Happy Birthday, Stella: When Children Die
April 18th, 2013 Today marks Stella Joy Bruner-Methven’s fourth birthday. She died last year, on October 22nd, just days after she turned 3 1/2. Although today is Stella’s birthday, she does not turn four. An egregious tumor, incurable and virtually untreatable, took this birthday from her. And before it did that, it took away almost [...]
To Work the Earth of My Heart: Memorizing the Sermon on the Mount
I just returned from my last final of the semester. It was…unconventional, to say the least. Instead of sitting in a wood-paneled classroom for three hours getting intimate with a blue book, I spent the last weekend sitting on a couch by a fireplace at a Mennonite retreat center in Michigan. This was my final. [...]
How Great the Darkness: A Prayer for Newtown
Oh God, how can we ever understand? This is evil wildly beyond comprehension. Are you the one allowing this? Could you have stopped it? Could we have? God, who I believe to be Merciful, who I hope to be Healing: let us know you grieve with us today. Let us feel your tears on our [...]
From The Place Where We Are Right: A Thanksgiving of “Doubts and Loves”
The Place Where We Are Right by Yehuda Amichai From the place where we are right Flowers will never grow In the spring. The place where we are right Is hard and trampled Like a yard. But doubts and loves Dig up the world Like a mole, a plow. And a whisper will be [...]
On Being with Dying: A Story of Squirrels and Little Girls
At an evening party some friends of mine threw last spring, two friends came up to me and asked for my help with an infant squirrel they’d found in their yard that seemed nearly dead. I quickly followed them to the basement where they’d placed the squirrel in a box with some leaves and well-meant [...]
Caitlin Michelle Desjardins
Caitlin Michelle Desjardins is a 3rd Year M.Div Student at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Her academic interests include Children's Spirituality, Death and Grief, Food Justice/Agrarian Issues, intersections of Literature and Theology, Contemplative Spirituality and Sexual Ethics. After spending a summer with the Sisters of Grandchamp, an ecumenical community of Sisters in Switzerland, she has a burgeoning interest in monastic expressions of faith. She also enjoys exploring the history and practices of Buddhism. Caitlin is a classical harpist, teaches gardening and writing in local elementary schools, and can often be found drawing with chalk or in the children's section of the library. Caitlin was a 2011 Fund For Theological Education Ministry Fellow and she drinks copious amounts of tea. You can contact her via e-mail (caitlin.desjardins@gmail.com).
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Contributing Scholars
Pluralism ProjectThe Pluralism Project, founded and directed by Dr. Diana L. Eck, is a twenty-year research project on the changing religious landscape of the United States. Through an expanding network of affiliates and student researchers, we document the contours of our multi-religious society, explore new forms of interfaith engagement, study the impact of religious diversity in civic life, and contextualize these findings within a global framework.
Hannah KardonAn aspiring Minister in the United Methodist Church, Hannah Kardon is currently in her first year of an M.Div at Harvard Divinity School.
C. Nikole SaulsberryA 2009 Syracuse University Alumna, Nikole is currently serving an AmeriCorps term with New Sector Alliance, Inc. as a Resident in Social Enterprise. Her interfaith work is focused on fostering religious pluralism through simultaneous efforts of common action, policy engagement, liberation theology and hermeneutics of social justice.