By: Jonita Fair-Payton on April 2, 2024
This past week has been so peaceful and filled with so many joyful interactions. I love Holy Week; it is my favorite time of the year with Thanksgiving being a close second. I welcomed the week off from class, readings, and posts as I desperately needed the week to not be on a schedule. I…
By: John Fehlen on April 1, 2024
Remember back to when the “internet” first became a thing? We had AOL and the famed “You Got Mail” voice prompt.[1] MSN Messenger and Yahoo were kind of a big deal. Viral videos were just becoming something we talked about and shared via email on the internet; both things that in 1994 the hosts of…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on March 28, 2024
“Baptism is the dramatic or episodic representation of the act or ritual of initiation-or, at least, stands midway between the entirely “unconscious” or procedural forms of initiation and their semantically abstracted symbolic equivalents. Baptism is the spiritual birth(rebirth) as opposed to birth of the flesh.”[1] I preached last month on Renewal, and as I…
By: Kim Sanford on March 27, 2024
I know we’ve often been advised to not only read the books we’re assigned but also read about the books we’re assigned. That is, we’re meant to read reviews and the like, but I can’t say I always do. This week, though, for whatever reason I decided to start with some reviews of Jordan Peterson’s…
By: Dinka Utomo on March 23, 2024
And even if you’re a rationalist, say, and a cynic and a nihilist, and you say, well, nothing has any meaning, you still run into the problem of pain. Because pain undercuts your arguments and has a meaning. So there’s no escaping from the meaning, you can pretty much demolish all the positive parts of…
By: Cathy Glei on March 22, 2024
When I think about following Jesus, the word that encompasses my pursuit of Him as an apprenticeship. Apprenticeship is a method of training and on-the-job experience, developing a new generation of practitioners, often accompanied by some study and/or shared learning. Much of the training is done while working alongside an employer or instructor, who helps…
By: Todd E Henley on March 21, 2024
“Critical thinkers have an abiding interest in the problematic aspects of their own thinking, and they seek out these problem areas, target them, and change something about their thinking in order to reason more rationally, logically, and justifiably.”1 Thanks to this program and blogging every week, I am slowly, painfully, and finally learning how to…
By: Adam Harris on March 21, 2024
“In Judaism, we take a strong view on this, and we have now for 2,000 years and we say reading the Bible literally is heresy”.[i] This surprising statement was made by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, an orthodox chief Rabbi from the United Kingdom, in a lively debate with one of the most famous atheist and Evolutionary…
By: Jenny Dooley on March 21, 2024
I want to know Christ — yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. Philippians 3:10 NIV I approached Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson with anticipation and a weary brain. The academic writing style was dense and certain…
By: Mathieu Yuill on March 21, 2024
Navigating through Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief feels akin to embarking on a dense archaeological dig, where instead of unearthing fossils you’re discovering facets of human belief, through the unveiling of mythology, religion, and psychology. Peterson’s This book isn’t merely academic; it’s a deep dive into the collective human psyche, exploring…
By: John Fehlen on March 19, 2024
“Something we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand.” Jordan Peterson in Maps of Meaning When I read the opening sentence of Map of Meaning I instantly knew we were in for a doozy of a book. I’m somewhat familiar with Peterson’s more current writings, social media posts, podcasts, blogs, and YouTube…
By: Cathy Glei on March 15, 2024
In the last three years, our district has done a deep dive into helping staff across the district unravel implicit and explicit biases as author Pragya Agarwal, of the book Sway: Unraveling unconscious bias, proposes. Our district has strongly encouraged staff to become a part of the Justice Leaders Collaborative, a platform for social justice…
By: Dinka Utomo on March 14, 2024
I am very grateful to be able to be in this lecture program which brings me together with brilliant minds who build awareness to think critically about thoughts and attitudes of racism, inequality, exclusion, denigration, and the like. This program guides and shapes students to think and behave as leaders on a global scale. Namely,…
By: Adam Harris on March 14, 2024
A few months ago while I was reading through Luke’s Gospel I noticed how Jesus wrapped up a statement that caused me to think, “Huh, I never noticed that.” To give some context, in this section of Luke 5:37-39, Jesus is cautioning his listeners about putting new wine in old wineskins, and at the end…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on March 14, 2024
“During Hurricane Katrina in the US, two photographs in particular made news amid the wide-spread havoc and destruction. In one photo, a dark-skinned young man is shown in New Orleans flood-waters, a 12-pack of Pepsi under his right arm, holding a garbage bag with his left hand. A caption read: ‘A young man walks…
By: Mathieu Yuill on March 14, 2024
In August 1999 I was living at my parents house but our relationship was bad. Towards the end of the month they told me I had to leave and I had three days to move out. Heading into my second year of college and without much in the way of reserve funds I took to…
By: Todd E Henley on March 13, 2024
Two months ago, we sold our washer and dryer online and I watched as the customer backed into our driveway. When he stopped, I walked outside to greet him. I waved hello and the first words out of his mouth were, “Do you live here?” Honestly, I thought that was a foolish question. After a…
By: Jenny Dooley on March 13, 2024
Reading Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias by Dr. Pragya Agarwal, is a reflective process. It’s uncomfortable discussing bias due to my intersecting identities as a Caucasian American woman. I’m feeling awkward acknowledging the unconscious bias I experience as a female and as a former expatriate, while simultaneously feeling regretful of my unintentional biases. I’m painfully aware…
By: Kim Sanford on March 11, 2024
Three days ago, I picked up Sway by Pragya Agarwal.[1] I began reading, and by page 35 I knew what I wanted to write my blog post about. Because I want to keep you in suspense, I’ll come to that in a minute. After the first chapter, I intended to continue with an inspectional read,…
By: John Fehlen on March 11, 2024
I came into this blog post knowing that I wanted to title it: “Red and Yellow, Black and White.” If you grew up in the church, or for that matter, didn’t have your head buried in the sand for the entirety of your human existence, you would have [most likely] heard, or at least heard…
