Word&Way Voices

Kristel Clayville examines a recent New York Times guest essay where Tish Harrison Warren talked with Prof. Charlie Camosy about the “secularization of medicine.” Having worked in religiously affiliated higher education, seminaries, and churches, Clayville argues that hospitals are actually the places where she has seen and experienced the most open displays of religion and spirituality.

Contributing writer Sarah Blackwell makes the case that as we feel the pace of the world quickening again, it is our obligation to fight the urge to keep up. Reconnecting to our wonder allows us to spend time with God in a way that is not transactional.

Juliet Vedral wishes she had Alicia Akins’ new book, Invitations to Abundance: How the Feasts of the Bible Nourish Us Today, to spark her imagination during a period of financial uncertainty and stress-related health issues. Besides the book’s rich theological content, it is a gorgeous work of literature – a feast in and of itself.

Lauren Graeber contemplates a pattern she has noticed: when writing on social media as a spiritual practice she is not talking about God as much by name. Is it possible that using explicitly Christian language is sometimes a barrier to inviting folks to engage with God?

Contributing writer Sarah Blackwell examines how the technology that rests at our fingertips can be used as a spiritual practice. After all, many of us only made it through the isolation of the pandemic because of some well-timed memes on group chats.

Darron LaMonte Edwards argues that our response to the murder of George Floyd as well as the ongoing global pandemic amount to best understanding this moment as a failed group project. This means it is time to critically reflect on the past 24-25 months so we can have an honest conversation about missed opportunities.

Palestinian journalist and media activist Daoud Kuttab details his experience being detained in Jordan because of his reporting. His primary concern is that other less experienced journalists will see what happened to him and begin practicing self-censorship.

Contributing writer Greg Mamula makes the case that we are not spiritually, emotionally, or physically ready for Easter until we have journeyed through Lent. If we over-emphasize the cross, our spiritual and scriptural imaginations have the potential to become closed off to the power of the full resurrection story.

Contributing writer Rodney Kennedy explores the ways that Marjorie Taylor Greene has come to represent a new form of Christians who work and pray for a rupture in deliberative democracy. This means that Republicans don’t just have a Greene problem – America has a Greene problem, and so does Christianity.

Contributing writer Sarah Blackwell offers us a poem as tribute to those who have had their lives changed by the pandemic. The struggles have been different for health care workers, parents, pastors, teachers, teenagers, the immunocompromised, service workers, and more.