Laura Wade Shirley’s post on “Running as a Spiritual Practice” has been on my mind a lot this year as I picked up running in preparation for a trip a few years ago. In December of last year, I was invited to sign up for a half marathon, which I did in hopes that by mid-June I would be ready.

I took off for my first training run in early April in the mountains of Leavenworth and returned with a new pain in my shins and right foot. Rather than rest, I upped my mileage again, and again. I was training, I told myself, I had to push through. Even with late-night googling of stress fracture symptoms that seemed to closely resemble the pain I was in, I didn’t want to stop. I had to keep going.

And then I couldn’t.

I knew I had pushed too hard. And I knew I had to stop. In an expensive and painful series of weeks of seeking healing and crying in many waiting rooms and doctor’s offices, I was told that this might be the end of my running career.

There’s something so vulnerable about physical pain. In my time at ������Ƶ, I’ve become well-versed in emotional and spiritual agony. But this was different, it wasn’t something that I could hide. Rather, I had to ask for help to do even the tiniest of tasks that I normally wouldn’t think twice about. It was a gift I was angry to receive.

I realized, though, that thankfully I had not yet created new injuries but had merely started applying pressure to old ones. In my 29 years, I’ve gotten hurt in some significant ways (that I’ve generally ignored) and I’ve adapted to living with these hurts in ways that have allowed me to pass as healed, both to myself and others. But with the increase in pressure through training, the injuries refused to remain hidden and demanded attention.

Everything I had done to prop myself up, to convince myself that I was okay, was no longer working.

I had shaped my body and my life around two ideas: I was frail, in need of protection, and that I could not show this to anyone. My chiropractor looked at me and told me to stop protecting myself. He put me in front of a mirror and showed me that I was caving in on myself, trying to diminish my injuries. The way forward in health was to stand upright and unprotected, no matter how much it hurt. In standing up straight I would have to relinquish my attempts to hide and to protect my heart.

Instead of ignoring my pain and pushing through, it is through attention and devotion to nourishing my weaknesses that a way forward is possible.

Slowly, carefully, intentionally, I’ve had to tend to these old wounds and ask for what they need in order to heal.

I was commanded by a trainer that if I was serious about remaining active throughout my life and about healing, that there was no going back. For the rest of my life I was going to have to work on maintaining my weaknesses so they would not cause injury again. I can blame the shoes I had (and I do) but I also have to reckon with how I pushed past all the signals that something was wrong. I had begun to prize my toughness over my tenderness. I was praising my own destruction by valuing my intensity and strength over my pain and weaknesses.

Learn more about and the .

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In these spaces of fear, we’re often less able to access our active practices of filtering our biases and choosing to act differently—leading to harm, most often of our Black and Brown community members. In the last few weeks in June, we’ve seen anti-Asian assaults in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle and white supremacist propaganda posted in Seattle’s Chinatown and International District. We’ve watched in horror the high profile lynchings in the form of police and vigilante killings of Black folks in Minnesota, Georgia, Florida, Washington, and undoubtedly more places before this piece is published. We’ve seen the less publicized police killing of Black first responder Breonna Taylor when police broke into her home in Louisville, KY. And we’ve heard reports of the devastatingly disproportionate toll of Covid19 among the Navajo Nation. And undoubtedly, between when this is written and published, there will be more names of people harmed—some we will learn and more will never be published because the events aren’t filmed.

While we’re stuck at home glued to our digital windows to the world, many of us may become more acutely aware of acts of violence that have been happening all along. Under our current load of fear and stress, these traumas each have their own particular impact, but they also have a cumulative impact on each of us—and most of all on those who see your own faces reflected in these particular victims and who live under this every day.

And I am a white man working at ������Ƶ, where our mission is: “to train people to be competent in the study of text, soul, and culture in order to serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships.” In the past months, I’ve sat in Zoom meetings with students, alumni, staff, and faculty of this majority-white institution, and I have heard story after story from people of color about the impact of this season of isolation and visible violence, as well as specific experiences of discrimination, violence, silence, and pain.

Racism is a primordial wound on the heart of our culture and it touches us all. It is a sin that cuts in so many directions—victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and descendants. And as I seek to understand my role in all this, and my turn of repentance, to love God and my neighbors, I am drawn back into wisdom from the Biblical texts.

In the story of Israel, God set in place cities of refuge—places where people could flee from reckless vengeance killings. These towns were also set aside as the homes of the Levites, the priestly clan. The Jewish Talmud offers deeper understanding about the teachings on these places of refuge. Requirements are outlined: these cannot be large cities or small towns, and they must have a water source. If there is no water source, a well or a canal must be dug. The roadways into these cities must be twice the standard width of the highways going in and out of the largest cities. And every intersection leading toward these cities must be clearly marked.

In short, it was never sufficient to name a place as a city of refuge. The lasting work had to be put in, in order for it to be a legitimate place of hospitality for those in danger of violence. As much as I long to call myself a person who is anti-racist, is so much more than that. This language from the Talmud changes the way that I hear the gospel message preached by John: “Prepare the way of the Lord and make straight paths for him.”

And it changes the way that I read Isaiah 40:3-5:

A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Last week, our community prayed this passage alongside . He gives voice to the ache and longing for justice present in this passage and in the Black community. As I listen to his voice I am reminded that there is no good news to the gospel of Jesus if it does not bring loving justice to our world.

In my own life as a white man, and in my work in ������Ƶ community, it is not enough to be aware of violence. And it is not enough to name myself an ally. In order to credibly love my neighbors, I must join in the lament of my siblings in pain, and even more, we must together continue to do the mundane and invisible work of creating and maintaining access ways, and sources of life for Black, Brown and Native people in our communities. And as a white man, I must enter my own lament. My own source of life is cut off by racism when I do not engage in this justice work, where I myself am often the worker who joins late in the day.

In my particular work at ������Ƶ this looks like grieving and strategizing with students; implementing and revisiting equity strategies as we distribute Covid19 benevolence funds; from the beginning, addressing racial and socioeconomic disparities as we lead workshops on self-care for ongoing trauma; and daily making space in our community rhythms of prayer to hold grief and explore our own work in justice building. It also means showing up in my own community—demanding justice and accountability for Stonechild Chiefstick, a Native man killed by police who have gone uncharged in my county last year, and for Bennie Branch and Manuel Ellis, both Black men killed by police in nearby Tacoma. And it means listening when my Black neighbor speaks about her fear for her teenager’s life, and doing work with our local police to ensure that this child is safe in our shared community.

None of these things give me or ������Ƶ the right to label ourselves a place of refuge. Instead, they are some of the daily practices we engage relationally and, in so doing, are ourselves being transformed. We have the blessing of not being a monolith. And while we are a majority white learning community, we are also a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and multicultural community that continues to be shaped and led by one another. To be a place of refuge, dialogue, and repair in our society, we must be engaged in this work as a daily spiritual practice, inviting our souls, our economics, our politics, and our relationships to be contoured to the Spirit of God at work in the world.

This past Sunday, Christians celebrated the feast of Pentecost. Humanity has always been in need of God’s flames uniting us with all people in love and justice. The fires across USAmerica are calling out for love and justice for Black bodies in our nation. I believe that the Spirit needs us to be people whose lives are marked by doing the work that creates justice and peace.

As a school, we can never really be a permanent city of refuge, but we can be a place along the way where people join with God and learn from one another about how to build such places together in our homes and congregations; nonprofits and friend groups; therapy offices and neighborhoods. As a white person, a huge part of my learning is listening and bearing wit(h)ness, and another huge part is consistently acting, speaking, and sharing in this blessed work, especially when society privileges me in such a way that I could choose to simply check out and reap the benefits handed to me because of my white skin.

This is important, holy work. And it is important work to talk about together. As wrong as it is to put up signposts pointing to places that are not actual refuge, it is also crucial to illuminate the pathways where work really is being done. This both opens us up for accountability and brings us into dialogue with those who have much to teach us. There is not a “right” way for white folks to do this work and come out looking good. We must move into it making mistakes and repenting all along the way. Some may experience this as a deterrent, but for those who receive it as the blessing it is, it is a way forward into sharing the weighty blessing of Pentecost.

One of the gifts of working in a place where psychology and theology intersect, is that while therapeutic changes often happen confidentially behind closed doors, the world of communities of faith are rich with public symbols and places to both contain and display communal grief and repair. Here, in the work of racial justice, we need both of these together. We need deep, internal, and interpersonal work. And we need communal and symbolic actions that disrupt oppression and create structure for cultural change.

May we join with the Spirit to create spaces of refuge and repair in our neighborhoods and in our world.

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Ahmaud Arbery.

Breonna Taylor.

Tony McDade.

Maurice Gordon.

Rayshard Brooks.

George Floyd.

Our altar grows all-too-crowded, even if we say names from Black Lives Matter was founded. All fellow people, Americans, neighbors, friends, family, children of God. All murdered by police. And all unwillingly martyred in the struggle against one of our nation’s original sins. Centuries worth of countless candles.

George Floyd.

Before moving to Seattle, I lived three blocks from where George was killed in Minneapolis.

When I heard, I joined my community from afar in anger, laying awake at night burning with it. 2,000 miles away, they took it onto the streets, soon joined by my community in Seattle and communities around the world in a sweeping, cleansing wildfire of global grief and outrage. A few people literally burned with their own fury – saboteurs with flames, police with tear gas. But our communities swiftly drowned out these acts of violence with acts of peace – civil disobedience, public meetings, policy proposals, neighborhood clean-ups.

We White folk can count on the Black community’s righteous anger remaining, as they try to prevent another trigger-finger taking of Black life by someone hired to protect and serve them. But can we White folk count on our own anger to stay kindled? As other stories overtake the headlines again, it is all too easy for us to let the fires of indignation snuff out. How do we sustain the anger that racial justice requires?

In the words of Civil Rights leader and long-time member of Congress, Rep. John Lewis, we now have to ignite our pilot lights. He says, in his epic chronicle of the Civil Rights movement Walking with the Wind:

“People who are like fireworks, popping off right and left with lots of sound and sizzle, can capture a crowd, capture a lot of attention for a time, but I always have to ask, where will they be at the end? Some battles are long and hard, and you have to have staying power. Firecrackers go off in a flash, then leave nothing but ashes. I prefer a pilot light — the flame is nothing flashy, but once it is lit, it doesn’t go out. It burns steadily, and it burns forever.”

How do we ignite our pilot lights?

Before the fireworks subside into the smoke of forgetting, we need to remember.

We need to remember that there are many already burning brightly in our world. Organizations like r and do much more than huge protests, which are costly actions of last resort. They mostly do the daily grind-work of shifting policy and culture, advancing concrete reform in municipalities nationwide, like those outlined by and . Then there are organizations like the , which has been doing this work for over a century.

We also need to remember other pilot lights of history, luminaries who can light our way now more than ever, reminding us of the continuity in the cause of racial justice. The elders of the Civil Rights Movement in particular have been helping me transmute my anger right now, infusing it with the hope it needs to keep burning. And despite the press that male leaders like John Lewis have gotten, these luminaries, like those who’ve founded the organizations mentioned above, are, of course, mostly Black women.

Septima Clark, “Mother of the Movement:” Co-founder of the Citizenship and Highlander Folk Schools; NAACP and SCLC builder.

Fannie Lou Hamer: Co-founder of the Freedom Democratic Party and National Women’s Political Caucus; SNCC and SCLC builder.

Labor like theirs is too often overshadowed, now as it was then. In part that’s because while men, including anti-racist White men, are busy basking in the center-stage spotlight, these women have been busy actually building the theatre, intentionally eschewing traditions of hierarchy and celebrity. In their words:

Diane Nash: Co-founder of SNCC, the Freedom Riders, and the Alabama and Selma Voting Rights Projects; SCLC and CORE builder:

“My thought about leadership is more task-oriented. Somebody needs to keep up with the money, and account for it. Somebody needs to come into the meeting with an agenda, and to call on people. I think the kind of leadership that has to do with ego and being ordained the leader and staying the leader is deficient. I think movements should be issue-led, not personality-led.”

Ella Baker: Mentor of the Civil Rights Movement, God-Mother of SNCC; NAACP, SCLC, and SCEF builder.:“You didn’t see me on television, you didn’t see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people don’t need strong leaders.”

Their ethos of building rather than “leading” lives on – the more recently-founded initiatives above like BLM explicitly carry the torch of the Mothers’ legacy. I find my own fire stoked by their emphasis on relationship, democracy, and sustainability, their invocation of our wise women elders. We can and must trust them with, and thank them for, our progress.

We need to remember that with their guidance, we have indeed progressed, and that we can further. But we need to remember too that we have not yet reached what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the “promised land of racial justice.” In many ways we still struggle now for what they struggled then. They too were and on the vigil altar. Ella Baker reminds us:

“Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.”

“Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit, a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.”

Now, there may be those of us, or others who we know, who though lauding this vision, criticize or misunderstand the means for carrying it out: direct action – protest that is peaceful and also confrontational. There are words to be remembered in this regard as well. And though we must continue to prioritize listening for the voices of Black women, I must now urge you to read the , which rings as true now as the day Dr. King first wrote it. He challenges all of us white folk, who too often oppose racism from a comfortable distance, to step into the “constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth” and be “extremists for love.”

So, fellow white folk, what does this look like in practice?

On social media, you might hear about only two modes of action, both fireworks:

1. Getting out in the streets or

2. Getting into a gladiatorial debate or onto a soapbox on social media.

Maybe your flame is still crackling and these seem like the right tactics for you right now. Personally I’ll encourage #1 as long as the builders do.

As far as #2, I believe we need (and want) a reality check on our social media use. What would the Mothers’ say about our vortex culture? I think they’d say something like: if it isn’t building, it isn’t working. We are becoming more , and more as it exacerbates this process. It siphons the time and energy – and damages the relationships – we need to work proactively for justice in the real world. If you’re seeing the ashes of relational slash and burn and scorched earth, if your echo chamber is shrinking or erupting with vitriol, that’s a sign the fireworks need a rest. Time to ignite the pilot lights, including but not limited to:

1. leading racial justice work.

2. Having actual conversations with fellow white folk offline.

Who benefits from our burning bridges? Who benefits from our virtue-signaling? Maybe our egos in the short-term. But in the long-term, we are only stymying the conversations we White folk need to be having with each other about racial justice. So instead, what if we sought exchange and quality over quantity in our conversations? What if we took them offline, calling people on the phone the old-fashioned way, reallocating the hour spent on Facebook diatribes and back-patting to an hour of nonviolent communication? As the Mothers remind us, commitment to relationship is the only proven path to transformation. That’s what moves opinions, then votes, then mountains, and ripples into tidal waves.

3. Doing our soul-work around race and racism.

And the most important relationship on this path is the one we each have with our very own souls. Many fellow white folk are speaking up about this, imploring us to own up to our privilege and silence. But any public demonstration in this regard is meaningless if we aren’t doing the private legwork that truly transformative activism requires. Yes, is another outlet for growing in awareness. But this too is meaningless if we don’t let awareness steep in our hearts.

We need to journal and pray and wander in the wilderness with the hard truths and questions. And yes, we must own our consistent failures and the consistent failures of white Western monoculture. But we must also own a vision for something better, in ourselves and in the world. Indeed, singing about salvation will draw in countless more people than just sermonizing about sin.

So let us imagine: What might that elusive “promised land of racial justice” and “larger freedom” look like? What healing and wholeness do our White folk souls have to gain there? Is there anything of ourselves and our ancestral European/American cultures that can aid us on the journey? These wrestlings will help us engage most constructively in the conversations and action needed to bring more white folk into the struggle. These wrestlings will keep us burning and in reciprocal relationship with BIPOC folk.

Lastly, we need to remember to keep saying the names of our fellow children of God, and keep the candles lit.

When the Vietnam War Memorial was installed in Washington, DC, it was proposed that politicians should meet there every time a declaration of war was on the table, and be forced to read aloud the 58,000 names etched into its polished black walls. Their wailing alone would prevent them from sending another mother’s child to die.

So it goes with the names of the Mothers’ children at our vigil altar – the memorial dedicated to the preservation of Black life, to the struggle for racial justice. May we continue to say their names, until politicians and police and protesters alike lay weapons down and wail together. Indeed, our anger is doomed to ashes if we do not also embrace sorrow.

Ahmaud Arbery.

Breonna Taylor.

Tony McDade.

Maurice Gordon.

Rayshard Brooks.

George Floyd.

May we keep bringing our pilot lights back to their candles.

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This, of course, is not the first time I have been overwhelmed with grief as I mourn the senseless deaths of black men and women. One moment comes to my mind quite poignantly, as it links the past and the present. In 2015, I traveled with my wife to Montgomery, Alabama to be in conversations with a mixed-race group about racial trauma and incarceration. One afternoon we were asked to travel to the site of a lynching in Elmore County in the town of Wetumpka that occurred on June 17th, 1898. I found myself overcome with grief, on my knees in the dirt filling two-gallon jars with the brown and grey clay of Alabama soil. We filled four jars, each stenciled with a name, a city, and a date. The names belonged to the four black men lynched together that day. 

A hundred and seventeen years later, we had traveled to Wetumpka, Alabama to remember and honor these men whose lives were taken for unknown reasons. The remembering of these men was both an act of defiance and reverence, linking them to us, as we sang, prayed, and cried for Ham Thompson, Reese Thompson, Louis Spier, and Solomon Jackson. 

Those four names are joined by more each day, and were preceded by millions before them. The names stretch out and feel endless as we attempt to remember them, know their lives, and honor their stories…Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and George Floyd.

As someone who studies change, I know that some change can only come from disruption and disorder. While I do not condone or support violent expressions, I understand the need to re-affirm that the killings must stop. I was struck by the words of Max Bailey, a protester in Denver: “If you can tell me something better for me to do—if you can tell me a way that we could change the world without trying to make noise like that, then I’ll get out of the streets” (CNN, Madeline Holcomb, 2020).

The tragedy is that we have yet to find the ways to make for justice and peace. None of us—conservative, progressive, or anywhere in between—can fully answer the question of how to find justice and peace for a nation toiling with its original sin of slavery. 

To call for peace without justice mutes the message of Jesus, decontextualizing the violence his body suffered and abstracting the tree he hung on, cheapens grace. Our hope is not in that Jesus escaped the humiliation, torture, and death, but that his death wasn’t the end of the story. Death will not be the end of our story.

Now, we have hard work in front of us. As a nation, we are at a crossroads. The status of our mistrust and divisions will tear us apart and we will not recover. This society will not hold together through coercion nor anarchy, but only through the rebuilding of trust. This means enemies must begin to hear truths from each other, and consistent action must be taken to lower the threat of harm to each other. There must be those who hold the center ground, those who can mediate a different relationship, those who can help us see past the splitting, those who offer a different love. We must be those who hear the gospel of Jesus as both a message of justice and grace.

We know that justice is not ultimately found in the streets. This is about being heard and being tired in the worst expressions of our trauma and rage.

The system will only change with the engagement of former combatants, those who believe that their very existence is linked together. 

When I came to this little school, my hope was that we would come to see our mission as more than training people to be therapists, pastors, social entrepreneurs, and artists. My hope was that we might learn to equip people to become agents of change—leaders in a movement through transforming relationships and mending society. My hope is that we might train people to serve others in healing their trauma—not just from their own life and story, but the generational trauma carried in and between their bodies. I believe in this mission and have hope for the mending and re-weaving of the fabric of society. 

This is an extension of our mission into the world: serving God and neighbor through transforming relationships. 

May we be people of faith who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. May our prayers not only be words—may our prayers move into our hands and feet in service to our neighbor. May our cries for justice extend into our relationships and the fabric of our communities. 

The post The Work Ahead of Us: Addressing Racial Trauma and Systemic Injustices appeared first on ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

She didn’t plan to build, there was the hope that maybe she could inherit the family home, the one that’s been passed down through generations.

But the thing is…the home is older and wearier and rotting out. There are deep cracks in the foundation, the kind that make the house lean into the dusty earth a little more each day. Really, it’s not even a house anymore, just some hollowed out and ancient ruins on a lonely ground.

There’s sorrow here. Hope feels it burning through her hands as she runs them along the battered stones. , too. Maybe you feel it. I do.

As we move into this new year and decade, your anger is welcome. These ruins are here but we can see them, glory to God. It’s okay to weep with Hope as we tear down something that might have been beautiful in its time. This is dangerous work, it’s gonna make our hands bleed and our feet ache. But it’s good work, the kind of work for the courageous and desperate ones. It’s work for those of us who are done with putting up with, those of us who are cold and wet from living in old homes where the rain gets in the cracks and the foundations tremble when the thunder comes. It’s for those of us who have a fire burning in our bones that no longer lets us remain silent or cry peace when there is none to be found. It’s for those of us who long to dance on the ancient ruins and play in the broken places because really, we’re just little ones looking for home.

Hope can remind us that within the grains of these old walls, there is the possibility for something new.

If within the broken places, then here is where we can make a home. We can plant a garden. We can root our bare toes into this soil, and tend to baby trees. We can join together with the friends of Hope to build communities where our children can play in the streets. We’ll sit on our doorsteps with our lovers and wine and say this is home, this is home, this is home.

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In February, ������Ƶ, , and gathered in Montgomery, Alabama to engage the realities and impacts of racism and trauma. The event centered around the belief in the power of the Gospel to bear witness to our cultural history, transform our stories, and sustain our hope. Race, Trauma, and the Gospel invited leaders to move beyond familiar solutions to engage in-depth discussions about the fragmented conversations about race in America and the needs of individuals and communities served by our organizations.

Resilient Leaders Project released its first research report, a 25-page document outlining resilience in practice. The purpose of the report is to begin a discussion on its theological and practical applications for Christian leaders while also reinforcing the need for these practical strategies. You can read more here.

Exciting news of the new MA in Counseling Psychology Concentration in Trauma & Abuse was announced in April, which is designed to train counselors and therapists for whole-person engagement of complex trauma. The first group of students to enroll in this concentration began taking classes in Fall 2019, featuring teaching from ������Ƶ’s faculty as well as immersive learning from The Allender Center.

May saw the launch of text.soul.culture Season Three which featured compelling conversations with alumni, faculty, and other thought leaders from both within and outside of our community. One of the featured episodes of the season was “Resilience, Trauma, and the Hope of the Church,” featuring Kate Davis (MDiv ‘15) and Laura Wade Shirley as they led a conversation about how they learned to recognize the need for resilience in their own lives and what they’re learning as they come up with new ways to help other leaders foster resilience. You can give the episode a listen here.

We said farewell to Dr. Angela Parker at commencement in June where she left students with a compelling charge to a different voice and relationship. You can watch her commencement address here.

The fall welcomed a host of learning opportunities, both from outside voices including Dr. Usha Tummala-Narra on “Why the Hate?: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Immigrants, Race, and Caste in Contemporary U.S.” as our featured Relational Perspectives Series speaker, numerous alumni at the fifth annual Symposia, and our own Dr. Chelle Stears as keynote speaker engaging “My Heart Flows on in Endless Song: Lament and Hope Through a Trauma-Informed Theology” for our annual Stanley Grenz Lecture Series.

Finally, we would be remiss to not revisit the appointment of Dr. J. Derek McNeil as President of ������Ƶ. Our community is privileged to have Dr. McNeil step into a role he has been faithfully stewarding and we continue to look forward to his leadership in the years to come.

Top Blog Posts of 2019

Throughout the year we feature essays, stories, art, and more from students, faculty, and guest contributors. Take a look through a few of our most-read posts from the past year:

So You’re Moving to Seattle

“Many of you are uprooting lives in other states, and even other countries, to plant yourselves in Seattle and seek roots at ������Ƶ. Part of Seattle’s charm is that it is a city of neighborhoods, each with its own distinct character. It’s helpful to have a sense of which neighborhood might be a good fit for you.” Continue Reading

8 Theologians and Women of Color You Should Be Reading

“This [November], we want to highlight eight prominent theologians who are women of color. Women who are at the forefront of conversations about womanist theology, gender, feminism, and race in the church. We encourage you to take a moment to pause, find a quiet place to read and discover the depth and wisdom these theologians have to offer.” Continue Reading

10 Women Theologians You Should Be Reading

“This is no ordinary list of “must-reads.” Through recommendations from faculty and staff, we’ve compiled a list of women theologians who are shaping and challenging discussions around womanist theology, race, feminism, and women and gender in scripture.” Continue Reading

Unconventional Thoughts on Addiction from a Psychotherapist

“Here, Joy Hilliker (MA in Counseling Psychology, 2016), a psychotherapist practicing in Seattle, writes about our perceptions of and responses to that cycle of addiction. Pulling from her research and therapeutic work, Joy argues that criminalization and stigmatization will not disrupt addictive patterns, but rather a caring, affirming gaze that does not turn away in disgust.” Continue Reading

Why Counselors Make Poor Lovers

“Dr. Doug Shirley writes about the tendency of many therapists to treat loved ones (including their partners) as clients, wielding clinical distance and professional jargon as a shield against the risks and conflicts of intimacy.” Continue Reading

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