year-old son; so when I’m not studying, I’m likely immersed in conversations between an excavator and a dump truck or driving toy fire-engines to extinguish fire on the bookshelves (I wonder why it is that my theology books are often the object of imagined fires…). I also enjoy learning languages, reading (beyond just for studies), and cooking and baking.
Any other comments?
I am grateful to Theological Horizons for the honor of this award. I’m also grateful for my supervisor, Ian McFarland, and the many friends here in Cambridge and abroad with whom I get to discuss theological matters—their diverse specialisms and willingness to discuss such a seemingly bizarre and archaic doctrine as divine simplicity enrich my thinking greatly. Finally, I want to thank my wife, Janette, for her work to support our family and for discussing (or at least listening to me discuss) things like divine simplicity even without having a personal interest in the subject. I believe that love for God and our sense of God’s own love are shaped by our closest relationships: I’m sure I would know God’s love through a much darker glass apart from daily life with Janette and our son.
Vocation & Discernment | A talk by Rev. Bill Haley for our Horizons Fellows
Every year, our Horizons Fellows travel to Corhaven retreat farm, just north of Harrisonburg for 24 hours to share their stories, eat an incredible locally grown vegetarian meal by host, Tara Haley, and listen to her husband, Rev. Bill Haley, share about their family’s vocational journey along with some teachings on vocation and discernment.
Run time is 1.5 hours. Take a walk, fold the laundry, go for a drive. Listen here.
New Vintage Lunch Series | How to Live: Invitations for Everyone
Vintage Lunches | Fall 2019
Life and How to Live It: Invitations for Everyone
“Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” ---Abraham Joshua Heschel
The Christian spiritual life is not about achievement; it’s about amazement. It’s not about labor; it’s about play. This semester we explore the abundant opportunities to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8) Join us as any Friday as we reclaim our lives and our peace---one invitation at a time. With fee lunch every time!
Fall Semester Schedule (1-2pm at Common Grounds, 480 Rugby Road. All are welcome!)
Sept 13 | Pay Attention: the Art & Science of Play, Practices & Habits
Sept 20 | To Be Spiritual is to be Amazed: a theology of Christian mindfulness
Sept 27 | Wander Through Scripture with Robert Cunningham, RUF Director
Oct 4 | Embody Scripture: acting out the Word with Kate Burke, UVa drama professor emerita
Oct 11 | Pray Your Anything: Jesus Prayer | Breath prayers | Help, Thanks, Wow!
Oct 18 | Life with Others: Ask 3 Good Questions| Just Connect |Say Thank You
Oct 25 | Body, Mind, Spirit: Laugh, Move, Sing with Terry Lindvall, Virginia Wesleyan Communications professor
Nov 1 | Morning Wake Ups: Make a Map | Choose your Intention | Fuel Up
Nov 8 | Lunch Breaks: Review the News |1 Small Thing with Great Love | Use Your Words
Nov 15 | Happy Hour Stretches: Do That Thing | Go To Your Edge | Give It Away | Bring Beauty
Nov 22 | Evening Rituals: Make a List | Do Nothing with Nobody | Walk Backwards | Get Ready to Rest
Nov 29 – Thanksgiving
Dec 6 | Mindfulness & Mental Health: Statio | Get Away | Hit Pause | Follow Your Breath
Theology of Work | Talk by Karen Wright Marsh
• What and who shapes my future?
• How do I know if I’m doing what I’m created to do?
• Does God care about my career path as much as my Christian community?
• Am I prepared for life after graduation?
These are questions undergraduates ask as they consider the ambiguous "post-college" time of life. Figuring out how your career, social life, basic responsibilities, and spiritual life connect can become more complicated than you may want to admit. But, God has given you everything you need to do “adulting” well.
Contrary to rumors around this transition, life after graduation does not need to be defined by dissonance and confusion but can be enjoyable and purposeful. Taking advantage of available resources and preparing yourself with realistic expectations can set you up to enter this next phase of life with anticipation and freedom in the journey God has promised to lead you through.
The Faith, Work & Calling Conference, provided a theological framework for your identity and calling, learn why a church community is crucial to your flourishing, and build a game-plan for next steps in your career.
This conference was be packed with practical steps for how to discern calling and time to process what's next in your life. You'll also have opportunities for conversations with community members in various industries to learn how they integrate faith and work.
Karen Wright Marsh, the Key Note speaker, serves as Executive Director and Co-Founder of Theological Horizons, a university ministry at University of Virginia (Charlottesville) that works to advance theological scholarship at the intersection of faith, thought, and life.
Three Women of the Faith - Talk by Karen Wright Marsh
In this talk, given to a women's group in Charlottesville, Virginia, Karen Marsh shares powerful stories of three women of the faith with us as a means of pushing us to think about what emotions we are carrying, and how we are bringing them to the Lord.
Watch (or listen) to the video here.
Julian Norwich
Amanda Berry Smith
Thérèse of Lisieux
Post-Easter Cravings for the Tangible Body of Christ | Reflections by Zoe Larmey '21
These two sculptures are my set of handcrafted confessions. They are rough to the touch and heavy in the hands and to me, their weight is comforting. They are my confessions of a craving that has stayed with me in the aftermath of the Easter season: to encounter a touchable God.
I will clarify for the sake of reader interpretation: this was not my attempt to fashion idols out of bronze and I have no intention of worshiping these pieces. They are created as hand held rosaries of sorts to accompany prayers that surpass words.
Recently, I noticed that the Easter traditions I partake in often guide me to the contemplation of the human body and its shortcomings. Lenten fasting, in the past, has challenged both my reverence and resistance to appetite. Communion reminds me of “the body of Christ,” which I receive as a pinch of bread. This year, however, even as a good month has passed since Easter festivities, I have remained most fixated on the character of Thomas, and his brief appearance at the end of the resurrection narrative in the book of John.
In the exchange that would give him the unfortunate reputation of “The Doubter,” Thomas declares that he would not believe in the living Jesus unless he could touch the scars on his hands and feet. To me, this statement is grounding. It allows me to appreciate the absurdity of a story that Easter celebrates so redundantly. It is not a lesson in doubt for me as it is a recognition that the miraculous is still present in the midst of a mundane, material world. More so, this story reiterates the affirmation that the human world matters enough that the Eternal became ephemeral in human form. It matters enough that the resurrected Christ assumed a body that could be touched by human hands. It affirms that the work of justice that we do in this world matters also.
There is time to dwell on the unseen and ungraspable images of God. But right now I am interested in the simple realness of a scarred hand that prompted the simplicity of Thomas’ exclamation, “My Lord and my God.”
Learning A Radical E Pluribus Unum | Reflections by Fellow Caitlin Flanagan '19
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” John Muir
The first essay I wrote for an English class in college was about the “privacy of the soul” in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Although I cringe now reading over the apparent and enthusiastic belief I had discovered Woolf’s use of the stream of consciousness method myself, it is evidently written from a place of personal investment. My first reading of Woolf’s literature sparked in me an appreciation for the capacity of literature to show reverence for the unique interiority of each individual soul. I loved the line in the novel, “There is a dignity in people; a solitude; even between husband and wife a gulf; and that one must respect,” and carried an interest in the ways literature could express that fundamental personal solitude into the remainder of my studies.
I think a literary lens on essential aloneness, particularly on the value of each individual story, helps navigate a world of difference with compassion. In the stories of his community-making, Jesus meets each person with an emphasis on their particular hearts and stories, and rejects the urge to categorize them according to their work, gender, or ethnicity. Just as I relished literature for the way it chewed over the contradictions, wonders, and questions of every human person, I tried to push myself to meet each person with a readiness to be surprised. At a place like UVa, where there are so many markers of social belonging to lend quick, shallow categorization to each person I met—from the Greek letters on their t-shirt and the buttons on their backpack, to their major and hometown—it takes a conscious decision to expect the unexpected. To the extent that I have at least tried to refrain from judging a person according to the stories told about them, their imposed narratives, I have benefited enormously.
We each know that we ourselves do not belong firmly within one, static identity, and even often surprise ourselves with the person we are becoming. My love for literature has accompanied my belief in a God who writes into each individual a story worth telling. I think a respect for the self as a radically unique and complex being has enhanced both my personal experience of college, as I have given myself time for reflection and allowed myself to defy certain imposed categorizations, and my engagement with others, as I have worked to open my mind to appreciating their narratives for the ways they tell them and understand them, rather than for the ways they can fit into my own.
Yet, while I can look back on these four years and identify the ways I grew in my appreciation for human solitude, I feel just as strongly that I have a greater awareness of connectedness. A writer I studied for my senior thesis, Rebecca Solnit, writes in an essay on hope, history, and indirect consequences that she thinks the only way “to stop tyranny and destruction” would be a society which is a “radical e pluribus unum,” one which compassionately remembers, retells, and celebrates stories of self, other, and together. A compassionate democracy looks beyond individual freedom and individual responsibility to see the connections which necessarily exist between people, between the ecology and people, between past and present, between different ideas. Like Walt Whitman’s guiding metaphor in Leaves of Grass, Solnit theorizes a thriving democracy which both recognizes the pluribus: that each human soul stands erect as one individual, solitudinous leaf of grass, one which carries its own meaning, responsibility, and dignity; and which asserts the great unum, the unity between all living things in this world that must be nurtured and recognized.
One quote from Mother Teresa has entered into my mind many times in college: “If we have forgotten who we are, it is because we have forgotten we belong to one another.” This is a testament to a fundamental interconnectedness, a belief that fullness of self is only found in depth of relationship. Living outside of a family unit for the first time, it can be easy to operate as a lone agent, responsible to and for none. For me, though, I often felt unmoored when I only conceptualized my time in terms of my own needs and goals. In close community, and with the recognition of the ways my time can be used for others, I found it easier to escape the sadness of self-sufficiency. In love of others, the formation of a personal identity is not a stressful, abstract endeavor to find myself and then express that self through the clothes I wear or my social media posts. Rather, I have tried to, and will continue to try to, find myself in the work of love—a more complicated, flawed, and beautiful sense of self, which is not ever static, but grows in certain directions. The belief that I am more fully myself when I am in community with others removes the heavy burden from my shoulders that I need to enter relationship with an articulable and identifiable identity, and frees me to find myself in the convoluted, scrappy, and wonderful work of human relationship.
I think an increased sense of connection also lends greater power to the decisions I make, whether out of generosity and love or self-interest and fear. I am often struck by the ways that the love we experience from others either limits or enables increased love for others. The connections between the language of individual compassion and large-scale kingdom-building in Jesus’ message lends a deep significance to the power of the everyday. Each specific decision to love another, from a heartfelt apology to a cookie on a sad day, has profound, compounding resonances, as another immortal soul internalizes the compassion they have been given and walks into the world with increased generosity and openness. Similarly, I have tried to view the pain I have experienced from negligent friends or cutting comments in terms of a larger network of shame and frustration, to imagine the connections between the way they are treating me and the way they have been made to feel. This is an essentially anti-American idea, as connection can be seen as undercutting individualistic responsibility, but has been a perspective that has both enabled me to take the consequences of my own choices seriously and to view the mistakes of others with human empathy.
As I move into a new space, attempting to find a home there, I hope I remain connected to the person I felt myself becoming in college with understanding and love, even as I continue to grow and change. I hope I remain grateful for my connections to the people who loved and shaped me in this place, even as we all forge relationships in these new places. I hope I see the vine upon which we are all branches, the body of which we are all parts, the family within which we are all brothers and sisters. I hope, too, I value each individual soul for its particularities. I hope I never lose the sense that I belong to others. My time in college, with both its radical loneliness and depth of community, makes me hope for a future characterized by a radical e pluribus unum, a divine unity founded on reverence for each soul as an individual miracle.