Archives for 2023

Part Two: Ritual Extends the Depth of Our Imagination. Ritual takes the familiar and enlivens it with our imagination.  Consider it this way, you have a favorite dance or song or prayer. The reason we can dance it, sing it, pray it, again and again is that each time our ...

“So, if anyone tells you to go to hell,” I say to my students, “you can say, ‘that’s fine—because Jesus has already been there, so I won’t be alone.’” When I started teaching theology at Columbia Seminary nearly twenty years ago, nobody told me that I needed ...

Before March 2020, the seminary where I teach didn’t do much in the way of remote learning. Like many educators, my colleagues and I found ourselves rushing to take our teaching online at the same time that many of our students were taking courses remotely for the first time. My ...

In junior high school, we were taught that all the sections of any assigned book were to be read. We were instructed that “good students” never overlook any section of the book. This point was reinforced when the answers to a few critical test questions came from the preface and ...

            …and they had the best class ever. I was honestly surprised I made it a whole month into the semester before getting sick, what with a preschooler at home. Much of the time, despite everything we should have learned from COVID, I strap on a mask and go teach anyway – ...