Inspiration...

Dan, my sister Ellie's finance, recently asked her why I had not been blogging for so long. There are many answers to that question, the simplest of which is that I have been rather unconnected as of late and thus did not feel inspired to write. However, the idea that Dan was thinking about me has called me forward again (not unlike so many people's stories of being called to ministry; it is often not until others recognize and name our gifts that we are able to see what we have to give in ourselves).

A more complex reason for my lack of writing has to do with intersecting identities. About 12 weeks ago, I began the less-than-straightforward journey of living into the identity of being pregnant, a journey that, God willing, will end in me taking on the identity of mother somewhere around February 10th of next year. Although I have not been writing, I have been doing a lot of thinking about what it will mean to become a mother and how my identities as a mother and as a scholar and teacher of religion and theology will intersect. How will I do both? I struggle with a lack of imagination in answering this question. My own mother was employed outside the home until I was born, and then she made the decision to work inside the home from then on. I do not know a lot of women in the academy who have had children while at the beginning stages of their academic careers. Let me put that a different way; I know women who have had children while writing their dissertation, but I do not know their stories. Once again I am reminded of the importance of women having models who can help them imagine futures that may be different than what they have previously known.

My Celebrity Look-alikes

I got the link to this site from Paul Teusner's blog. He is a colleague in the Melbourne area who studies religion in cyberspace. Should I be at all concerned that JT made it into my list of celebrity look alikes?

My cool celebrity look-alike collage from MyHeritage.com. Get one for yourself.

Foundational Beliefs

Recently, a mentor of mine has been dealing with a professional dilemma. One of her books will receive a somewhat negative review in our guild's main peer-reviewed U.S. journal, and the journal is giving her a chance to respond to the review. While the reviewer had a few positive things to say about her book, he disagreed with two of the foundational assumptions on which she bases the book: one pedagogical and one theological. This is how she describes these two foundational assumptions in her blog:

First, that learning is a collaborative process that must involve student
engagement; and second, that media culture might be a context in which God is
revealing Godself.

The reviewer believes that learning is more of an instrumental process that centers on the transfer of content and that media culture is not a context in which God might reveal Godself.

The issue this situation raises for me is how we can have constructive dialogue with those who do not share our most important foundational assumptions or beliefs about the world. For instance, through the reading, teaching, and research I have done, as well as through my personal experiences as a student, I have come to agree wholeheartedly with my mentor that learning is a collaborative process that must involve student engagement. But I also recognize that someone else, who has also done reading, teaching, and research, and who has his or her own wealth of experiences, may just as wholeheartedly disagree with me. How can I talk with this person who disagrees with me about pedagogy, education, and epistemology when our foundational beliefs differ so markedly? I use "beliefs" here intentionally, because after all of the reading, and teaching, and research has been done, at bottom, aren't we called to stake a claim, a belief, about the truth of the matter, knowing full well we do not have all of the facts and never will?

Maybe another way of putting the dilemma is as a question between being committed to beliefs while remaining open to change. I have strong opinions about education and I care deeply about doing education well, and so I have made commitments to particular ways of teaching that I believe are in the best interests of students. Yet, I know that by virtue of seeing only from my position I necessarily have blind spots and biases. What sort of conversational stance does it take to both try to convince my conversation partner of my own wisdom and to remain open to what that partner can teach me?

Virtual Life

As of about two weeks ago, I had never given any thought to virtual life. Then, in the series of a few days, I heard about virtual life games a handful of times, thus it caught my attention. There was a report on the local news about how virtual life games were going to be the next big thing on the Internet, an msn.com piece about the first person to make a fortune selling virtual real estate, and a passing reference to it in a blog I read regularly. I still can't quite wrap my head around this phenomenon, but as far as I understand it, people create avatars who then live in a virtual world doing similar things to what we do in the "real" world, such as going to parties, buying homes, buying and selling stock, etc. According to one source, there are about 20 million people actively participating in virtual life, which is roughly equivalent to the population of Australia.

The phenomenon interests me on a number of levels. First, what needs and desires are people meeting through the creation and manipulation of their avatar alter-egos and how are to understand identity in a world that includes both reality and virtual reality? Second, how will the existence of virtual life challenge what we think of as "real life"? Third, what are the theological implications of virtual life?

Girls groups

Thanks to Mary Hess for introducing me, through her blog, to TVbyGirls, a nonprofit organization in Minnesota through which young women have the opportunity to create their own media products. I'm adding learning about this organization as one more reason I cannot wait to get back to Minnesota this coming fall. I'd love to think more about how faith communities could partner with already established organizations like this one to the benefit of the young women in their congregations.

Another organization that recently came to my attention is GOAL, an organization in Georgia that conducts experiential learning workshops that promote self-esteem and self-awareness among young women. They are currently looking for a full time program director and two interns for fall 2007.

Exploring TVbyGirls and GOAL also reminded me about New Moon, an award winning, advertising free magazine geared at girls ages 8-14 (also published in Duluth, MN). The goal of the magazine is to take girls' voices seriously, and it is an excellent alternative to the range of junior fashion mags.

U.S. Social Forum

This past weekend the first ever U.S. Social Forum was held in Atlanta, GA. It's tagline was: "Another world is possible; another U.S. is necessary." I really do not know much about it, but it is exciting to think about thousands of people getting together to dialogue about how "we the people" would like to change social policies in the U.S. and sketching roadmaps of how to reach this future vision. Also impressive was the dedication of the planning team to have a dedicated youth tent, so that young people would have their own space to be heard, and also to promote an intergenerational feel throughout the forum.

Young Women and Catholicism

In November 2005, My Red Couch and Other Stories on Seeking a Feminist Faith was published, a collection of first person narratives by people trying to reconcile their faith and their feminist commitments for which I was a co-editor and contributor.

Now, Kate Dugan and Jen Owens, two graduate students at Harvard Divinity, are putting together a similar anthology, Young Women and Catholicism. They invited young women to tell stories about the role of Catholicism in their lives for consideration in the anthology, and they received over 100 submissions. The large response to their call for papers seems to speak to the importance people place on telling their stories.