By: Nicole Richardson on September 9, 2021
“Unclean! Unclean!”, the leper shouts while walking through a crowd, all the while ringing the bell to announce his passing to those within ear shot. What a compassionate construct for caring for the humanity of the sick. Just kidding. But it is a historical testament about how human beings passive aggressively hold to power through…
By: Andy Hale on September 9, 2021
Raised in Alabaster, Alabama, I spent the first six years of my life in between Selma and Birmingham. These two places that hold great significance in the fight for equal rights for Black Americans; Selma for the second march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in response to Bloody Sunday, hundreds marched from Montgomery in solidarity;…
By: Denise Johnson on September 6, 2021
School, particularly the skills of reading and writing have always been a struggle. Therefore a reflection of my academic journey has to start with a separation between academic skills and learning. While I found myself in pre-college days struggle to keep up, my college days were filled with extra courses to remediate and make up.…
By: Nicole Richardson on September 5, 2021
“Do not be afraid”, the Angels, and well more importantly, Jesus, proclaim over and over. However, I am afraid; I’m afraid of reading too slow, of taking too much time on notes, and writing with an academic voice. I wonder how I have made it this far academically with so many weaknesses. The truth is…
By: Elmarie Parker on September 2, 2021
Our readings for this week have challenged and stretched my understanding of how to read, think, take notes, and write. Being high on the intuitive scale, it is often hard for me to write until I have a sense of inspiration or spark. Outlining my thoughts has always felt cumbersome and lackluster. Several insights from…
By: Troy Rappold on September 2, 2021
Twelve years of primary education, four years of higher education, another four years of seminary education, and now I find myself in the second year of George Fox’s Doctoral program. My ability to read, take notes, and compose critical essays has indeed improved over this trajectory. It’s rewarding to see one’s intellectual growth. Progress is…
By: Jonathan Lee on September 2, 2021
I immigrated to America when I was ten years old from Korea. I still vividly remember the fear and anxiety of learning English as my second language. I think growing up, understanding and learning numbers came much more naturally than language arts. I read a lot in Korean when I was young before I moved…
By: Roy Gruber on September 2, 2021
My educational journey to this point included plenty of expectations regarding reading, taking notes, and writing essays. Reading always came easy to me, but I enjoyed reading what I liked while complying with what was assigned in school. From elementary school through high school, good memory recall allowed me to read posted material quickly and…
By: Andy Hale on September 2, 2021
Digging deeper into academia at the start of my bachelor’s studies was a tremendous learning curve since I never enjoyed reading in my adolescence. Therefore, up until my first year in college, the reading assigned to me was always done at the very last minute and not effectively. So, you can imagine my struggle to…
By: Eric Basye on September 1, 2021
Upon entering my second year of doctoral work, I feel the weight of how little I know when it comes to reading, note-taking, and writing! On the reading front, over the years, I have challenged myself to become what I would consider an avid reader. However, in better understanding the four levels of reading as…
By: Chris Pollock on May 2, 2021
The experience of progressive thinking, considering philosophy, even, contemplative theology is new for me. For less than two decades, I have been on an adventure exploring truth (in all its wonderful variety). With the curiosity to learn, panic has arisen at times for there is just not enough time to passably explore-to-know the island I…
By: Dylan Branson on April 26, 2021
The key to understanding any social movement is to understand the language used to spread its narrative. In his book, Explaining Postmodernism, Stephen R.C. Hicks argues that postmodernism has become the language of the political Left. He writes, “Many deconstruct reason, truth, and reality because they believe that in the name of reason, truth, and…
By: John McLarty on April 26, 2021
“Explaining Postmodernism” is written by a professor of philosophy and seeks to make sense of why today’s society finds it difficult, if not impossible, to handle complex questions and function in ambiguity using methods like logic, reason, and rules for debate instead of resorting to extremist activism and identity politics. Stephen Hicks argues that the…
By: Jer Swigart on April 26, 2021
In the opening pages of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, philosopher Stephen Hicks seeks to articulate his interpretation of what postmodernism is, what its philosophical roots are, and what, if anything, it seeks to achieve. Modernist philosophy, which emerged within the Enlightenment Period (Descartes, Newton, etc.), argued that the objective world…
By: Chris Pollock on April 26, 2021
https://prezi.com/view/lm2lpzHnrj5cOVMBzlCS/
By: Darcy Hansen on April 26, 2021
In the fall of 2019, I needed some space to breathe and be, so I went to the Portland Art Museum. The instillation, “All Things Being Equal,” by Hank Willis Thomas was on display. As I walked past Thomas’ photographs, prints, videos, quilts, and mixed-media two-dimensional (often) interactive works, I felt disoriented, forced to see…
By: Shawn Cramer on April 25, 2021
For the past two academic years, I have placed the concept of innovation like a jewel on a cloth and inspected it from many angles, applied differing light, and wore several lenses from differing world-views, traditions, and opinions. All this in hopes of helping see others taste of what Isaiah gives witness to: “See, I…
By: Greg Reich on April 25, 2021
“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”[1] Is it too late to take the red pill? As I was reading through Stephen…
By: Chris Pollock on April 21, 2021
The world could be a better place to be. We have heard the cries of people passing through this place of time, journeying between the gardens, desperate for consolation. Some are gifted to endear their lives to pursuing it while so many others are consumed, wandering in dark places or numb, empty spaces within empty…
By: Darcy Hansen on April 20, 2021
Death is an inevitable reality. It comes to individuals, ecosystems, and entire civilizations, as all things have a beginning and end. Sometimes death comes quickly; other times it comes slowly. Our current cultural reality finds us in an extended season of death. We are situated in a global pandemic that has disrupted political, economic, social,…
