Recently, I was down in San Antonio for the annual board meeting of the Hispanic Summer Program, which is a fantastic program that will celebrate its 35th anniversary next year. Wartburg Seminary is a proud supporter of this program. This is HSP mission statement [and you can find more about it here: https://hispanicsummerprogram.org/about/%5D Founded in…… Continue reading Memory, Identity & Storytelling
Category: Life and Living
Grasping & Letting Go
I want to share a brief reflection on a good sermon one of our students preached in chapel this week. [Disclaimer: this is my interpretation of one of the points she made in her sermon—and, as anyone who preaches knows, it may or may not have anything to do with what she actually said, or…… Continue reading Grasping & Letting Go
Weaving the Country Together
Families are on the move–but not for the reasons you might think. People have always moved, of course, and there are many reasons we still do so today: we move to be closer to family, we move for jobs, we move for climate or health reasons, we move for preferences in activities and amenities. However,…… Continue reading Weaving the Country Together
Ordinary People at Auschwitz
Yesterday we visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. As many of you know, Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers. Over 1.1 million men, women and children were murdered there. Auschwitz proper was actually a whole network of sub-camps, forty in all, that exploited the prisoners as slave labor. [The website, by the way,…… Continue reading Ordinary People at Auschwitz
Learning to Eat Ice Cream
“Hidden Brain” is one of my favorite podcasts–I highly recommend it. I just listened to a fabulous episode today on savoring good experiences: you can find it here (along with some suggestions for further reading): https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/you-2-0-slow-down/ I wanted to pull out a couple points that I thought were especially helpful. The title of this post…… Continue reading Learning to Eat Ice Cream
Embodiment at the Parliament
The 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions opened yesterday, and I was pleased to be on a panel with two of my colleagues, Evangeline Anderson-Rajkumar and Kris Kvam, on Embodied Justice from a Lutheran perspective. I wanted to share a bit from my presentation, because I think the concept of embodiment is so important for…… Continue reading Embodiment at the Parliament
Rekindle the Gift Within You
I want to share the verses from Jeremiah that are guiding our work at Wartburg Seminary in our new strategic plan, “Rooted and Renewing.” Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream.It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall…… Continue reading Rekindle the Gift Within You
What’s Right about Organized Religion
Tish Harrison Warren has a regular column in The New York Times about faith and society; she deals with a wide variety of topics, and I almost always find it interesting. The article this week was titled “Faith Communities are Still a Force for Good,” and I really wanted share some aspects of it. [If…… Continue reading What’s Right about Organized Religion
A Fearless Heart
I wanted to share just a few brief reflections on this book, which, as you can see from the title, focuses on the transformative power of compassion–and how a life grounded in compassion can change not only our own outlook on things, but also can change our institutions: he mentions our educational systems, health care,…… Continue reading A Fearless Heart
Commemorating Juneteenth
Juneteenth celebrated the proclamation issued to enslaved African Americans by Union general Gordon Granger, in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, that they were free, and the Civil War had ended. General Granger’s announcement put into effect the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued nearly two and a half years earlier. From the website http://www.juneteenth.com:…… Continue reading Commemorating Juneteenth
Happy Lutheran 