“The last time I wrote a paper, the year started with a 19 not a 20…”

“Friends often ask me to proofread their papers; I love helping people’s ideas come through the written word…”

“Am I supposed to already know what Chicago Style means?”

Are any of these thoughts familiar? Entering a graduate program involves a lot of transition and for many students, academic writing can feel like a daunting hill to ascend or a muscle that hasn’t been worked in a long time. Maybe you’re a confident writer but would like some help navigating the integrative type of assignments you’ll be asked to write at ������Ƶ. However you’re feeling as the fall term approaches, I invite you to consider being a part of the first-year Writing Workshop.

My name is Kelsey Wallace – I am the Registrar and I work closely with Mac Martin, who handles academic advising for all of our students, as well as our Writing Center Consultants. As a student you will receive emails from me often! I love journeying with students throughout their time at ������Ƶ. I have more than 10 years of teaching experience, and love working with students as a writing and academic skills coach.

The Writing Workshop is recommended for all, regardless of your confidence level as an academic writer. While all the writing you will do at ������Ƶ requires technical competence, much of it asks for a high level of personal engagement and research synthesis as well. The workshop is designed to familiarize you with the rhythms of research, writing, and editing that you’ll do in your time as a student here. And more than that, the workshop provides space to experiment with and explore study methods and sustainable work habits to help you re-calibrate your previous academic experience towards the often unexpected dynamics that come with graduate-level study. The purpose of the workshop is as much about adjusting to graduate school as it is about refreshing your memory on thesis statements.

Details

We offer two sections of Writing Workshops: Section 1 before classes begin, and Section 2 during the fall term, both offered synchronously online. While both workshops cover the same material, the Fall Weekly Workshop provides space to discuss and peer review assignments for your classes while they are happening; the Pre-Fall Workshop often appeals to folks who want a reorientation towards academic work before classes begin.��

Whichever section you join, you will be challenged, have fun, and leave with tools, techniques, and the confidence to overcome the glorious mountain of writing ahead! You can also learn more about the Writing Center here.

Section 1: Pre-Fall Workshop

Sample Schedule: 9am-12 pm, 4 days over 2 weeks in August

Section 2: Weekly Fall-Term Workshop

Sample Schedule: Fridays, 12-1 pm

What to Expect

• Brainstorming exercises to generate paper topics or help you see what you’re saying between the lines.
• Self-guided modules on citation styles, essay structure, etc., that you can return to and reference throughout your Fall term, in addition to workshop time together.
• Discussion around your methods of writing and how what you’re doing now may help or hinder your process at ������Ƶ (i.e. Do you make outlines? How much time do you give yourself to write? How do you give yourself breaks from writing?). A word to the wise: taking breaks for restorative, creative activity is the best way to avoid the dreaded “writer’s block.”
• Approaches and opportunities for Peer Review. Hopefully the work you do sharing your words and hearing the words of others will go with you as part of your process here. It is vulnerable to let others into your writing, and a layered beauty often comes if you will take the risk.��

“The Writing Workshop was an immensely helpful space to refresh on academic writing and meet peers from my cohort before the term started. I still reference my notes from the workshop every time I am forming thesis statements for papers. Also, I met a great writing partner and we have been peer reviewing/editing each other’s work all throughout our first year.”��

—Carson Taylor, MATC 2024

The post The Writing Workshop appeared first on ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

These books are not required for any particular course, but instead are a peek into our hearts and minds as we enter this new season.

As you discern what books you’d like to add to your summer list, we invite you to consult and consider buying a book from a Black-owned independent bookstore.

Community Recommendations
	by Padriag O’Tuama�� Recommended by Millicent Haase, MDiv ’21, Admissions Counselor�� From master storyteller and host of On Being’s Poetry Unbound, Pádraig Ó Tuama, comes an unforgettable memoir of peace and reconciliation, Celtic spirituality, belonging, and sexual identity. “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”��
	by Cole Arthur Riley�� Recommended by McKenna Hight, MDiv ’24 This quote from the introduction sets the frame: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER: In her stunning debut, the creator of Black Liturgies weaves stories from three generations of her family alongside contemplative reflections to discover the “necessary rituals” that connect us with our belonging, dignity, and liberation.���� “To be human in an aching world is to know our dignity and become people who safeguard the dignity of everything around us.”��
	by Dr. Angela Parker�� Recommended by McKenna Hight, MDiv ’24 A challenge to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy that calls into question how Christians are taught more about the way of Whiteness than the way of Jesus.�� “In essence, If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I allows me to hold the idea of Scripture as authoritative while interrogating the doctrines of inerrancy and infallibility as tools of White supremacist thought that promote the erasure of communal memory.”��

More Community Recommendations:

Cheryl Goodwin, Director of Institutional Assessment and Library Services ��

• by Brian McClaren��

Daniel Tidwell-Davis, Director of Student & Academic Services��

• �� by Ash Van Oterloo��
• by James Alison��

Jana Peterson, MDiv ’21 & current theology doctoral student at ��

• by Randy Woodley��
• by Steven Heinrichs��
• by Robin Wall Kimmerer��
• by Osheta Moore
• by Jennifer Grace Bird Dr. Ron Ruthruff, Associate Professor of Theology and Culture

Dr. Joel Kiekintveld, Adjunct Faculty, Listening Lab Leader��

• by Randy Woodley��
• by Hartmut Rosa��
• by Andrew Root and Blair D. Bertrand��
• by James K. A. Smith��

Katrina Fitzpatrick, Assistant Instructor��

• by Richard Twiss��
• by Kristin Kobes Du Mez����
• by Randy Woodley and Bo Sanders��
• by Isabel Wilkerson��

Krista Law, MACP ’12 & MATC ’13, Enrollment Manager��

• by Wil Gafney��

Lauren Peiser, Director of Partnerships��

• by Matthias Roberts��

Mackenzie Martin, Academic Advisor��

• by Rebecca Roanhorse��

Dr. Maria Fee, Adjunct Faculty��

• by Willie James Jennings��
• by Courtney Bryant��
• by Patrick Bringley
• by Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt
• by Lucretia B. Yaghjian
• by Madeleine L’Engle

Dr. O’Donnell Day, Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology

• by Patrick Casement
• by M Fakhry Davids
• by Narendra Keval
• by Frank Lowe
• by Thomas Ogden��

Dr. Paul Hoard, Assistant Professor of Counseling Psychology

• by Stephen Mitchell and Margaret Black
• by John Caputo��
• by Resmaa Menakem
• by Richard Mitchell
• by Neil Postman����
• by Daniel Jose Gaztambide��
• by Emily Nagoski��
• by Slavoj Zizek��
• by Bessel van der Kolk��
• by Julia Serano��

Dr. Ron Ruthruff, Associate Professor of Theology and Culture

• by Philip S Gorski and Samuel Perry
• by Andrew Whitehead��
• by Pamela Cooper White��
• by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin JR����

Dr. Pat Loughery, Affiliate Faculty����

• by Rob Walker ��
• by Becky Chambers
• by Oliver Burkeman

Jeanette Scott, MACP ’08, Practicum Leader

• by Colin Woodard

We look forward to being in conversation with you about the places your own readings and curiosities take you this summer when we enter into learning together this fall. Until then, we hope each of us can find some good time in the sun.

The post What to Read Before September appeared first on ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

Here at ������Ƶ, as we tend to the learning and formation that our students and alumni experience, we talk about the Student and Alumni Lifecycle. While there are some shared rhythms and formational pathways that all students follow through our degree programs, every practitioner who trains at ������Ƶ has their own unique stories and journey through our programs. Over time, we have collected data from students and alumni to help us understand the seasons of formation that students experience.

The Office of Students & Alumni (OSA) provides Lifecycle programming to support students throughout each season of their lifecycle as students at ������Ƶ. These opportunities are designed to help you navigate your own pathway through your time in this community of learning practitioners.

We understand each student journey as happening in 3 phases: beginning, middle, and (s)ending. While your student journey will look different depending on your degree and pace, each student begins by applying and matriculating to ������Ƶ and going through Orientation as a first year student.

First Year Student Lifecycle

The first year in graduate school can be quite a challenge. Whether you’ve just finished an undergraduate degree or are returning to school after quite some time, becoming a student at ������Ƶ means learning a new language, developing new skills, and examining your own beliefs and stories for the purpose of deep formation. This work takes courage, community, and practice.
What’s more, those of you joining us in our low-residency cohorts are entering this journey from different locations and with different needs for community and formation. Throughout the first year, your Lifecycle Gatherings will focus on helping you enter community and engage in dialogue together across differences of geography, social location, belief, and experiences.

By choosing again and again to opt-in to your own journey of formation and to listen with curiosity to one another’s stories, you have the opportunity to co-create a culture and posture of learning that will empower you for vocations filled with transforming relationships with individuals and systems. Lifecycle Gatherings will be a place where we collectively press pause, breathe, and re-engage that commitment together.

First Year Student Lifecycle Programming begins before the start of weekly classes with Frameworks & Intersections, a self-paced online course where you’ll be introduced to the basics of our learning platforms, and begin your orientation into the culture and resources that will support your ������Ƶ journey. Frameworks & Intersections continues as a series of synchronous online roundtable gatherings for all first year students for 9 weeks across the fall term.

These roundtables orient you to academic, relational, and spiritual resources that are essential to your work as a student practitioner. We’ll connect you with student leaders, faculty, alumni, and staff for engaging conversation around how we co-create a supportive, challenging, and purposeful learning community that supports the needs of students from all backgrounds in their own particular lifecycle as practitioners in formation together at ������Ƶ.

We look forward to beginning this journey with you in just a few weeks!

Stay tuned to your student email inbox for information about Frameworks & Intersections and other Lifecycle Programming that will be launching towards the end of August.

For more information, you can contact , Supervisor of Accessibility & Vocational Programs at dtidwell@theseattleschool.edu.

The post What You Need to Know about Student Lifecycle Programming appeared first on ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

This concept of (S)ending is woven into ������Ƶ experience, from the moment students begin. Graduates of our programs are equipped to serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships in a variety of settings, and we hope these alumni continue as lifelong healers and learners in their communities and vocations. Through this transition process, ������Ƶ seeks to bless and release people into the work they will do, choosing to embody a holistic and life-giving (S)ending. Our goal is to intentionally shape practitioners who are thriving years later, who survive the early phase of their vocational work well, and who care for themselves while also being held in community. In (S)ending, OSA and ������Ƶ community seek to provide support and scaffolding, encouraging self-kindness and care for all that alumni will experience in the transition from graduate school into the early years of their vocation.

Graduating students are offered workshops covering topics such as resume writing, licensure resources, and alumni networking, as well as information on launching a private practice or non-profit. In addition to vocational planning, students are encouraged to consider the longer arc of formation and personal growth that will be continued after graduation.

Each February, at the weekend (S)ending retreat, graduating students are invited to remember the journey that brought them to ������Ƶ, revisiting their first assignment, a creative work centered on the concept “Who Am I,” and exploring questions about identity, expectations, and change. The retreat is offered in a hybrid format. Students attending in Seattle can process this transition through somatic experiences such as moving through the red brick building space and releasing body tension in massage therapy while students participating remotely engage their bodies within the spaces where they have engaged their work as low-residency students. We do this work together because graduates are entering a liminal space, and need to devote time and energy to self-care in order to see what emerges during these processes of grief, play, rest, and discovery.

At the (S)ending retreat, students are also introduced to the alumni community, including Alumni Chapters throughout the country, and the Alumni Quad–an alumni advisory board. It is important for graduating students to know they will have connections and a network of support. The relationship with ������Ƶ is not ending but it is changed, as graduates are now part of a much larger community of lifelong learners. The culminating arc of (S)ending points to the feast at the Graduates’ Breakfast and the celebration of Commencement at the end of June – where graduates are welcomed as colleagues.

In the continual process of (S)ending, OSA gathers feedback from alumni in regular intervals of three to five years, and also consults the Alumni Quad, who meet one-on-one with Alumni each month to better understand the needs and vocational journeys of our graduates Alumni also come to the (S)ending retreat to share and discuss three areas: Where have they needed spiritually and where have those needs been met? What does it look like to find community as Alumni? And what have they needed for ongoing vocational development?

The impact of ������Ƶ is not only embodied and held in our alumni, but also in the clients and community members served by our graduates. Becoming a good practitioner is a lifelong process of building capacity and deepening experience: practicing ending well is a skill that serves us all well, long after completing requirements for a degree at ������Ƶ. Through (S)ending each year, we hope that the newest cohort of alumni will be able to replicate this experience and share with others, serving and blessing God and neighbors in their continued journey throughout the world.

Photo by on

The post The Season of (S)ending appeared first on ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

Many of you have been drawn to this learning community at ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology by the conviction that the fullness of your being should be heard, met, and taken seriously. Along with this conviction comes a core belief that you yourself are one of the most valuable and important assets of any work that you step into. ������Ƶ community honors the personal labor of formation and becoming just as much as the academic development of critical engagement and practical skill (which are both a part of formation as well). Who you are matters. As we like to say it, you can only accompany people as far as you have been willing to go yourself.

Formation is at the very heart of ������Ƶ curriculum and experience, and we believe that you also need to be pursuing growth outside of our learning community–perhaps through participation in a faith community or perhaps through interactions with friends and family. In whatever ways you choose to lean into formation, may it be grounded in strong rhythms of self-care.

MACP Students

A significant part of your training and development as a therapist will happen outside ������Ƶ, as a client in a therapeutic relationship. ������Ƶ requires that you, as an MACP student, complete 40 sessions of psychotherapy with a licensed therapist to deepen your own self-understanding and spend time pursuing the work you will be asking of others. You’ll learn more about this in the weeks ahead, but know that this rhythm of self-care is intentionally woven into the MACP curriculum because we deeply value your journey.

MATC Students

In our degree programs at ������Ƶ, we are forming leaders and practitioners who are relationally mature, growing in awareness, and courageously compassionate. So we highly encourage MATC students to find a therapist or spiritual director to journey with you through this formative time. During graduate school, you will be asked to reflect deeply on your story and how this has impacted your relational style. A gifted sojourner can come alongside you and help you do this work well.

Beyond Therapy and Spiritual Direction

We hope the rhythms mentioned above will be a meaningful part of your self-care as a student. We also know that holistically caring for ourselves is about much more than a task list or how we fill our calendars. In this, we’ve been inspired by the training and resources coming out of ������Ƶ’s . identifies three streams of resilience—people, practices, and purpose—that are crucial to meaningful self-care. We pray that, in addition to the practice of therapy, spiritual direction, and self-care routines, you will also experience care through the people in this community, and through stepping closer to your future purpose as you equip yourself for it through learning and formation.

Seek out the ways you can care for yourself well, and know that they are likely as nuanced as your own story! Some of you may already have a good sense of this, while others may spend three to four years learning what self-care even is, and what the particularities of good self-care are for your personhood. We invite you to be always practicing. After all, learning at ������Ƶ takes your whole body.

The post The Role of Self-Care in Formation appeared first on ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

If we listen, allowing ourselves to receive their comings and goings, the rhythms of change in the earth’s seasons invite us deeper into our own journeys of growth and transformation. Wild, wise, and profoundly complex, our Mother the earth has much to say to us about hope, about loss, about rest.. about patience, forgiveness, and faithfulness.

And whether we feel awe and gratitude for the earth’s stunning beauty, rejoicing in festivals of pumpkins, cider, and soup… or we feel sadness looming as in the darker, colder, wetter days… or perhaps some mixture of both… the rhythms of the earth will carry us. The day will dawn once again, the rains will water the earth, and the sun will continue to surprise us.

These rhythms in life both soothe and sustain us. Some, like the beating of our hearts and the waves of the sea, remind us to breathe. Similarly, communal rhythms offer rest and containment; reminders that we are connected and held.

Here at ������Ƶ, we steward our own collective rhythms as we listen and learn to move together from season to season.

Some of these rhythms are daily: The bells that ring at nine.noon.three; the brewing of coffee; our bodies’ invitations to eat at regular intervals; the faces we see and moments we share in our comings and goings on campus.

Some of these rhythms are weekly: The community newsletter in our inboxes every Monday morning; Communion happens in the chapel at 11:30am every Wednesday, and we meet in classes week to week.

And some rhythms are seasonal: Fall begins with the Welcome Back BBQ, Neighborhood Dinners, Vespers, and Convocation; continues with Thanksgiving Vespers; the Community Christmas Party; winter and spring continue with internships and projects; the Spring Banquet; and Commencement.

Amidst all of these other rhythms, our Student Life Cycle Gatherings offer rhythms of containment that are designed to meet you in your journey as a student at strategic points along the way, allowing space for conversations and connections that will help you orient to resources that are available to you and to the work that is before you. Find more information about these gatherings here.

If you are new to our building, we welcome you and invite you to get cozy with us. We look forward to knowing you and having your presence shape who we are and who we are becoming.

To learn more about community rhythms at ������Ƶ, register to join us for Preview on November 2.

The post Why Community Rhythms Are Important at ������Ƶ appeared first on ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

Watch Dr. J. Derek McNeil’s address to our incoming cohort:

“text.soul.culture is a vehicle. The purpose clause is to serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships. The first two may be common, the last puts the heavy burden on us to not simply inform you, but to form with you.”

Our culture is growing increasingly fragmented and full of ‘wicked problems.’ Problems such as poverty, social inequality, and discrimination around identity. They are singular, complicated problems that we cannot solve with one solution. The problems in this world require more of us than attending graduate school to get a better job or claim a certain status. The challenges in our culture today push us to answer the question: How are you called to serve?

Throughout his challenges to our community, President McNeil focused on the latter part of our mission, which is “to serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships.”

“We know we’re inviting you to not only an informing place, but to an informative place, that in some way we’re being shaped by each other. We’ll be influenced by you, not simply you being influenced by us.”

Watch Dr. J. Derek McNeil’s address to our community at (Re)Orientation:

“I want to affirm that we must retain our faith in the mission, the work of Jesus in our midst, , our commitment to narrative work as a vehicle for change, an integration of disciplines, and the body-mind-spirit relationships, a commitment to serve and a dedication to learning and care for each other—we can’t lose those things.”

Derek challenged our community to think of home not just as a place of comfort, but the place we are called to serve. The difficult realities in our culture require us to think differently, to learn differently, and to address these problems in new ways. But in order to, as our mission statement says, “serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships,” we must do three things:

• We have to accept the assumption we are interconnected.
• We have to accept that integration is a form of maturing and adaptation.
• We have to accept that we are embodied.

As we move into deeper spaces and engage with one another rather than simply fixing what is not working, the metaphorical question and call is: What does it look like to face some of the darkness and heartache in the world around us and in our own stories and sing songs of redemption?

The post Where Are You Called to Serve? appeared first on ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

Thank you to all who joined us for this year’s Relational Perspectives Series lecture with Dr. Usha Tummala-Narra. In an age of cultural fragmentation, learning spaces such as these are deeply important and we are grateful for the way Dr. Tummala-Narra told her story and brought awareness to the anxiety, racism, and xenophobia that is pervasive in our culture. During her lecture, Dr. Tummala-Narra wove personal experience with her own psychoanalytic studies, discussing how fear of immigrants reflects anxiety in multiple dimensions and carries with it much discriminatory potential.

“In the US and in parts of the world, the presence and growing visibility of immigrants triggered a sense of collective anxiety where dissociated defenses maintain emotional distance and identification with groups perceived to be threatening.”

The post Relational Perspectives Series with Dr. Usha Tummala-Narra appeared first on ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

For us all this is a phenomenal beginning, and a gracious gift of God to have you with us, and I am privileged to invite you to further reflect on how you engage your education at the ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology. For me, it is an anniversary of sorts. It was 45 years ago I had the opportunity to be part of the beginning of my seminary career and if you know much of my life and story it was a very unusual moment to actually be in seminary.

I had not planned to do so. I had wished to go to graduate school or law school but I had forgotten to take any of the exams necessary to do so. So, I didn’t want to get a job and my best friend suggested I join him at seminary. And being a person at that point with very unclear convictions it seemed a ridiculous option. I said, “what is it you think I should do if I went to seminary for a year?” and he said, just think about God for a year. That seemed reasonable especially if the light of that if I didn’t I would end up having to get a job.

So I sat where you sat, unfortunately, though the day before I appeared to be and was something of a street person with very long hair, having been involved for many years in illicit pharmaceutical sales, and I was not of the kind of person who probably would have normally attended seminary. As I walked through the hallway, an older student accosted me, or at least that’s what it felt like, and asked why I was there and I told him “I had no damn idea in the world.” He put his finger in my face and said we do not use language like that here, again, important verb, I didn’t hit him nor did I throw him against a wall, I tossed him against a wall.

Apparently that was not acceptable at the seminary I attended and I was sent to the principal, that is the president, my very first day. It was not ostensibly a very successful beginning. But what I would say from that experience is two things my academic dean who put me on probation for six weeks told me, which I want to invite you to, and then there’s a third I wish to add.

The first thing he said to me was, would you be open? And in many ways, that is what we are doing at this ceremony. Will we as your professors, as an administration, as staff, as already present students, will we remain open to you, will you remain open to the work. I was brought to a point of having to consider really in the first month of seminary what I believed about the reality of the character of God and the substance of God. And to begin to address the category of substance, the idea of trinity and triunity, there were so many new concepts that I knew in many ways I didn’t believe and the stance that I was being asked to consider was would I remain open.

Often I will hear from students, “Why do I need to take theology? I’m here to study counseling. I want to become someone who can work with others.” And after sort of removing something of my own core irritation as I hear that question, really the answer is this: What we want for you is to become, no matter what your set of convictions are, someone who can ponder deeply and approach an understanding of the role of the Trinity, and understand what it means to be a follower of Jesus, to actually engage not only your own life but the lives of others.

We’re asking you to be a deeply interconnected human beings and open to various contradictory or conciliatory views that invite you to so much more than we can possibly accomplish just in one simple classroom.

I had the privilege this summer of reading Chelle Stearn’s new book , and what it brought back to memory was the goodness of how to think through an approach that almost every sentence challenged me. I knew much of her vocabulary but because of her rich and deep theological orientation, it required me to be thinking how I in many ways colonize a world by viewing sight as more important than the oral sensation and what music brings to an understanding of the Trinity. All we’re asking is don’t come to class with an already preset set of convictions that you’re not willing to hold tenuously. Still hold, but open your heart to an experience that allows your heart to go far further than what any of us can possibly accomplish.

A second thing I was told in the meeting that was determining whether or not I would remain in that seminary was this: Will you remain humble? And in many ways, you need to know much to know what it means to be humble. The more you know the more you don’t know. And the stance that we would hope for every one of us is that we learn together.

We will teach but so will you. The questions you ask, the world you’ve experienced prior to being here, everything is of value and everything is moving us teleologically from our viewpoint to a deepened Christological understanding of how to read our own lives and to engage the lives of others. So we ask of you, will you continue to pray to be open, to be humbled? But the final thing that I wish my academic dean at that time said to me was this: We are here essentially not to pass on knowledge, not primarily for you to become competent as a professional—we are here essentially to help each of us come to love better.

, as he addresses so many of the components of what it means to be a good psychoanalytic therapist. He comes to a chapter on love and says at the introduction that there was a question as to whether or not he was going to include that chapter because it’s sort of a soft category as you think about the issue of science. But he describes in one class a student who came to him and affirmed the importance of love and said, “you have loved and you have loved us well.” Consider the importance of how love will transform how we each do therapy, so in one sense what I’m inviting us to is this: We are here to educate, there is knowledge that must be transmitted, engaged, and in many ways mimicked and brought into fruition and connections to many other matters.

We are inviting you to ponder the implications of the Trinity and to do so with a mind that, as we engage the one and the many, opens us to consider far more what it means to honor and build boundaries.

What it means to create space, what it means to allow for diversity and complexity to exist in our midst so there is a presence of welcoming, not a matter of mastery. The more we master the more we come to be humbled and the more we are humbled the more we are aware of what it is we each need from one another. We are here, at our very best, to invite all of us to become greater lovers—not only one another, but of the Lord Jesus Christ.

As we do so, I say, and I say not just from the faculty but I say almost solely from myself, I don’t know how to do this well. I stumble profoundly. The very things I claim to be true I virtually contradict in the next sentence, but it is that which we have as a privilege to be together. To actively say the goal of our endeavor is to become greater lovers and such to become then people who know what it is to see this as the central task of our lives.

As I end, I’d like to read from R.M. Rilke as he speaks to a young poet in : “It is also good to love because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being, that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us. The ultimate task, the final test in proof for which all other work is merely preparation.”

What you will do in classes, papers, exams, interviews, conversations, it is all but preparation for what is most important and we are so honored and so grateful that we get to be with you and that you are with us.

The post Convocation: An Invitation to a Greater Love appeared first on ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

Over the course of a year, students will integrate biblical, cultural, and psychological studies as well as respond to being embedded within their own context, culture, and systems. One of the major shifts of the new common curriculum is instituting a greater reflection and response regarding embeddedness within students’ contexts, cultures, and systems.

“As people of faith navigating a tumultuous time in our nation and in the world, I am even more renewed in my commitment to this learning community linked together through our mission of service. There’s a for such a time as this quality that feels palpable,” says Dr. J. Derek McNeil, Acting President & Provost.

The revised Common Curriculum courses center around the thought of “Intersection” as students engage in the places where theology, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology intersect.

Our Common Curriculum unites students across disciplines in order to develop perspective and better engage in our world’s ever-evolving challenges. First year students in our Master of Divinity, MA in Theology & Culture, and MA in Counseling Psychology programs will take three intersections courses and two dialogue-oriented labs.

“At the crux of our Common Curriculum is the desire to help our learners to have a robust curiosity and growing understanding of God, neighbor, and the space between,” says Dr. Doug Shirley, Assistant Professor of Counseling. Interdisciplinary education is core to ������Ƶ. Studying one particular discipline affords a certain view or “lens” of the world, whereas opening the door to different views gives students an opportunity to move in and out of their own perspectives.

“I’m deeply grateful for the thoughtful, creative work of our faculty and how much they have invested in reshaping our curriculum. I believe we are called to see the complexity in the world around us and engage it with wisdom and courage. It’s humbling to be a part of a learning community so invested in forming folks for such a call and for such a time,” says President McNeil.

This fall we will welcome our 22nd cohort. We are honored to participate in their formation and we look forward to these sending them to our alumni community of over 1300 pastors, therapists, social leaders, and artists, joining God in the restoration of their communities.

Learn more about our Common Curriculum.

The post Announcing New Common Curriculum at ������Ƶ appeared first on ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.