Monthly Archives: November 2020

A Covid-19 Advent Season Reflection

Posted on by
Image seen through the Hubble telescope. Check out the Hubble telescope Advent calendar, shared by the Boston Globe.

Cosmologist Brian Swimme’s view of the place of humans in the cosmos strikes for me as valuable as we begin this Covid-19 Advent season.

An interviewer once asked Swimme about his vocation as a writer and teacher. 

“I am just so profoundly happy,” Swimme responded, “serving out the role of the human as the realm in which the Earth reflects upon and tastes its beauty.”

Advent is a liturgical season of anticipating and birthing. Advent is also a time for reflecting on what it means that God became human and dwelt upon the earth. During Advent we anticipate the many ways in which God arrives in our midst. We also celebrate how God dwells upon the earth in us and in the generous gifts of creation.

What does “Advent” bring to us during this perplexing and uncertain season?

To respond to this challenging question, I look to the importance of “place” in religious leadership and theological education:

Effective religious leaders are ministers in place: deeply engaged with the land, history, people and patterns of particular places. They are committed to the health and well-being of their locale and its inhabitants. Through the lens of the particular issues of a place, religious leaders are able to see more vividly the web of connections of the local context with a global environment and global economy.  Leadership in place is a practice, not a set of traits or qualities; leadership is worked out through direct, persistent, active engagement with the needs, hopes, and possibilities of a community.

Jill Crainshaw, in Grounding Education in the Environmental Humanities: Exploring Place-Based Pedagogies in the South (Routledge, 2018).

Poet Maxine Kumin’s insights about poetry and place come to mind:

In a poem, one can use the sense of place as an anchor for larger concerns, as a link between narrow details and global realities. Location is where we start from.

Maxine Kumin

Advent sings, prays, and proclaims the power and possibility of “place” in Christian understanding.

As we enter into Advent this year, I invite you to join me in considering this question: What if place—both its incarnational and resurrectional dimensions—is where theological education, religious leadership, and perhaps even faith begin and to where they return?

“Place” certainly seems to be where the liturgical year begins–with God making a place on earth through the birth of Jesus.

As this fall semester draws to a close, God’s liturgical incarnation rhythms have only just begun. The question with which I began the semester lingers for me and with it Swimme’s idea that the Universe—God’s good earth—somehow comes to taste itself, perhaps even to savor itself, through humans. This Advent and Christmas, as we rest between semesters, may we ponder anew the meaning of humanity’s place, and may we discover new ways to incarnate in our own lives and vocations God’s savoring and saving work.

Catching the Light

Posted on by

Some thoughts as we head into the Season of Advent

Light-catcher

. . . and the stars will be falling from heaven.

Mark 13:25

Apocalyptic stars make a grand appearance in the lectionary texts for the First Sunday of Advent. I was reminded of these Advent stars when I walked in my neighborhood a few nights ago. A crescent moon wandered up beneath two twinkling luminaries, and I thought about our longings for light in our nighttime places.

2020 has been a year of uncertainties. Many stars we thought forever anchored in place seem to be falling or wavering.

In the midst of these uncertainties, I have been grateful for connecting with students, even if only by Zoom, for amazing wisdom and insights shared by colleagues, for accomplishments celebrated, for chapel services shared together. Many glittering granules of community and learning together have filled me with Spirit-hope.

Thank you, students and colleagues, for inviting me to catch bits and pieces of light across this semester. I cherish the fire that together they and we have created in my heart and mind.

I wish you blessings on the remaining weeks of the semester and as we begin another Advent season.

“The stars are falling–“
was she asking or announcing?
“a sign of the times.”

A moon sickle
slid beneath the stars–
to catch them, perhaps,
as they tumble
through turbulent times
to a light-hungry earth?

“She will hold the pieces,” I said
and smiled at the hopeful moon–
bent on cradling the aching light
until she is full–
one more time.

**Thanks to all who helped to make possible a smooth registration period. Please reach out to the Office of Academic Affairs if you have questions or concerns about your Spring 2021 schedule.

Opening Minds and Hearts

Posted on by

What is theological education?

Over many years, theologians, educators, ministers, and communities of faith have wrestled with and debated this question. Responses have been as varied as the persons who give voice to them.

As we move closer to the end of this fall term, I offer in this post a visual response to the question. Sheila Hunter, a local piano technician and artist, shot the photograph you see here several Novembers ago as a waning moon began to rise up over God’s Acre in Old Salem. The photo was taken during autumn’s 7pm darkness. Sheila did not use a flash. The light in the photo is the light gathered from a time exposed shot taken with a camera on a tripod.

Why so much light in a nighttime image? Photographer Sheila reports that the lens of the camera opened wide and then for as long as five seconds, an eternity in the photography world, absorbed information from the surroundings until it had adequate light for this particular shot. A good analogy is what happens to human vision when we walk into a darkened room.  Our eyes take a moment to adjust to the light. Then, gradually, we can see the shapes of chairs or sofas, thus avoiding stumping a toe.

If this photo were a response to the question “What is theological education?” it might suggest that theological education opens ours hearts and minds to take in a more than usual amount of data about “things theological,” for example, God, faith, culture, cosmology, and humanity. Theological education, we hope, increases our capacity to encounter light in the midst of shadowy and uncertain places. At least, we might think of theological education in this way as we approach the end of a semester during which many people have sought light and hope.

Notes for this week:

Registration begins this week. If you need assistance during the registration period, contact the Office of Academic Affairs at acadiv@wfu.edu.

The last day for all in person classes is November 20. We will have fully remote instruction until classes end on December. Fall exams are December 7-12.

“Let us look expectantly to a new day”

Posted on by
Autumn Magic

One thing have I asked of the Lord;

one thing I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life;

to behold the fair beauty of the Lord,

to seek God in the temple (from Psalm 27).

These words from Psalm 27 are the “opening sentences” for each day’s office of morning prayer in Celtic Daily Prayer. They offer wise counsel as we journey into the last third of the fall term.

So much has happened this semester. Some assignments have been completed and others are under way. Art of Ministry internships have brought gifts and challenges. Students in clinical pastoral education are visiting patients, presenting event accounts, and exploring theological and vocational identities with their supervisors. Faculty members are busy with teaching and writing, committee meetings, and community leadership. Staff persons are planning events and providing vital leadership and support.

And we have found ourselves this doing all of this during a pandemic, as a contentious election season draws to an end, and in the midst of ongoing individual and communal life challenges and difficulties.

So, a new week begins. We have a new President-elect and Vice President-elect. Students are meeting with advisers to plan for the spring semester. We have hope—and worries—about many life realities. I wonder. In the midst of the chaotic swirl of daily schedules and the stresses of academic deadlines and other life responsibilities, can we lean in and hear the Psalm 27 poet asking: What is the most important thing that you are asking of and seeking from God as you undertake this work of theological education? What is the source of your calling to ministry or to this educational journey? 

My fellow Wake Div-ers, please hear my gratitude for each of you. Your presence in our community and your ministry callings—the passions and dreams that led you to theological education and Wake Div–they matter, and they make a palpable and prophetic difference in the places where you live and work, laugh and lament. 

Another daily office, this one from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer, includes in its Night Prayer these words:

It is night after a long day.

What has been done has been done;

What has not been done has not been done.

Let it be.

The night heralds the dawn.

Let us look expectantly to a new day,

new joys, new possibilities.

In your name we pray. Amen.

Even as uncertain and wearying as much of 2020 has been, we can hold to the divine promise: Night follows day follows night as we move through the weeks of each semester of work and learning.

During this particular week of sunrises and sunsets, may we “let be” into God’s Spirit both what has been done so far and what has not yet been done even as, restless for communal transformation, we continue to undertake our shared mission to be agents of justice, reconciliation, and compassion in our communities.

Be sure to meet with your advisers this week and make plans to begin spring registration on Monday, November 16. Please reach out if you have questions as you consider your spring term or journey toward the end of this term.

To my amazing community, I offer blessings,

Jill Y. Crainshaw