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Tag Archives: Christianity

Favorite Classes at HDS: Part 1

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by HDS Admissions Blog in What's It Like at HDS?

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Black Spirituality, Christianity, Classes, Islam, MDiv, MTS, Research

Editor’s Note: With so many course options, it can be difficult for students to narrow down which classes to take during their short time in graduate school. This blog post part one of a two-part series highlighting some of our current student’s favorite HDS classes. You can read part 2 here. Please note that these are just a few of the great courses HDS offers! The HDS Course Catalog is public, you can check out the other courses offered here. 

Reem Shaikh MTS ’21 She/Her/Hers 

“Hadith Jibril: An introduction to the theological, legal, and spiritual dimensions of Islam. I really enjoyed this class because it allowed me to take a break from academia and rather approach religion from a spiritual perspective, which kept me rooted to my love for what I study.” 

Rebecca Mendoza Nunziato MTS’22 She/Her/Ella 

“Moctezuma’s Mexico is an incredible course that has helped me connect to my own heritage while also clarifying my research interests. It has been especially interesting to discuss the differences of social stratification, gender, and pandemics then and now.” 

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A Former HDS Student Reflects on the Anniversary of Reformation Day

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by HDS Admissions Blog in Experiential Learning

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Alumni, Christianity, Ministry

Guest Post by Pastor Robin Lutjohann, MDiv 2013

Harvard Divinity School is a place that will change you if you let it. I started by pursuing

robin

Robin Lutjohann, photo from author.

the two-year MTS degree with the intention of researching and teaching the history of Christianity. By the time I left, I was well on my way to becoming a Lutheran pastor. During the three years I spent at HDS, I lived in a protest camp in downtown Boston (Occupy!); switched my program; learned how to do ministry from people who lived on the streets of Cambridge and directed a soup kitchen. Also, I learned a couple of languages; wrote many papers; got baptized in the Charles River; fell in and out of love a couple of times; got engaged; met some of my best friends. Through all these and countless other encounters, I experienced at HDS what the Christian tradition calls “conversion” — a “being turned around” from one direction to another. So many of my friends and colleagues from HDS experienced something similar, entering the school with one vision and leaving with a very different one.

I have experienced the Divinity School as a kind of incubator for discernment. The sheer diversity of perspectives, traditions, and practices surrounding us here required us to examine our paths and question our motives at every turn. We took nothing for granted. Which is why, when folks ask me why I went to HDS and not to a Lutheran seminary, my answer is:

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Photo Credit: Rose Lincoln, Harvard Staff Photographer

“I am not sure I would be a Lutheran pastor today if I had gone to a Lutheran seminary. But in this multi-faith, multi-vocational context, I was forced to give an account for myself, for my story, and for my chosen tradition.” Others’ questions spurred on my learning. It is not too much to say that I learned from my Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, Baptist, Jewish, and other friends about what it means to be a Lutheran.

Despite our diversity of paths, one thing united us: HDS taught us that this institution educates “learned ministers.” All of us — academics, social workers, monks, nonprofit or government leaders, teachers, and students, and, yes, even pastors — were encouraged to think of ourselves as “learned ministers.”

One year into my pastorate at Faith Lutheran Church, back in my old neighborhood close to HDS, I am rediscovering the strength of this core idea. It contains a compelling ethos, holding together academic excellence and responsibility in the world.

Often, I wonder: what do most people think when they hear the phrase “learned minister?” Maybe they picture something like the statue of William Ellery Channing

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Photo Credit: Rose Lincoln, Harvard Staff Photographer

facing Arlington Street Church in downtown Boston. His eyes and chest raised heroically, 19th-century-windswept-Jane-Austen-novel hair casually blowing in the breeze, one hand clutching an academic robe (as if to shield the man against the onslaught of the world’s moral depravity), the other solidly in possession of that which grounds all of his work: the text. It is the image of the Preacher, the Pulpit Prince, who exercises leadership through his golden-tongued eloquence and moral example.

It is an image conjured for the sake of public gardens and portrait galleries. But it has little to do with what I have known a “learned minister” to be. Even Will Channing’s actual ministry and character was so much more interesting than it was heroic, much more embattled and conflicted, weak and strong at once, swept along by events, attempting to be witness to the Light he had glimpsed, but ever failing to do so completely, ever the sinner, even while a saint to us.

In 200 years of its history, HDS has expanded the definition of “minister” to include all forms of service to neighbor and world. While both some traditionalists and some secularists may bristle at this identification, it is actually quite faithful to its original intent. “Minister” is a Latin word that simply means “servant.” Its Greek equivalent “diakonos” is used by St. Paul in his letters not to describe an ordained clergyperson, but rather the role of the whole community seeking after the way of life that Jesus showed us — to serve others with compassion and to serve the world in seeking a just society, even in the face of the greatest adversity, even to the point of losing all for the sake of the world’s life. 

I see it as a fortuitous turn of events that HDS, in its increasing inclusivity over 200 years (towards other traditions, towards broader vocational directions), was forced to expand its definition of “ministry” and thereby virtually backed itself into a rendering of the term that is ironically more faithful to the biblical tradition at its roots, even while many students today would not claim this tradition as their own.

In fact, as a Lutheran, who is particularly mindful of Martin Luther’s reform movement as the 500th anniversary of its inception approaches in 2017, I am reminded of Luther’s own theology of vocation. Rather than ministry being the exclusive enclave of a few holy experts with lofty titles, who would have the power to dispense enlightenment and forgiveness, Luther wanted the entire people of God to own their ministry in daily life — cobblers, stonemasons, mothers and fathers, students, governors, and, yes, even pastors. “Each has the work and office of [their] trade, and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops. Further, everyone must benefit and serve every other by means of [their] own work or office so that in this way many kinds of work may be done for the bodily and spiritual welfare of the community, just as all the members of the body serve one another [1 Cor 12:14-26].” (Luther’s Works 44:130) All were to be ministers of the Gospel! Luther once remarked that a Christian cobbler was not one who stitched little crosses on their shoes, but rather one who worked ethically, made an honest living, and exuded holiness in their ordinary tasks. 

So, there is no divide between the mundane and the theological. There is no barrier separating ministry and “secular” work. There is only the one service offered for the life of the world. The more we embrace this, the more faithful we will be to both the 200-year legacy of HDS and the(almost) 500-year history of the Lutheran reforming movement. I am delighted to think these two strands of tradition together, and I would invite anyone, regardless of affiliation, to join me

 

 

Discovering a New Version of Home at HDS

01 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by Caston Lee Benjamin Boyd III in What's It Like at HDS?

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Adjusting, Christianity, Classmates, Community, Friends, Harvard, Religious Pluralism, Student Life

Being human is being comfortable with the uncomfortable.

I remember the first time someone told me I was going to hell (apart from the times in elementary school when my teachers were just fed up with my wisecracking in class). I was an undergrad.

“No way! I can’t go to hell. I believe in Jesus.”

But my antagonists were convinced that I didn’t believe in the right Jesus. “You believe in a false god. Not the one that comes through this church.”  By “this church” they meant their particular denomination, and in many ways they were righMemorialChurch2t: I didn’t believe in the Jesus that they interpreted in their weekly Sunday gatherings. I believed in a Jesus and a Christianity that were broader and more nuanced and more inclusive. How could they reduce a whole Jesus movement to their own particular denomination? What do you call this? Some would label it extremism. I might reach that same conclusion, but I typically imagine an extremist tying me to a chair, locking me up in a room, and forcing me to watch their religious propaganda—like Wednesday, Pugsley, and Joel were indoctrinated with Disney Films in Addam’s Family Values. Thank god that didn’t happen! Fundamentally, I believe my interlocutors felt an unease with something different. They were uncomfortable.

How to be “comfortable.”

Most of my free-spirited liberal friends would say, “Life is a balance.” I agree, wholeheartedly. However, is the balancing act ever comfortable? Think about it. When the Wild Coyote is chasing the Road Runner down a tightrope, does it ever look pleasant for the Coyote? Does it look easy for a gymnast to perform on a balance beam?

I often found myself in sweaty situations where all I could do was fake a smile, and the only place I was able to decompress was in a small, one-window bedroom. In these moments of decompression, I realized something: I was making a home.

I’ve given much thought to this idea of comfort, especially as it relates to balance, and I’ve come to believe that comfortableness is not a human quality. We are always susceptible to forces beyond our control and encroached by evil even in places of peace. Our bodies are degenerative. Our families, traditions, and legacies fade or are replaced, and only a few of us are lucky enough to see three generations. Being human is uncomfortable. Being human is being comfortable with the uncomfortable.

In my time at Harvard Divinity School, I have often been uncomfortable. In the beginning, I thought I would get used to the different personalities, cultures, customs, views, and people, but that never happened. In fact, I became more uncomfortable as time progressed. I often found myself in sweaty situations where all I could do was fake a smile, and the only place I was able to decompress was in a small, one-window bedroom. In these moments of decompression, I realized something: I was making a home.

Homes take different forms. There are the physical spaces we often think of as home. Some find home in a religious tradition. But for me, home is dynamic and ever changing.

Homes take different forms. There are the physical spaces we often think of as home. Some find home in a religious tradition. But for me, home is dynamic and ever changing. It is an uncomfortable place filled with different views, people, cultures, and traditions. I don’t think of a brick-layered building, but a sculptor carving away at a block of stone. It may be incomplete, but always, in a sense, progressing. Not a progression that requires a triumphant end, but one that astonishes you with every new development.

My home is in others’ homes. It may sound bizarre. It may sound like conformity, compromise, or masquerading. But what would it be like to reimagine home? We often think of home as a refuge—a place like no other. This presumes that we are autonomous individuals, each traveling our own path, each in need of a home that consists of seclusion and apartness. In a complex, yet still divided world, I’ve found it helpful to remind myself of the value of encounter.

In a complex, yet still divided world, I’ve found it helpful to remind myself of the value of encounter.

When I first came to HDS, I was tempted to avoid encounters with the different cultures, worldviews, and religions because of unfamiliarity and unease, but after a period of time I grew aware of something happening to me. Disagreements challenged me. Cultures informed me. Traditions awakened me. This development became a consistent reminder that I am a sculpture and the world—my new community—is the sculptor.

I have found that my home is no longer an individual estate or a place of seclusion, but that my home is in others’ homes. It is not the place I retreat to in order to avoid seeing coworkers, tough situations, major events, crisis, and people. It’s the meeting place where the worlds of many become one: everyone unique and yet somehow familiar, collaborating, exchanging, and growing. Home has become a place constantly transformed by the world and life. Not a retreat, but a place of engagement.

Sacraments and the Apocalypse: Asking the Big Questions About Scholarship, Ministry, and Relationship

09 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by Mac Loftin in Academics

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Christianity, Classes, Faculty, Harvard, MTS

On paper, Karen King and Matt Potts’ “The Death of Jesus” might sound like a trainwreck of a course: co-taught by two professors with wildly different interests, readings veering wildly back and forth from contemporary fiction to the esoteric texts of the Nag Hammadi library, and intense meditation on disturbing materials like ancient martyrdom accounts, lynching photographs, and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.  It would be easy to glance at the course description and pass it over in favor of happier materials discussed in a more harmonious classroom environment.  Had I done so, however, I would have missed out on what may be the most interesting and engaging course I’ve ever taken.

Can hope and meaningfulness be divorced from happy endings?  If everything fades, does anything matter?  Do prayer and ritual have a place in the face of the earth-freezing, stone-cracking absence of God?

The highlight of the course, for me, was our discussion of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.  For those who haven’t read it, the book is a terse post-apocalyptic story about an unnamed father and son wandering a frozen earth after some unspecified catastrophe.  All plants and animals are extinct, ash falls from the sky like snow, and what few people remain survive by scavenging for canned food or cannibalizing each other.  Needless to say, the story is bleak.  Unlike other stories of apocalypse like I Am Legend or 28 Days Later, The Road precludes any hope of a happy ending.  There is no secret farm community or enclave of scientists working on a solution.  The man and the boy will die, almost assuredly gruesomely, and the ragged remnants of life on earth will not be far behind them.

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Matthew Potts, Assistant Professor of Ministry Studies

As our class discussed, a story like this raises important theological and philosophical questions.  Can hope and meaningfulness be divorced from happy endings?  If everything fades, does anything matter?  Do prayer and ritual have a place in the face of the earth-freezing, stone-cracking absence of God?  These questions are not idle musings about a hypothetical apocalypse.  As Dr. Potts likes to say, The Road is just the human condition cranked up to 11; all things are stamped with their own expiration date, and if we as scholars, ministers, or anyone just trying to get by are going to affirm goodness and meaning and hope and love, we need to reckon with these expiration dates.

Dr. Potts’ own work draws connections between Cormac McCarthy and Christian sacramental theology, and it was through this lens that our class tackled the book.  To condense a centuries-long tradition of sacramental theology that traces back through Luther, Aquinas, and Augustine into a few lines: In the Christian ritual of the Eucharist, the priest holds up a loaf of bread and says “this is the body of Christ”; the bread is then broken and distributed to the community.  What is important to note is that, for sacramental theology, the priest is not correct in identifying the bread with Christ because she is speaking metaphorically, as if the bread were a signpost pointing to some “more real” body that exists in some heavenly beyond.  Neither is she correct because the bread has ceased to become bread and is now Christ, as if the ritual were some kind of alchemy that sweeps away mundane “breadness” so that the more meaningful “Christness” can take up shop.  Rather, the point of the ritual is that the bread is both bread and Christ, that the mundane can be meaningful and holy in and of itself, without recourse to anything beyond or outside it.  A stale crust of bread can be sacred when the gathered community behaves as if it were sacred, independent of any “more sacred” that might exist outside of the ritual.

The discussion we had during those three hours is one that can easily be taken out of the classroom and into real life.  How are we to love when we know the other will die?  Why should we care about climate change when all species will go extinct eventually?  Why pursue academic work when all books will someday crumble to dust?

Bringing things back to The Road, what makes the father and son’s journey down the road meaningful is not that they are heading towards anywhere better than where they’ve been.  When the man bathes the boy or the two share a meal, these acts of love don’t represent a meaningfulness or a holiness outside of themselves; they actively manifest that meaningfulness and that holiness.  Like the sacramental bread that is holy unto itself without recourse to an outside, the characters in The Road can find meaning and hope and love without pretending that the world through which they wander is anything other than bleak and terrifying.

The discussion we had during those three hours is one that can easily be taken out of the classroom and into real life.  How are we to love when we know the other will die?  Why should we care about climate change when all species will go extinct eventually?  Why pursue academic work when all books will someday crumble to dust?  What our discussion of The Road (informed by a particular brand of sacramental theology) emphasized is that acts of love and meaningful work can be good and sacred in and of themselves, in all their brokenness and finitude.  That Thursday afternoon, to me, represented the core of what HDS offers: intense classroom discussion that leads to insights that can be taken and applied to ministry, academic work, and especially our relationships to others.

On Discovering a Hermeneutic of Generosity

17 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by Keith Esposito in Academics

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Academics, Christianity, Classes, Faculty, Growth, Harvard

440px-Friedrich_Daniel_Ernst_SchleiermacherThree months ago: It’s my first semester at HDS and I’m completing an assignment for Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion, the one required class for all incoming HDS students. Each week before lecture we have to submit an online response to that week’s reading, which for this week is Friedrich Schleiermacher’s On Religion. Schleiermacher was an 18th century theologian sometimes seen as the father of liberal Protestant Christianity. On Religion is his apology for religion, which he seeks to dissociate from doctrine, ritual, practice, traditions or mythology. For Schleiermacher, religion is defined in experiential terms, as something that a believer feels or “intuits.” I thought this was a bunch of baloney. Here’s an excerpt from my online response:

My main issue with Schleiermacher is that his first two chapters are mostly vague, repetitive and rambling descriptions of his amorphous concept of religion, but as soon as he tries to ground his perspective in a particular example–for example when he says that Judaism is defunct and Christianity’s original intuition is “more glorious, more sublime…and extending farther over the whole universe” (113)–he reveals his giant bias: that his own, liberal, protestant Christianity is conveniently the best for intuiting religion. His arguments then lose all credit as any kind of lens for understanding religion from anything but a Christian, liberal, European perspective.

I had completely written off Schleiermacher. What was there to learn from someone with such a blatant, self-serving bias? And that was the day Professor Amy Hollywood introduced the hermeneutic of suspicion and the hermeneutic of generosity.

By the time I got to lecture the next day, I had completely written off Schleiermacher. What was there to learn from someone with such a blatant, self-serving bias? And that was the day Professor Amy Hollywood introduced the hermeneutic of suspicion and the hermeneutic of generosity.

In a nutshell, the hermeneutic of suspicion calls scholars to interrogate the authors and texts they encounter. Questioning an author’s bias, historical time period, cultural background, or the validity of their arguments all fall into this category. It’s an important paradigm and one that I was fully entrenched in during my undergraduate years. In fact, my undergraduate studies were conducted almost entirely through this critical prism. I was trained to think that my job as a scholar was to deconstruct every text presented to me. My work was done only after I had determined the author’s agenda, come up with counter examples–no matter how obscure–disproving their points, and deconstructed their points to pieces. I could then dismiss the entirety of their work as merely their personal bias.

 

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But Professor Hollywood insisted that in addition to being critical, we also need to employ the hermeneutic of generosity; instead of only reading against the author, we also need to read alongside them. As the term implies, we ought to be charitable with the text we read, try as best we can to embody the author’s place, and occasionally look past certain biases, or at least temporarily sideline them, in order to fully grasp the arguments in play. Often it’s only from this generous standpoint that we’re able to fully appreciate what a text or author has to offer.

Deconstructing a text with the hermeneutic of suspicion is a critical component of a scholar’s work. But as I realized that day in Hollywood’s class, employing it without tempering it with generosity is ultimately futile. First, despite the insistence by some that true scholarship is objective, everyone has a bias. If we were to dismiss every biased work, there would be nothing to read. But more importantly, if scholarship is solely about deconstructing a text, then we never truly appreciate what a particular author has to offer, the implications of their arguments, or how their theories map onto our own experiences of the world.

Professor Hollywood insisted that in addition to being critical, we also need to employ the hermeneutic of generosity; instead of only reading against the author, we also need to read alongside them.

When it came to Schleiermacher, my eagerness to pinpoint his bias and then dismiss him meant that I didn’t give his theories any credence. I soon realized my folly during Professor Hollywood’s lecture. She pointed out that not only is Schleiermacher’s work critical in understanding the development of liberal Christianity in Europe and the US, but, even more importantly, it is readily applicable to our contemporary world. In the modern West, many people call themselves “spiritual, but not religious,” meaning they maintain some personal, typically felt, experience of the divine, but don’t subscribe to particular rituals, doctrines, hierarchies, texts, or other structures that the modern West associates with religion. Few realize that, far from a modern take on spirituality, this thread has been running through Protestant Christianity for centuries, and that way back in 1799 Schleiermacher was already making this distinction and prioritizing one’s personal, felt, divine encounters as the really real. I was ready to throw Schleiermacher away without realizing that his work offers an important critique of how religion and spirituality are understood in the contemporary world.

This has been perhaps the greatest lesson from my first semester at HDS because it has changed how I read texts in all of my classes. Now I try to keep a balance between these two hermeneutics, always challenging myself to not only read against but with an author. In this way I’m already getting more out of these amazing texts than I ever did before.

Getting to Know HDS: New Friends and In-Between Spaces

05 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Keith Esposito in Transitioning to HDS

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Academics, Adjusting, Christianity, Classmates, Friends, Interfaith, Student Life, Workload

Recently, as a graduate assistant in the Office of Admissions, I was fielding questions in a virtual chatroom from prospective HDS applicants. Most of the questions were the typical ones you’d expect: What degrees are offered at HDS? Is HDS affiliated with a particular denomination? How does financial aid work? Some were a little more specific: What’s field education and why is it required for all MDivs? Can you tell me more about the Boston Theological Institute? What’s campus life like at HDS?

But there was one question I hadn’t been expecting: Keith, could you tell us what you like the most about HDS?

For context, I am a first year MDiv, this was only my second week of class, and my time at HDS thus far had been a blur. My days consisted of rushing out the door each day for morning prayer at Memorial Church, followed by an advanced Spanish course I was cross-registered in at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and then off to my other classes on Religious Pluralism or Ministry Studies or Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion, followed by discussion sections, my Hear and Now interfaith group, late nights in the comfy chairs on the second floor of Andover-Harvard Library chipping away at my mountain of reading, and finally my bike ride home, where I would collapse in an exhausted, but happy, heap on my bed, wake up the next morning, and do it all over again.

I loved my classes, the worship services, my readings—all of it. But I hadn’t had much time yet to process it all. And upon reflection I realized that my favorite part of HDS thus far was the in-between time, the few gaps in my schedule, because it was during those times that I had started to build friendships with my classmates. During a break, I’d mosey outside to the quad, inevitably bump into someone, and strike up a conversation: about Boston, or our classes, or specific readings. Just the night before, I had ended up sitting in the grass with two classmates completely geeking out over some obscure philosophy text.  On another occasion, a conversation about various Christian practices led to a group of us attending a local church service that weekend.

My classmates fascinate me. They come from all walks of life, from all over the US and the world, from an array of religious traditions, all with deep-seated convictions. From them I’ve already learned about Zen Buddhist monasticism, interpretative approaches to Nietzsche, Latin American Liberation Theology, and Greek Orthodox contemplative practices, not to mention the best bars in the Cambridge, books that change lives, and life hacks for poor graduate students (tip #1: shop at market basket). I’ve quickly realized that though HDS offers leading scholars, top-notch academics, unimaginable opportunities, and access to University-wide resources, its greatest resource may be the students who study here. I look forward to learning from as many as I can, one impromptu conversation at a time.

Stellar & Down to Earth Faculty

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Chris Alburger in What's It Like at HDS?

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Christianity, Classes, CSWR, Faculty, Religion & Politics, Religious Pluralism, Theology, UU

The Harvard Divinity School shield. Photo by Chris Alburger

The Harvard Divinity School shield at Harvard COOP. Photo by Chris Alburger

When I visited HDS as a prospective student, I was surprised by what Dr. Emily Click said from the podium. I’d brought some assumptions with me, across the country to Cambridge. I mean, it was Harvard. I figured they’d be snobby. Especially the faculty, with all their accomplishments and accolades. But Emily Click emanated warmth, her words were heartfelt, and she was so down to earth, I thought, wow, this is like my small liberal arts college, but even more so: nurturing, holistic, inspiring. Continue reading →

“Congratulations!”

14 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by Dorie Goehring in Why I Chose HDS

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Academics, Catholic, Christianity, Community Tea, Family, Harvard, Islam, LGBT, Social Justice

Memorial Hall. Photo by Chris Alburger

Memorial Hall. Photo by Chris Alburger

“Dear Ms. Goehring, Congratulations!…”

Memories crash over me.

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The MDiv Program

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by Chris Alburger in Academics

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Aspirations, Christianity, Classes, Faith, Field Ed, Humanist, Interfaith, Jewish, MDiv, Ministry, Muslim, Pagan, Religious Pluralism, Theology

My book shelf. Photo by Chris Alburger

My book shelf. Photo by Chris Alburger

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An Intellectual and Spiritual Journey

26 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by Jahnabi Barooah in Experiential Learning

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Adjusting, Bhagavad-gītā, Buddhism, Christianity, Comparative Monasticisms, Comparative Religion, Hinduism, Monks, MTS, Sanskrit, Self Care, Student Life

A candle for each person who participated in the HDS Winter Retreat. By Chris Alburger

A candle lit for each person who participated in the HDS Winter Retreat. Photo by Chris Alburger

It was not even half past two in the morning when my alarm went off. I had barely enough time to get ready to attend the 3:30 a.m. vigil at St. Joseph’s Abbey, a Trappist monastery located in Spencer, MA. I was there with a group of students from HDS on a 2-day silent retreat. This was part of a weeklong immersive Buddhist-Christian retreat offered by the divinity school as a J-term course, “Comparative Monasticisms.” Earlier in the week, we had spent some time at the New England Buddhist Vihara (a Sanskrit word that means “monastery”) and at the Empty Bell, a Buddhist-Christian retreat center in Northampton.

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