“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
–Mary Oliver

On January 17, for just a few hours, part of our collective online life seemed to take on a different tone. The usual frenzy was jarred by news of Mary Oliver’s death, and as word spread it set the Internet afire with grief and gratitude and poetry. Given the storms underway around us and the anxious pace of our discourse, Mary’s quiet prevalence that day reflects something of how unique she was, how holy the gifts she left us.

In my corner of the Internet, this phenomenon was especially noticeable among my ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” friends and colleagues—because few voices have seeped into the pulse of this community so thoroughly and so generously. Of course, certain writers shape a pivotal moment in particular classes: first-year students often develop a begrudging affection for Martin Buber and his fondness for talking to trees; Harry Middleton’s gorgeous memoir The Earth Is Enough prompts an assignment with which Dan Allender’s students are on a first-name basis; in theology classes, many students bond in common conviction and inspiration under the work of James Cone; and Annie Rogers’s A Shining Affliction is a beloved rite of passage in the Counseling Psychology program.

Fewer writers, though, manage to impact the rhythms and tones of life in our red brick building even when they are not officially assigned in class. And perhaps none have done so with as much resonance as Mary Oliver—a matriarch of ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” whose words stir somewhere deep in the heart of this place.

With the authority of a voice at home with itself, Mary called us to listen and pay attention. Sometimes her call came as a gentle whisper, and other times it felt more like a slap in the face: look up, at the gray sky you take for granted; look down, at the wet soil knotted with roots; look in, at the self you have forgotten. In a way, she was echoing that other Mary, who teaches us that even the bravado of wise men and the chaos of exile might evoke in us a moment of attentive pondering.

“In a way, she was echoing that other Mary, who teaches us that even the bravado of wise men and the chaos of exile might evoke in us a moment of attentive pondering.”

But attention itself is not the goal, learning from her long-time partner Molly: “Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness—an empathy—was necessary if the attention was to matter.” It’s why her famous “instructions for living a life” don’t end at “pay attention,” though that is the crucial point from which everything else follows. Instead, attention leads to astonishment, and astonishment turns us toward others. It seems that the work of paying attention and opening ourselves to wonder is not complete until it also deepens our capacity for love.

Love, then, is where Mary leads us, and it’s why the Internet, for just a moment, felt like such a kind place on that sad day. Because so many of us, in one way or another, learned something from Mary about what it means to love. In the profound simplicity of her work, she assured us that love is not resounding gongs and clanging cymbals. In her long, inquisitive walks she proclaimed that presence and attunement are the elements of love, and that those are grown through the repetition and discipline of ritual. And in not shying from grief after her partner’s death, she reminded us that love can be excruciating and raw—that it sometimes comes as a gift in

Mary taught us again and again that love is most fully itself when it is omnidirectional: outward, inward, up, down, around—each avenue nourished by and dependent upon the others. If you treat the with impatience and contempt, she seemed to be asking us, how can you hope to love others any differently? If you stop listening to the earth and all that breathes and pulses around you, how can you maintain the intrigue that gives love wings? And if you are not at home in your own self, will you ever be home anywhere else?

Somehow, when Mary’s work asked big questions or spoke a truth that shot like lightning through our bones, it never felt as if she was lecturing or preaching at us. She offered a small thing well said, a bit like walking on the beach with a friend who stoops to collect a seashell. “Here,” she says, dropping it into our palm, “look what I found.” Then she’s off, continuing her walk and letting us decide what to do with her gift.

That is why she could reach refrigerator-magnet-level prevalence and still feel as if she was speaking directly to you, her reader. When she said, it was both a universal proclamation and the close comfort of a dear friend, offering a cup of tea to bring our anxious frenzy back to the earth. She was both wise teacher and gentle companion.

There are some who were skeptical of this, who believed that Mary’s presence on Pinterest and postcards must mean her work was somehow less beautiful or important. Her critics often championed the suspicious belief that popularity betrays a work as shallow or false, like the easy pleasure and empty insight you might find on Top 40 radio. But I would argue that Mary’s widespread resonance was deeper than that. She saw something true of our world and ourselves, and she offered it to us as a free gift—simply wrapped, shyly given, no strings attached. And we loved her for it.

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Before we shut down the red brick building for the holidays, our staff and faculty participated in the annual Christmas Lunch, the inaugural Office Decorating Competition, and—in what may be a new tradition—a whole lot of photo booth sessions with Santa himself.

It’s been a busy and often challenging year, so there was something delightful about being able to pause in the midst of the year-end rush to eat together, sing together, and snap a few silly pictures with jolly old Saint Nick. May all of us come to know more moments of unexpected delight in the days ahead.

From our family to yours, merry Christmas!

(Click for full images.)

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Like everybody else I know in the Northwest, I was captivated by , or J-35, the orca whale who carried her deceased calf for more than 1,000 miles—what became known internationally as a “tour of grief.” The calf had lived for as little as half an hour, and Tahlequah refused to let go for the next 17 days. With scientists and whale watchers fretting about Tahlequah’s health and speculating about when the calf’s body might decompose, we all followed along as the mother whale continued swimming, sometimes balancing the body on her nose, sometimes holding it by the tail in her jaw. Each time it slipped from her grasp she would dive after it, chasing it into the depths because her tour of grief was not yet complete.

In the midst of such a heartbreaking display, Tahlequah was not traveling alone; she was surrounded by the pod that had witnessed the birth of her calf and shared in the trauma of its death. According to the , the Southern Resident killer whale population has seen no healthy new calves in more than three years; as their food supply grows scarce, their population has declined by 25 percent in the last 20 years. So Tahlequah, her pod members, and the other orcas in the region know something of death and loss. They know something of grief. Finally, here was a living calf who—for at least a few minutes—became the first sign in years of a hopeful future for the pod. No wonder Tahlequah would not let go. No wonder, as I heard one scientist speculate, the others in the pod were helping feed her—helping sustain her in her mourning, because her mourning was also their mourning. It does not minimize Tahlequah’s individual grief to suggest that this tour was also an outpouring of collective grief.

I was thinking about Tahlequah during (Re)Orientation on August 28, when Dr. Derek McNeil, Senior VP of Academics, named our institutional season of transition and, more broadly, the profound social disruption unfolding around us. Derek then invited our student body into this refrain: “Grief and hope. Grief and hope. Grief and hope.” He reminded us that the two must go hand in hand; grief grounds and contextualizes our hope, and hope brings life to our grief. Yet they both feel foreign to our cultural discourse.

“Grief grounds and contextualizes our hope, and hope brings life to our grief.

On August 10, Richard Russell, a ground service agent at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, stole a 76-seat plane and went for an improvised—and ultimately suicidal—Friday evening flight. Russell commented on the beautiful mountain views, talked lightheartedly with air traffic control, and mentioned that his video game experience was enough training for the unlikely stunts he pulled off. At one point before he crashed into Ketron Island, almost in passing, Russell made a heartbreaking request: “Hey, I want the coordinates of that mama orca with the baby. I wanna go see that guy.”*

An individual caught up in some unknown inner storm was drawn to an outer display of collective grief. I won’t pretend to know what in Russell’s life led him to that moment, what losses or traumas or conflicts prompted his quixotic quest for what he hoped would be “a moment of serenity.” But I do know there is something deeply, perhaps universally human in this airborne confession: “I’ve got a lot of people that care about me, and it’s going to disappoint them to hear that I did this. I would like to apologize to each and every one of them. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess. Never really knew it until now.”

What do we do with our brokenness, with those parts of ourselves that are loose and unraveled? Do we dare name it and bear it on our faces for the world to see? Do we dare expose our grief and nourish others who are doing the same? Or do we try to silence and bury it, pretending that it won’t eventually leak out in some form or another?

On August 14, the state of Nebraska carried out , marking the inaugural use of fentanyl in a government-sanctioned lethal injection. If fentanyl sounds familiar, it’s because it is the synthetic opioid that is the name and face of the latest iteration of America’s overdose epidemic—.

What a damning exposure of our cultural paralysis in the face of grief. If the drug crisis demands the kind of collective lament that leads to action, then is there anything more morbidly ironic than taking an icon of that unaccessed grief and using it to kill another person? Is there anything more futile than injecting into someone else’s veins what we’re afraid to face in ourselves? Psychological theory, scientific research, and the common sense wisdom of living in relationship all point to this truth: if we do not name our experiences of harm and loss, and if we do not allow others to care for us in our grief, we will not wake up one day magically whole again. Internalized pain does not come to rest and dissolve away; like a poorly contained body of water, it will always find an outlet.

The world recently learned about at the hands of hundreds of priests in Pennsylvania—a hideous, systemic act of evil that was protected at the highest levels. No words I write here could capture the outrage and hollowness and sackcloth-and-ashes kind of torment that should answer such a degree of harm, or the sinking awareness that these revelations were contained to just one state. Instead I remember the story of , whose own tour of grief in 1955—“I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby”—forced our nation to reckon with its legacy of state-sanctioned lynchings. As Karen Baker-Fletcher writes, “She was like Mary, mother of Jesus, asking the world to look and to repent. She was like many other black women who had seen the horror, and couldn’t bear another look. But Mother Till-Mobley found courage to say, ‘I’M NOT TAKING THIS! LOOK World, get delivered of your demons and Look!’”**

And so I turn again to the story of Tahlequah, who balanced the body of her grief on her nose for longer than anyone thought possible. Because here’s something else: soon after Tahlequah’s grief had been expressed and she had let go of the calf, she was described as once again able to contribute to her pod’s fight for survival.

In her stubborn, prophetic grief, and in the collective lament of her community, Tahlequah’s story holds a mirror to our own avoidance of grief, our efforts to divert our outrage and mourning into cyclical contempt, revenge, or shame. She embodied the conviction that the dynamic movement of grief unto life is the only way forward. May we learn to do the same.

*Quotes from Russell’s communication with Air Traffic Control were found and .

**Karen Baker-Fletcher, Dancing with God: The Trinity from a Womanist Perspective (Chalice Press, 2006), emphasis in original. I first encountered this text in a theology class at ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” with Dr. Chelle Stearns.

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I expected much of how Won’t You Be My Neighbor moved me. I watched in tears as Morgan Neville’s beautiful film showed Fred Rogers’ seemingly endless capacity for empathy and compassion, and I choked up at the all-too-rare gift of an adult who remembers what it’s like to be a kid. I was inspired by his defense of quiet kindness in media, energized by the subtly subversive advocacy woven through his show, and grieved by the ways that his advocacy fell short (like when Rogers told his friend, Francois Clemmons, that he could not remain on the show if he came out as gay). I was angered by the pushback to Mr. Rogers—those who say he couldn’t possibly be genuine, or the right-wing commentators who skewed his “you’re special just the way you are” message as one of entitlement, claiming that he ruined a generation by insisting on the God-given beauty in each person.

I don’t want to minimize what a gift all of the above is; the film is worth seeing on those merits alone. But I would like to focus on something else, something that surprised me and has stuck with me for days after leaving the theater. First, though, a story.

***

When I was in middle school, my English teacher assigned The Wizard of Oz and lectured about the use of symbolism and metaphor, arguing that the whole text could be read as a commentary on political issues of the late 1800s: the plight of farmers, the intrusion of business magnates and politicians from the east, the movement to keep the rate of the dollar fixed to the value of gold or silver.

By this time I had long been a fan of the Chronicles of Narnia and the lion-Jesus that stalked its pages, but I had never tried writing an allegory myself; my stories up to that point comprised a Hardy Boys-inspired series about me and my brother called, originally enough, the Denton Boys.

This was in the year after 9/11 and the run-up to the 2004 election. It was the first time I remember being curious about the U.S. political system, at least as it was filtered to me through my parents and my conservative Christian school, and I was intrigued by the idea of crafting a timely political allegory.

My story was about a bold and handsome history teacher who drove a Chevy pickup. His name was Mr. Smith, and he was often seen carrying a baseball bat—you knew right away that he was confident and tough, an all-American embodiment of everything I thought a man was supposed to be.

One day, Mr. Smith and the other teachers learned that one of their students was being abused at home. A debate ensued in the staff lounge. Mr. Smith wanted to go to the boy’s house and teach his parents a lesson; Mr. Pierre, the French teacher, insisted that it was none of their business and they should stay out of it (worth noting that this was smack dab in the middle of the “freedom fries” era).

The principal, Unifred Nattings, decreed that they needed more time to talk about it before deciding the best course of action, but Mr. Smith would have none of that. He called his gorgeous wife to say he loved her, then grabbed his bat and ran to his truck, which spewed gravel and dust as he peeled out of the parking lot. That’s where the story ended—no need to write any further, because the righteousness of Mr. Smith’s actions and the certainty of his victory were so evident.

My political inclinations have shifted quite a bit since middle school, and I’d like to believe that I now have at least a little more appreciation for nuance and subtlety. But that initial intrigue with symbolism and metaphor remains, an enduring fascination with the ways we express that which we don’t know how to express.

***

Here’s what surprised me about Won’t You Be My Neighbor, what I haven’t been able to stop thinking about: Mr. Rogers wrestled, at times, with profound insecurity. I remember reading somewhere that he had been insecure as a child and had experienced bullying, but I must have assumed that—even though I don’t hold this expectation over anyone else—he had grown out of it. His gentle strength, his quiet conviction, his steady faith and unflinching kindness: how could a man like that be so anxious about how his work would be received, or worry so intensely about living up to people’s expectations?

In a particularly telling scene, one of his children reveals that, when Rogers needed to act at home in a way that was un-Mr. Rogers-like, he would take on the voice of one of his puppets. The implication is that, in moments of conflict or discomfort, Fred Rogers was terrified of remaining in his own skin and would, instead, assume the identity of a character.

That moment (questionable parenting tactics aside) immediately brought me back to the middle school boy who was so intrigued by allegories and symbols, so comforted by the idea of using fiction to communicate that which he did not otherwise dare reveal. My days of Bush-era fanfiction had been mercifully short-lived; instead, in high school, I started writing stories in which the most damaged and insecure parts of myself were free to roam. I dreamed up characters who said all the things I couldn’t say, imagined worlds in which I could be brave and articulate and wise.

I sobbed there, in the theater, as I wondered if Mr. Rogers had been doing the same thing all along. He imagined a simple but vibrant world and filled it with characters who embodied different parts of himself, parts that he may have been too anxious to live into without a little separation, a little space created by fiction and imagination. He put on his puppets and projected his voice into them, giving language to the expressions of himself that he had learned to silence and hide as a child. This imagined world was not divorced from reality, and it did not make Rogers less of himself without the puppets. It was, like all the best fiction, a space where he could wrestle with real-life concerns and wonder about real-world issues in new ways, inviting millions of others to do the same.

“He put on his puppets and projected his voice into them, giving language to the expressions of himself that he had learned to silence and hide as a child.”

I wonder, if Fred Rogers had somehow “grown out of” his insecurity, would he still have that remarkable capacity for remembering what it’s like to be a child? If he did not find ways to give voice to the parts of himself he was ashamed of or anxious about, would he have still resonated with so many children from such diverse backgrounds?

I wonder, too, what our world might look like if more of us kept our childhood selves in mind more often, if we did not act as if our own insecurities and anxieties were things of the past. Would we still be capable of separating immigrant children from their parents in the name of self-protection if we remembered something of what it’s like to be scared and alone as kids, if we stopped pretending we are not sometimes still scared and alone as adults?

Our distance from childhood is not just a problem of memory; it is a lie we tell ourselves and each other. I’m grateful to Mr. Rogers for reminding me of this, and I believe—I have to believe—that there are others like him in the world. Through fiction, art, music, whatever it takes, I pray that we acquaint ourselves again with the beautiful, anxious, lonely world of childhood, that we find new ways to give voice to the parts of ourselves we have hidden, and that this deepens our empathy and compassion for the people around us, no matter who they are.

https://youtu.be/x6XAP_VThhk

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The first time I remember seeing people out and about with forehead smudges on Ash Wednesday, I was nearing the end of a brief stint living in Los Angeles after college. I didn’t even know what it was at first; I discreetly wiped my own forehead to let a woman at the library know she had something on hers. Later I saw it as I passed a bearded man on the sidewalk, again on a barista, then matching smudges on an older couple at the theater. It felt so vulnerable, so naked. They were wearing a mark of repentance for the world to see, which struck me as both brave and desperate.

Though much of my childhood had revolved around church, Lent was not a part of that faith. Like many evangelicals, we wrote off most of the rhythms of the church calendar as empty rituals and religious legalism. We got out of school early on Good Friday and broke out our pastel finest for Easter Sunday, but I remember little talk about Holy Saturday, let alone the larger Lenten movement that starts with the desperation of Ash Wednesday.

I had moved to LA in a fit of restlessness. It was a year after my dad died, and I had come unmoored as I learned that the rhetoric of my faith did not allow much room for anger, doubt, or loss. Death feels all but irrelevant when you think only of the empty tomb. This Lent-less worldview fit quite nicely with our American tendency to believe that we can buy, shoot, medicate, or elect our way out of our problems, but it offered little solace to a grieving son. My faith jumped ahead to resurrection and left me behind, isolated and abandoned.

So when I noticed the day-long pattern of smudges and recalled some dusty memory about what it might mean, I wanted in. It was not that I needed to be reminded of my smallness or my brokenness (though that is often the case). At the time I was well aware of my fragility and pain, but it lacked context. As I passed these strangers, the ashes on their foreheads said It’s okay, we’re broken too. We’re wandering like you, but here—join us. We can wander together for a bit.

I thought about that as I walked around the school recently, asking folks—those who would let me, considering the microphone in my hand—about their understanding of Lent. (You can hear the responses on “What Lent Means to You: A text.soul.culture ČŃŸ±ČÔŸ±ČőŽÇ»ć±đ.”) I thought about it again when Daniel Tidwell spoke of stardust and shared humanity as he led the Ash Wednesday service in our chapel. It’s the joyful surprise of a season known for desert and fasting: something transformative happens when suffering is witnessed and shared.

Maybe you, like me as a fatherless young man in Los Angeles, don’t need Lent to be reminded of your personal brokenness this year. And we probably don’t need it to remind us of our shared brokenness, either. Is there any doubt that we are, collectively, lost in a wilderness? Our nation’s appetite for violence seems without end, and stepping over others for the sake of personal comfort or advancement is a national pastime.

I do not believe that Lent arrives to evoke suffering for suffering’s sake. But it does insist that we not ignore or belittle suffering—our own or others’. Lent counters those who “dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14; modern translation, “All lives matter”). It reminds us that we are not alone when we suffer, and that Jesus preceded us into the desert and emerged with the clarity and authority of calling.

May we follow his example when we find ourselves drawn into the desert and tempted toward quick fixes or empty promises. May we listen to those—even if it’s a bunch of kids in Florida—who follow his example here in the wilderness, those who remind us that the way forward is not in hunkering down or closing our eyes or turning back, but in naming the realities of our woundedness, witnessing each other’s suffering and healing, and challenging those who benefit from cloaking rocks as bread.

And may we always, always, always remember—in our suffering, grieving, healing, erring, and returning—that we are not alone.

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Near the beginning of every great journey, there is a call. A call to leave home, to leave the known and the familiar, and to step toward something big and wild and scary. For me, that home was on the banks of the Manatee River, which flows out of alligator country to the east and, just a few miles west of my childhood home, empties into the Gulf of Mexico on the edge of Tampa Bay. Because of a young boyhood spent in, on, and around that river, and because of a father who was most at home when he was on the water, that warm, murky current still moves somewhere deep inside me.

Rivers come to mind when I think of what it means to answer the call. Only now, after three years at ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ”, it feels a bit less like the slow, brackish waters of the gentle Manatee and more like the cold and raging waters of the mighty Columbia. Calling is a torrential beast, and many of us had learned to fear it and to question our ability to swim. But every once in a while we would catch glimpses through the trees as the sun danced on the water, and something deep inside would tug at our hearts, insisting, “Come and see. The water is good. Come and see.”

And eventually, each of us here answered that call. We chose to no longer ignore the harm in our stories and the way it dictated our lives. We chose to no longer turn a blind eye to the abuses of power and the silencing of voices all around us. We chose to believe that maybe, just maybe, God has something new and glorious to say about who we are and what our work is in the world.

So, perhaps against our better judgment, we stepped, jumped, or fell into the river. Maybe some of us were thrown in while we looked the other way. And as we were swept downstream, sometimes being pulled under and tossed around so much we didn’t know which way was up, with the help of the guides who came alongside us we very slowly began learning how to swim.

Learning to swim, though, does not mean the river of calling has become any less wild. No, the waters ahead of us are deeper and fiercer than ever. I realize this as I sit with clients whose stories of heartache seem without end, and I realize it as Father’s Day passes and I’m reminded that my own heartache is also a lifelong journey. I realize it like a slap in the face each time I see my complicity in the systems that kill people who don’t look like me over and over and over again. To keep swimming, then, we’re risking our very lives. We’re throwing our bodies into the rivers of our calling, not always knowing that we’ll be able to stay afloat.

But I do know this: we have had good guides, who aren’t afraid to dive in and help hold our heads above water. Next time you get pulled under–because it will happen to us again, many times–remember their faces. Remember their voices in your life, and remember that they believe in you because they have witnessed your journey these last few years, and they are standing by to bear witness to the work you are called to do. And all these people gathered around us today, they believe in you too. In fact our guides have taken many forms, but as someone who came to this school very much still a boy — a boy who had lived for too long without a father and had come to fear the movement of the currents — I cannot let this moment pass without thanking in particular those behind me on this stage who have been my guides. You have taught me how to swim and how to read water, and you have invited me to believe that the river of my calling is a wild and glorious creature. I thank you, and I honor you.

And here’s something else I know: you all are fierce swimmers. When you’ve lost your breath and you’re near drowning, I have seen you kick toward the surface and let the currents carry you into ever deeper waters–because you are brave, brave people, with ferocious kindness and deep passion. I believe with all of my heart that when others hear the river of your calling splashing on the rocks, and when they see the sun dancing on its waters and the mighty, fruit-bearing trees in its wake, those trees whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, they will come to the banks to see what is this new and wonderful river, and there you will be, inviting them in for a swim, tugging at their hearts as you call to them to “Come and see. The water is good. Come and see.”

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Near the beginning of ÌìĂÀÊÓƔ’s Therapy I class last spring, we read an article by Martin Buber about therapy as a confrontation with “the naked abyss of man.” Many people try to objectify that abyss or bury it in theory and training, writes Buber, but there comes a moment when genuine connection and the hope for healing necessitate that “self is exposed to self” and that the abyss in one person is open to the abyss in the other.Âč

I loved this idea as soon as I read it. It reminded me of when the Psalmist writes about deep calling unto deep, and it felt powerful and important. Buber’s abyss stayed in my mind the rest of the spring and summer terms, and I cited it frequently in papers and class discussions.

Then I started my internship in community mental health, and the therapeutic abyss was no longer a theoretical notion for me to romanticize. I met clients whose stories intersected my own in ways that unraveled me and left me raw, and on some days the abyss in my tiny intern office felt like it was going to swallow me.

On some days the abyss felt like it was going to swallow me.

That feeling—unraveled and raw—spread to other areas of my life as well: sleepless nights, apathy in maintaining friendships, phoned-in papers and work tasks. After a couple months I found the courage to start naming it as depression, which initially heightened my terror of the abyss. How could I help clients, I wondered, with such a storm raging in my own life?

As the term progressed, I grasped at the small moments that sparked life and beauty in the midst of my storm: like the mornings when, just as my work day was starting, I would hear music floating up from the Large Classroom. starts each Theology class playing her violin and inviting students to sing with her, and on many mornings this past term I found myself walking downstairs to let their music reach into where I felt unraveled and disconnected.

Then there are the rituals of Vespers and Wednesday communion in the Chapel, and inviting us to sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” at the staff Christmas lunch as we gathered to align ourselves once again with the work of the incarnation.

I think, too, of a Christmas dinner with my Practicum II group. Practicum ended months ago, yet we still find ourselves coming together, as if we are leaning on each other to help us remember where we have been and to witness our ongoing, sometimes awkward growth as clinicians and as people.

In recent weeks I have been clinging to these moments like small, steady beacons in the midst of the abyss. And somehow, in ways that I do not fully understand, they have changed me. Because of these moments—because of this community—I have slowly begun to find my feet planted beneath me again.

Don’t get me wrong: Buber’s abyss still terrifies me, and I think it should. Making ourselves vulnerable to another person’s chaos in order to help facilitate change is staggering and holy work, and I hope I never take it lightly. But I also hope I never forget to be awed by the wonder of two people being fully present with each other and both being changed by the encounter. Participating in that process in a therapeutic context is more humbling, difficult, and jaw-droppingly beautiful than I could have imagined.

In about a week I’ll start my final term as a student at ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ”. As I reflect on these last few years, my current internship, and all the work ahead of me, I find that the moments of connection and beauty in this community serve as milestones of my formation here, and that the internalized voices of my professors—like urging us to “listen to the music of the patient,” talking about “planting a seed of ‘we,’” or asking again and again, “Where does it hurt?”—are supporting and interacting with my own emerging therapeutic voice.

As that voice continues to develop in the coming term and the years of work ahead, my desire is that it will reflect the experience of being both humbled by the abyss and inspired by my capacity to confront it. For all of the times I have felt unraveled and raw in this community, it has taken me a while to also recognize the roots I have grown here: roots that have fostered a more thoughtful, integrated, and courageous version of myself, and that allow me to—slowly, painfully, over and over—stare into that abyss without shrinking from it.

ÂčBuber, M. (1999). Healing through meeting. In J.B. Agassi (Ed.), Martin Buber on psychology and psychotherapy (pp. 17-21). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

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In the summer before eighth grade, I participated in a church youth group mission trip to Guatemala. We packed our Bibles and pamphlets, rehearsed our testimonies, and practiced our skits; I performed the role of Jesus in a Spanish version of Carman’s “The Champion.”

That middle school trip came to mind often (you might say it haunted me) during our recent for ÌìĂÀÊÓƔ’s new “Engaging Global Partnerships” course. I was one of six students—led by , Associate Professor of Theology & Culture—who spent the week learning about the story of Guatemala, meeting on-the-ground leaders, teachers, businesspeople, pastors, and others working toward the restoration of their neighborhoods, and witnessing both the power of incarnation and the trauma of oppression.

Unlike my earlier visit to Guatemala, and unlike what you might picture when you hear about six Christian students from the U.S. visiting Central America, this was not a mission trip. We didn’t build any churches or distribute any tracts, and we didn’t even wear matching T-shirts. We were there to hear stories, ask questions, bear witness, and wonder together about how the things we were seeing and learning might impact our ongoing education at ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” and the ways we inhabit our own places.

At the beginning of the week, one of our Guatemalan instructors, Joel, welcomed us to his city and encouraged us to look for and be open to both its beauty and its affliction. With his words in mind, we encountered plenty of both over the days that followed. There was beauty in the mountains that skirted the horizon, the vibrant colors on signs, buildings, and fabrics throughout the city, the varied and flourishing trees, the soaring cathedrals, and the resilience of a culture that endured decades of civil war and centuries of oppression. And, especially, there was so much beauty in the people we met.

Yet, at the same time and often in the same place, there was tremendous affliction. Even now, one of the communities we visited is reeling from the effects of a collapse at the city dump that killed at least four people. In a neighborhood adjacent to the dump, Fito (another one of our guides and instructors) welcomed us into his home barely a week before the nearby collapse. When I asked Fito how it felt to show us around his neighborhood and welcome us for lunch, he said he felt so at home, like a fish that had gone back underwater—that’s how much he loves the place.

Many of Fito’s neighbors work in the dump. When a tragedy like this happens—a heap of trash collapsing unexpectedly—their neighborhood is left to mourn, search for loved ones buried in the garbage, and, much sooner than they should have to, get back to work. (Here I’ll urge you to read these two bold and heartbreaking posts from our Guatemalan instructors Joel and Fito: and )

Even with so much to learn and to witness, we could not stop at passive observation. Through their wisdom, their example, and their many difficult questions, Joel and Fito challenged us to wrestle with the beauty and affliction in our own homes, to wonder how the dynamics we were encountering were similar to or different from dynamics in the United States. Their deep love for their country insisted that we not resort to voyeurism and judgment, but instead look at our own lives and our own settings with curiosity, courage, and honesty.

Because, after all, Guatemala is not the only country suffering from vast economic inequality, gang violence born out of systemic marginalization, widespread sexual abuse, and dangerous political and religious leaders.

In those moments, when something we saw registered like a punch in the gut by reminding us of our own country and our own homes, “Engaging Global Partnerships” felt like much more than a fancy title. The people we encountered and the things we learned will have a direct and lasting effect on the way we pursue therapeutic work, ministry, social entrepreneurship, and the daily love and care of our neighborhoods. For that—for the people we met, for the beauty and affliction we witnessed, for the good, ongoing work we learned about, for all of it—I am so very grateful.

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What I didn’t fully grasp at the time—what I, a 10-year-old boy, had no way of comprehending—was that this trip was not just for the fun of it. My mom did not randomly decide to fly across the country with her five children and celebrate Christmas in an unfamiliar place. It was an act of desperation, a fear of confronting the first Christmas in which our father would be out of the house.

After losses and separations, the firsts are usually the hardest: the first birthday of a deceased parent, the first anniversary spent alone, the first Christmas after a divorce. When my dad left, my mom knew that nothing would be the same—Who would sit in his chair? Who would read The Night Before Christmas?—and spending Christmas at home while pretending everything was normal was too much to bear. So we fled to Colorado and distracted ourselves with snowballs and ski lifts and freezing temperatures.

* * *

I’ve been thinking, too, about the magi who followed a star across a desert to welcome a newborn king. Was he everything they were hoping for? Was it worth the journey? I imagine them trekking the long way home, facing the questions that were waiting when they got back. Did they ever wonder if anything had really changed?

Then there are the shepherds, witness to a heavenly spectacle and angelic proclamations that have been told and retold in stories and songs. What happened a night later, a week later, a year later, when the skies were silent and everything was as it had always been? Where did the angels go?

What happened when the skies were silent and everything was as it had always been? Where did the angels go?

And what about us? We move through Advent with and liturgies of anticipation, and on Christmas we remember the pregnant teenager who bore the hope of the world, but then what? Has anything really changed?

Soon we’ll toast the new year, and then back to work, back to school, back to the headlines brimming with fear and hate. Jesus has been born, and still we oppress and villainize the other. Still we stoop to violence. Still we feel the pain of loss and loneliness. The star that leads the way, the host of angels, the baby Immanuel—did we make it all up?

* * *

A few weeks ago, I sat in the final session of as we took turns reading out loud our personal essays. It was the last class of a busy term, the culmination of months of wrestling with big ideas and bigger questions. We read stories about family and pain and life and faith. They were funny, sad, angry, and, all of them, beautiful. It felt a little like church: the Christmas cookie communion, the liturgy of stories, the call to listen and be moved.

There was something profound about wrapping ourselves in those words, stepping into someone else’s world and seeing, for just a few minutes, from each other’s perspectives. Isn’t that part of why we talk so much about stories at this school? Isn’t that why we sit through the insanity of Practicum and subject ourselves to hours upon hours of therapy? We believe that telling meaningful stories is a way to counter trauma and brokenness. And we believe that by listening to stories, immersing ourselves in the heartaches and longings of another, we can offer something of goodness and truth.

I don’t know what the magi were thinking as they crossed the desert toward home, nor the shepherds after they went back to their flocks. But I imagine that they found themselves telling the story again and again, each time like something new. And I imagine that the scandal of the story, the notion of God stepping into human experience through the vulnerability of an infant, made them want to be a little more vulnerable and compassionate themselves.

I imagine that they found themselves telling the story again and again, each time like something new.

I don’t know, either, where you find yourself after Christmas. For many of us, it’s a time in which we are acutely aware of our wounds—and of our tendency to distract ourselves. So maybe, even though December 25 is passed, we can tell ourselves the story of the unexpected baby one more time.

And then let’s follow that story’s example, setting aside our own power and privilege so that we can enter the worlds of others. Let’s listen to their stories, mourning and celebrating with them, defying the systems that tell us some stories matter more than others and some people deserve more than others. And let’s tell good stories, stories that are true and deep and full of hope, stories that point back to the pregnant teenager and the baby and the God who rescues.

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One part in particular, in verse 6, has been haunting me. Isaiah hears the call to cry out in the wilderness, and his reply is heartbreaking in its simplicity: “What shall I cry?”

What shall I cry? How will I ever know what to say? What difference would it make?

These are the questions I’m left with after the recent attacks in Beirut and Paris. So, in my not knowing what to say, I turned to community. First I looked for that Mr. Rogers “Look for the helpers” kind of content that reminds us of our shared goodness. Social media, as usual, did not disappoint. My sister-in-law shared the Emma Lazarus poem from the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.”), which registered like a punch in the gut, and then I teared up at my desk watching a video of a Muslim man offering hugs to people on the streets of Paris.

Then I started looking for voices that might help us process how to respond as Christians. Sojourners likened . RELEVANT posted a list of Patheos offered this, which feels devastating and true:

“If your beliefs, if your convictions, end up breaking people’s bodies or hearts or spirits, then maybe it is time to wonder if those beliefs are pushing you toward evil, not good. If your beliefs declare that certain people (the gays, the immigrants, the Republicans) are anathema, that some group of people is unworthy of compassion and respect, then you are standing on the side of the terrorists. The terrorists who are hoping that violence will be answered with violence, so that they can be even more certain that their violence is justified and right.” ()

Then I asked some friends and colleagues at ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” to share anything they’ve seen recently that has helped bring comfort or clarity or inspiration. , Professor of Counseling Psychology, recommended a recent essay, from David Brooks at The New York Times. Brooks writes:

“Justice demands respect of the other. It plays on the collective memory of people who are in covenantal communities: Your people, too, were once vulnerable strangers in a strange land. The command is not just to be empathetic toward strangers, which is fragile. The command is to pursue sanctification, which involves struggle and sometimes conquering your selfish instincts. Moreover, God frequently appears where he is least expected—in the voice of the stranger—reminding us that God transcends the particulars of our attachments.”

, Director of Enrollment Management, forwarded me an old Wendell Berry text, which is as timely now as it was after September 11: “It is hard to speak of the ways of peace and to remember that Christ enjoined us to love our enemies, but this is no less necessary for being difficult,” Berry writes.

, Human Resources Generalist and 2015 alumna, posted she recently delivered on Mark 13:1-8. Kate writes:

“Jesus says: No. No, wars are not the end; they are the result of earthly rulers, not the will of the Divine Creator of the Universe. No, natural disasters are not a sign of God’s punishment. No, famines are never God’s desire. No, this is not the end of the story. Rather, Jesus tells us that these problems are early birth pains—the sign of new life; the sign that something new is struggling to be born; the sign of the Nation of God struggling to become reality. And perhaps we are to respond to these early birth pains in the same way we would respond to a woman entering labor: by offering comfort and assistance, to the best of our abilities, while anticipating the new life that is to come.”

, Assistant Director of Admissions, went into full-on preacher mode at her desk as she told me how, as a pastor, she turns to our sacred stories to see how the people of God are called to treat strangers and refugees. “We have given up our lives as followers of Jesus,” she told me. “We cannot then orient our lives around fear or self-protection.”

What does say about us? What do we do with the possibility that most of us are more likely to suffer violence from a white man with a mental illness than from a foreign refugee? What do we do with our mountains of guns and the generations of men in our prisons? It’s easier, after all, to point out a window than to look in a mirror.

It’s easier, after all, to point out a window than to look in a mirror.

It was about the time that I was researching the when I heard that question again: “What shall I cry?” I think I’ve been keeping myself busy, scrambling to collect ideas and inspiration, to keep myself from feeling the desperation and futility in Isaiah’s question. That’s something our culture is really good at: hiding our fear of futility under think pieces, statistics, and infographics.

So I was moved when , President of ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ”, told me he didn’t know what to say. He knew he’d be expected to offer something profound and compassionate, but all he felt was raw anger and futility. The next day Keith jotted down a few words describing his response, which you can read —and please do.

I am left, now, with far more questions than answers. And I invite you to join us in those questions. Throughout Advent, we are wrestling as a community with all of the complexity and uncertainty that comes with the collision of past, present, and future: our past stories and traumas, our present wounds and realities, and our future hope—however faint—in the coming Messiah. You can sign up for our weekly Advent series, emailed every Sunday until Christmas, here.

Photo by Bulent Kilic / AFP / Getty Images. Accessed

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