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Pope Leo XIV has just released his first encyclical, focused on artificial intelligence and the future of human society. The timing could not be more urgent for theological institutions. Prior to the encyclical, Pope Leo already has stressed that emerging technologies place a particular mandate on Catholic educators: “Catholic education can be a beacon: not a nostalgic refuge, but a laboratory of discernment, pedagogical innovation and prophetic witness. Drawing new maps of hope: this is the urgency of the mandate.”Pope Leo’s call to “draw new maps of hope,” echoes his predecessor, Pope Francis, who urged Catholic universities to “Be present as great laboratories of hope at this crossroads of history.” There is just one glaring problem with this captivating vision: hope is in short supply right now in higher education.Long before ChatGPT answered its first query, changes in demographics, pandemic-era disruptions in student preparation, and a political climate that seeks to undermine the value of critical reasoning had already dramatically decreased the level of hope in these intellectual “laboratories.” Reading student reflections that have been quite obviously written by robots is depressing; even more depressing are the despondent attitudes of students struggling to find value in classroom learning itself.Like most educators and administrators, I have wrestled with how to prepare our community for inevitable technological transformation. Last summer, I co-led a group of faculty at our private Catholic R1 university to discuss how we might prepare for inevitable technological transformation. These conversations renewed our confidence in a liberal arts education as the critical tool we will need to face the future.This era requires thought leaders who are trained to ask better questions, who know the value of human reason and creativity, and who can critically and ethically evaluate rapidly changing technologies and their applications. Liberal arts colleges and universities are designed to prepare precisely this kind of leader, and that should be the reason for our hope.Our curriculum does not teach students to find answers to arbitrary questions; it enlivens their creative capacity to refine their questions in order to build a more just world. At a moment when large language models promise instant answers at unprecedented speed, universities have a different responsibility. We must prepare students who know how to evaluate knowledge critically, recognize the limits of technological systems, and ask difficult moral and intellectual questions about the societies those systems are shaping. ‘Education in the round’Many institutions of higher education are grounded in an educational tradition that is vitally important for this historical moment. The Greco-Roman tradition of encyclios paideia, or “education in the round,” was a technology of the empire that worked by ensuring a common language and training, but also by educating the whole person. This circular, or complete, education was thought to advance society by forming the human soul through a set of shared educational habits, habits that shaped the ways humans would think, behave, and dialogue with each other to produce knowledge.The Catholic intellectual tradition is full to the brim with thinkers who leaned into inquiry in the face of dramatic change. Pope Leo underscores that “dynamic history” tracing it from the Desert Fathers to women educational reformers of the 19th and 20th centuries who led the way in educating the marginalized.Catholic higher education is part of a living tradition, and there are a few key features that I have observed as a historian working at a Catholic university that strike me as particularly valuable for this historical moment. First and foremost is that we continue to prioritize the dignity of the human person in the process of advancing knowledge. This means that the utility and profitability of discovery is not the sole telos of our research — the human metacognitive and dialogic processes by which we arrive at those discoveries in community are just as important. The human researcher is essential for the successful evaluation, interpretation, and integration of knowledge. New discoveries are not possible without human reason and verification in a community of researchers who are held accountable for their work. LLMs do not possess these essential human faculties, and when they are wrong, they bear no accountability.The ethical questions we face in this technological age are more complex than the citation or fabrication of sources; they strike at the foundations of human interdependence and its centrality for the advancement of human knowledge. LLMs promise to provide answers to human questions at an unprecedented rate, but they attempt to do so by indiscriminately pulling from available sources in ways that obscure the contexts and relationships between those sources, limit the perspectives considered, and reinforce inequalities. University education prepares students not just to examine the sources and evidence they can readily see, but to ask critical questions about the evidence itself. This is the intellectual scaffolding that meets the changing needs of our students and our world.Pope Leo reminds us, “education does not measure its value only on the axis of efficiency: it measures it according to dignity, justice, the capacity to serve the common good. This integral anthropological vision must remain the cornerstone of Catholic pedagogy." This does not mean we educate students on every injustice in our current world, but that we teach them discernment so they can “recognize and name both justice and oppression” in an ever-changing world.  In Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo places particular emphasis on community and human relationships for achieving this learning: “Schools are not called to follow the pace of the digital world, but to offer that which the digital sphere  by itself cannot provide, namely a shared time for learning and developing trustworthy relationships.” As AI threatens the biodiversity of human knowledge, university education “in the round” will be vitally important for protecting human innovation and its roots in the human community. We know as educators that we cannot possibly provide our students with all of the knowledge they will need ten or twenty years from now. Our hope is grounded in knowing that a student who graduates with the humility to recognize the limits of their knowledge, the curiosity to ask a different question, and the moral courage to ask a difficult question will be prepared for the uncertainty of a changing world. In the era of AI, the ability to stay curious and center human flourishing will distinguish the leaders from the users. 

The practice of writing and publishing can be among the most life-giving dimensions of scholarship, and, at times, among the most difficult. Recently, I have held both joy and fear in the same open hand.My latest book is now available: Thinking Teaching: Stories, Insights, and Strategies to Ignite Reflection, Discussion, and Imagination.Thinking Teaching is a collection of blogs I have written for the Wabash Center over more than twenty years. In many ways, this volume most fully reflects my pedagogical commitments, both in content and in form. The book gathers sixty-six essays shaped by story, memory, wonder, and hard-earned wisdom—offerings intended to help teachers teach with greater imagination, reflection, and care. Each essay concludes with questions designed to spark conversation and communal discernment.Throughout the book, I draw from my experiences in classrooms and on faculties, while also leaning into the teachings and memories of family life. Womanist pedagogical commitments guide the work deeply. I understand education as a practice of emancipation, healing, and human flourishing. My hope is that this book will serve as a companion for individual readers, small groups, and faculty communities seeking richer conversations about teaching and the teaching life.Anyone who has published a book knows that writing and publication rarely unfold in a straight line. Books often arrive through detours, disappointments, revisions, unexpected grace and help from friends and colleagues. This was certainly the journey of this manuscript’s becoming.Around 2014, I began to imagine my Wabash blogs as a collected work. Though I had not written them according to a systematic plan, I sensed that together they traced meaningful terrain for colleagues engaged in conversations about teaching. I prepared a proposal for an anthology of these essays and carried it with me to a conference where scholarly and trade publishers gathered in search of new projects.I shared the proposal with several publishers. Most were not interested. Then, during a conversation with a fifth editor, I began to feel hopeful. We had a lively and engaging exchange about teaching, writing, and audience. As the conversation came to a close, she said gently, “Of course, you will expand each blog into a full chapter—right?”My heart sank.I wanted the brief essay form—those 750 to 900-word reflections—to remain intact. I believed the short form carried its own integrity, accessibility, and power. After thanking her for the conversation, I quietly set the project aside. With disappointment lingering close by, I placed the dream of a book-length collection on the back burner.Then, in 2022 I met Donald Quist. Donald became both editor and thoughtful conversation-partner for my writing life. He helped me trust my voice again—particularly my love for short-form creative nonfiction. What began as a professional collaboration soon grew into a relationship marked by shared imagination, intellectual curiosity, and mutual trust. Donald’s editorial guidance deepened my writing, clarified my sense of purpose, and refined my voice. Through his encouragement, I began once again to believe that these collected essays could make a meaningful contribution to theological education. Without hesitation, Donald urged me to pursue the book anew.With renewed confidence, I returned to the manuscript.I then called Jack Seymour for help. Together, we shaped a table of contents that finally felt coherent and spacious. My earlier attempts had been tangled and overworked. From among hundreds of blogs, Jack helped identify sixty-six essays for inclusion in the volume. I prepared a proposal for Wipf and Stock Publishers, and in the spring of 2026, the book came into the world. Somewhere between 2014 and 2026, this book slowly found its way toward becoming. Some books, this book, require more time to ripen before they are ready to meet the world.One of my deepest joys connected to this book is its cover art. The cover features an original painting, Eden #13, by Najee Dorsey, artist and founder of Black Art in America in Atlanta, Georgia. The artwork is luminous and beautiful. For the past two years, the Wabash Center and Black Art in America have been in creative partnership. Through that collaboration, Najee has generously shared his work and encouraged artists within his gallery community to contribute artwork for scholarly book covers. This partnership has blessed us in ways both marvelous and unforeseen.When I received the email from the publisher announcing that Thinking Teaching had been published, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude, joy, and humility. The dread and frustration that accompanied parts of the journey seemed to fall away. In their place was a deep appreciation for the possibility that my work might accompany colleagues, nourish meaningful conversations, and encourage more liberative approaches to teaching and learning.Reflection QuestionsIn the blog, I describe my resistance to expanding the brief essays into long chapters because I trusted the “integrity, accessibility, and power” of short forms. What forms of wisdom or truth might theology and religion teachers overlook because academia privileges length, complexity, or abstraction?Who are your trusted conversation partners who cheer you on, bring needed skills and expertise, and allow you space to shine in your writing and scholarly work? List them. Thank them.The writing of some books “require more time to ripen.” What in your teaching life is still ripening? What unfinished idea, classroom practice, or project might need patience rather than productivity?What are your practices of relief and release when dread seizes you? How can you better handle disappointment and rejection?For the colleagues who you mentor, advise, and support, how will you encourage their persistence, agency, and tenacity for their creative work?When your work brings you satisfaction and joy, how do you celebrate? How do you show appreciation for those who assisted you? 

Since 2022, I have had the distinct privilege of serving as an editor and conversation-partner for Director Lynne Westfield through her ongoing written contributions to the Wabash Center. What began as a professional collaboration quickly became something more generative, more human—an evolving dialogue grounded in trust, care, and a shared commitment to clarity of thought and purpose in teaching.From the very beginning, I found myself drawn to Lynne’s voice. There is a particular kind of vulnerability in her writing, an openness that does not seek performance but instead insists on honesty. Month after month, for more than four years, I have sat with her words, responding not simply as an editor marking a page, but as a reader invited into a living, breathing intellectual and spiritual practice. With each blog post, I became a deeper admirer of her work—not because it sought perfection, but because it refused to hide from complexity.Those monthly exchanges were never transactional. They were conversations. They required attention, patience, and a willingness to listen beyond the surface of the text. As an editor, I believe it is important to understand one’s role is not to refine the author/artist into something more “polished,” but to help them become more fully themselves on the page.Many of the blog posts with Lynne have now found new life in her recent book, Thinking Teaching, out now from Cascade Books. Watching that manuscript take shape has been profoundly rewarding. It marks the second time I’ve had the honor of witnessing Lynne bring a book into the world, following her earlier work, Glimpses of Me and Mine (2023). To see the arc of her ideas develop from individual reflections to a cohesive, enduring text has been a reminder of what sustained writing practice can do.Editing, at its best, is an act of care. A good editor does not impose themselves onto the work. They do not flatten the writer’s voice into something more familiar or marketable. Instead, they listen. They ask questions. They create space for the writer to hear themselves more clearly.Over the years, working with Lynne has sharpened my understanding of what it means to be a compassionate and effective editor. For those engaged in similar work, I offer a few guiding principles:Listen for the writer’s intention, not just the sentence’s structure.Editing is not only about correctness; it is about coherence between what the writer means and what the reader receives.Protect the writer’s voice at all costs.Your job is not to rewrite the work in your own image. The distinctiveness of a writer’s voice is their greatest strength.Respond, don’t dictate.Frame your edits as invitations or inquiries rather than commands. This keeps the process collaborative rather than hierarchical.Cultivate patience and trust.Good writing, and good editing, takes time. Trust that clarity will emerge through conversation, not force.What I have learned through this work is that editing is not a neutral act. It is relational. It requires humility. And when done well, it becomes transformative, not only for the writer, who is given the space to grow and refine their voice, but also for the editor.To work with Lynne Westfield has been to witness an author bloom steadily, courageously, and without compromise. In supporting that process, I, too, have been changed. I have become a more attentive reader, a more patient collaborator, and, I hope, a more generous thinker.This is the quiet gift of editing: when we commit ourselves to the flourishing of another’s voice, we often find our own deepened in the process.Please check out Lynne Westfield’s latest…Thinking Teaching: Stories, Insights, and Strategies to Ignite Reflection, Discussion, and Imagination – Out Now!

On a recent visit to the faculty breakroom to heat up my lunch, I ran into a colleague who asked, “Richelle, how is the semester going?” We had not seen each other very much during the semester. We were at the midpoint—administering exams and collecting assignments. Among the faculty, there was an awareness that the consistent use of AI was presenting problems. We felt anxious because we were uneasy about moving forward regarding campus policies and the use of AI. We were skeptical and questioned whether students were even interested in learning anymore.My colleague’s question prompted me to move beyond the default response, “The semester is going well,” but I took a few seconds to answer. “I am experiencing some sharpening this semester.” With a puzzled look, he followed up with, “What do you mean?” “I am being challenged relationally by students, and vocationally I am being stretched.” Our brief conversation ended with him telling me to hang in there, and with me returning to my office to take some time to reflect on my response.Proverbs 27:17—“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” One Bible commentator offers: “Iron cutting tools are made sharp, bright, and useful by rubbing them against another form of iron. A person without the company and conversation of a friend is alone, dull, and inactive; but with the fellowship and communication of a friend, they are refreshed, revived, and fitted for—and incited to—action.”The experiences of sharpening that I encountered were not directly connected to friendship, but to the teacher-student relationship. I recalled the two intentions I set at the beginning of the semester:As a teacher, I would strive to be the best version of myself. As a teacher, I would help students read, write, and think better. The first intention caused me to remember my teacher, mentor, and dissertation advisor—Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon. She often shared the legacy of Black women educators in the Jim Crow South who taught in overcrowded, one-teacher schools with scarce funding and out-of-date resources. This lack did not prevent them from proclaiming to Black children, “I will give you the best that I’ve got, and I want you to be even better.” This mantra was my guiding star throughout the semester. I created, prepared, rearranged, revised, added, subtracted, engaged, and explored content and teaching strategies for student-centered learning.The second intention called for a complete overhaul of the first because I was confronting the reality that some students do not want to be better readers, writers, or thinkers. There was resistance and, oftentimes, a refusal to engage in those foundational educational tasks. My self-dialogue centered on the following questions:Why do they resist reading and writing? It seems like using ChatGPT is always their first choice—why do they refuse to think on their own? Have they been taught to think critically? Beyond offering objective answers, many students would not respond to questions in class. Students used ChatGPT to complete reflection questions and other learning assignments. Using AI is not a big deal for students—everybody does it. Students often avoid doing hard things. Facing consequences and/or being held accountable for actions, good or bad, has not been consistent.As I became more intentional about engaging in prayer and reading scripture, and paid attention to what I was seeing and experiencing among my students, I resonated with Matthew 9:36: “When he (Jesus) saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” This verse helped me to identify the students’ need for character development, critical thinking, accountability, and facing consequences for their actions. They were confused and helplessly attached to cultural norms, social media, and subject to poor decision-making.These revelations helped change my perspective and navigate more effective ways of being my best self, while incorporating character development, accountability, critical thinking, and consequences within the foundational activities of reading, writing, and thinking. God was calling me to be a shepherd for this group of sheep, guiding them beyond confusion and poor decisions. This experience of sharpening is a continuous process. Progressing through the semester with these new changes was not easy, but it introduced all of us to becoming better—if not the best—versions of ourselves. Challenging, refining, and improving one another, the sparks and friction that ensued were difficult but necessary, and will hopefully produce lifelong learners who benefit from the sharpening.

“The best way to learn something is to teach it.” Wary as I tend to be of truisms, this one has proven accurate in my own experience as a teacher and scholar. The passages and concepts that I have taught over the years are on permanent recall in my brain. I remember these stories and ideas because I have talked about them with others repeatedly. But learning—and learning through teaching—is not just about memorization. The practice of preparing to teach prompts a very specific (and, yes, memorable) kind of thinking. When I approach a text to make a teaching plan, it requires attention to particularity and ambiguity. When I prepare to teach, I ask: What can be clearly learned from this passage? What is uncertain enough to warrant discussion? In other words, I read for ways both to distill possible meanings and to make room for new ones. In recent years, I have begun wondering what it might be like to invite my undergraduate students into this practice of teaching preparation. I’ve formulated “The Teaching Portfolio” as a capstone assignment for an upper-level undergraduate course where the enrollment may be too high for students to actually teach all or even part of a session themselves. In this assignment, each student selects a biblical passage (one we haven’t already read together), subjects that passage to close analysis using the terms and queries we’ve developed over the course of our semester, and finally plans several activities or discussion prompts they would use to help their hypothetical students engage with their chosen passage.  The AssignmentThis is how I describe the assignment to students:This final project invites you into a step-by-step process of how you would approach interpreting and then teaching a biblical passage in a classroom setting. These projects will be individual, but we will devote the final two weeks of class to workshopping these projects collaboratively.Here’s what that teaching portfolio will include:A. An Annotated Biblical Passage. In the margins of this passage you will:Pose three major interpretive questions, related to the types of terms and queries we have asked over the course of the class. Pose two translation or vocabulary questions that you can research and answer (please chat with me about this!).Pose two connections with texts we’ve studied over the course of this text. Explain these connections. B. An Interpretive Artifact. A piece of direct (that is self-conscious) interpretation of the passage you’ve chosen (from short ancient Jewish or Christian texts, from the history of art, etc.). If you select a text, make sure that it’s an excerpt of around three hundred words. Put this artifact into brief context (tell us who made it, when, and where).Describe the artifact, making two to four observations about how our specific course concepts and terms are represented in this artifact or are relevant to its analysis.Make at least two observations about how this interpretation differs from the biblical text and/or what this interpretation adds to the biblical account.How might you incorporate this artifact into a classroom activity? What questions would you pose to the classroom to generate discussion about this artifact? C.  Answering Your Questions. Attempt provisional answers to your three major interpretive questions (from part A) with direct, specific references to the text. You may not be able to answer your questions conclusively (that’s okay!), just reflect on how you would begin to answer these questions with as much detail as you can.D. Preparing to Teach. Having wrestled with this text and its interpretation, now is the time to reflect and prepare to teach it. In this final section, please address the following questions: If you taught this story in a classroom setting, what two or three major concepts, questions, or ideas would you want students to remember from this text? Why? What would make teaching this particular text challenging? How might you address those challenges? Describe an activity (in addition to the discussion you imagined above in part B.4) that you might use in class that would engage and convey those ideas to students. Describe it in as much detail as you can.Having completed this project, what new interpretive questions do you now have about this passage, especially in view of our course’s major terms and concepts? E. Presentation. You will have ten to fifteen minutes to present your portfolio work-in-progress in the two weeks leading up to finals week.  The Fine Print Your selected passage must be from a part of the Hebrew Bible or Septuagint (LXX) that we have NOT covered in class. Be sure to spend time understanding the context of this passage, especially if it is part of a larger narrative. That is one thing we will ask you do at the beginning your portfolio presentation.Not sure where to start looking for an interpretive artifact? Check out the following sites:Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization. The Posen online library has some great examples of visual and literary interpretation of biblical passages.  Visual Commentary on Scripture has some good examples of biblical interpretation in the history of art (if using the VCS just make sure the artwork you select is a direct, self-conscious representation of your biblical passage; some of the connections this site makes are more abstract). Sefaria is a great place to start in finding examples of ancient Jewish interpretation. While you are welcome (encouraged!) to confer with colleagues, your final project must show clear evidence of independent thought (different questions and answers, a distinctive interpretive artifact, etc.). If a colleague from our workshop inspires or helps your thinking in any particular way, be sure to cite them like this: “(conversation with A. Colleague, 12/6/24).” ResultsI have used this assignment in several 300-level courses (enrollment twenty to twenty-five). I typically reserve our three final class sessions for students to present their portfolios in progress and receive feedback from their colleagues. This means we typically end the semester on an energetic and collaborative note. One student told me that the project helped inspire his pursuit of a career in education. Students have reflected that this project helped them to synthesize the major ideas of the class and consider how they might communicate them to communities beyond our classroom.  

We know that students are most motivated to learn when they’re genuinely excited and curious about the material, when they can connect the material to their personal interests, and when they can perceive the relevance between course content and their own lives, both current and future. (This is one way of establishing “value”—a primary driver of student motivation.)I have tried to motivate my students this way for many years, convinced by the goodness of the approach. In class discussions, I frequently ask students to think of examples from their own lives to illustrate course concepts: “What is a time in your own life where you felt misunderstood based on an identity that you held?” or “If you were a Hindu, which god would you worship and why?” I frequently teach skills and orientations that I explicitly state can be used outside of my course: “I suggest this note-taking strategy for all of your classes” or “I encourage you to ask ‘why’ about everything you do.” On weekly quizzes, I prompt students: “Describe a connection between something from our course this week and your life outside of class.” For their final projects, I allow students to choose their own topics; my instructions read, “Ideally, I’d like for you to pick a topic that is relevant or applicable to your own life, something that interests or excites you.”I DO think this attunement to relevance and connection helps students to learn. They do seem excited by the material; they do seem to understand difficult concepts better with personalization; they do seem to realize and appreciate the applicability of course material more than if I simply lectured at them about course content only. It’s been rewarding to witness.AND I am becoming worried about this approach.In both public and private spheres, I am perceiving the (increasing?) pervasiveness of:Disinterest (or worse) in people who are “not like us” (out-group bias);“Cancel culture” and going “No Contact” from those (even parents) who may hold opinions, values, or beliefs different than our own; Villainization and pathologization of people who we reduce to just one thing (an identity, a behavior, a religion); Psychological labels such as “toxic,” “narcissistic,” or “triggering” applied to those individuals whose behavior we don’t like (a great book on why this is a problem); Compulsory “pick-a-side”-ism (this video even contains a warning!); Refusal to admit—or even to consider—the inevitable limitations of one’s own position;Valorization and unqualified support for any “one of us” (even in the face of obvious concerns or problems); And more.I am bothered by this all.When I insist on relevance as a guiding principle in my presentation of course content, am I implying to students that anything that doesn’t personally interest or benefit them is not worth their time? Am I positioning whatever is outside of their (very very limited) spheres as inherently insignificant and irrelevant? Am I encouraging an individualism (that often lapses into self-centeredness) that Americans are already known for? Am I fostering growth, exploration, discomfort—or am I basically fitting the horses I lead with better and better blinders?My daughter loves reading graphic novels. (I get that any reading is still reading, but some of these books are terrible.) And they’re mostly representative of the life that she leads. The protagonists are all young characters whose lives are consumed by crushes and drama and makeup and annoying teachers. Yes, it’s all very familiar. But the best literature can transport us to different worlds. It exposes us to experiences and situations that we may never encounter. We get to inhabit characters who may be unlike us in every way possible—and grow to care about them deeply. (I cried over a gorilla in The One and Only Bob.) This is how literature builds empathy; this is what “Theory of Mind” is all about. So, once in a while, I force my kid to read old books, books from my childhood, books where the characters don’t talk like her or act like her or have the same stuff as her. She doesn’t like it one bit.I think we could all do with getting out of our comfort zones a bit more. I think we could all do with a bit more exposure to ideas, people, and worlds that are disconnected from our own. Otherwise, we’re all just operating in our own little insular echo chambers. How else will we discover new interests? How else will we change our minds? How else will we build empathy? Lots of things are going to be irrelevant or foreign for students AND still be important for them to learn. In fact, maybe these are the most important things to learn? So the question I’m trying to mull over now is: How can we motivate students while also de-centering them and pushing them to engage with difference, strangeness, otherness, irrelevance—learning for the mere sake of learning?

Since my last post, life has changed in ways I never imagined: a divorce, a move from Indiana to California, and the start of an entirely new rhythm. I’m still drawing every day, but my focus has widened. I write, I cook, I apply for jobs, I manage household logistics. The life I imagined during my sabbatical—long, uninterrupted studio days—has given way to something messier and, in its own way, more honest.   2025 Mini #6, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paperMornings usually start with writing. I work on essays for my two ongoing blogs: Aspie Art Journey, where I write about life as an artist with Asperger’s and how that lens shapes my perspective on the world; and Dating App Diaries, which chronicles the equally unpredictable world of human connection. Both projects grew out of the same instinct that drives my drawings: to observe closely, reflect honestly, and keep creating even when life doesn’t line up neatly.When the writing slows, I move on to practical things—job applications, phone calls, the endless details of caregiving, and keeping a household running. It’s not glamorous, but it’s part of the work. I’ve started to see these moments—cooking for my parents, cleaning, organizing supplies—as an extension of art-making. They’re grounded, rhythmic, physical. The same kind of attention that steadies my line work can also steady the rest of my life.   2025 Mini #13, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paperLate afternoons are for drawing, even if only for an hour or so. My large-format days are on hold for now; most of my recent work consists of small 2½ × 3½-inch ink drawings. The pens I used for years finally clogged, so I’m experimenting with new colors and tools. I enjoy the challenge of small-scale pieces—they require precision and focus without the demands of long hours. They also fit perfectly with a new project I’m planning: a Patreon that will feature these drawings as part of a monthly subscription. Alongside them, I’m sketching designs for a new 4×6 linocut print series. Both ideas bring me back to the tactile side of creativity—the ink, the carving, the test prints, the final prints, and the repetition of making something by hand.   2025 Mini #18, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paperEvenings are when I reconnect with the spirit behind all this: podcasts about functional medicine, the intersections of Buddhist meditation and neuropsychology, or Spanish language lessons. I also read, yet rarely finish a single book before starting others. Sometimes I draw to music; sometimes I just look at what I made that day and think about how it fits into the larger story of my life. That’s when my mind drifts to Lines on the Spectrum, my illustrated memoir, or to the online course I’m developing, “Art as Spiritual Practice.” The course explores the same process I go through daily: using creativity to stay present, grounded, and aware. It’s designed primarily for non-artists, hobbyists, and anyone who feels a pull toward new, transformative experiences, even if they’ve never called themselves creative.   2025 Mini #23, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paperAnyone can become more creative despite the oft-repeated refrain, “I’m not an artist; I have no talent.” The course combines practical exercises with a rigorous examination of terms such as artist and spiritual, a concept that is hotly debated among scholars of religion. The course is a hybrid, combining experiential and reflective elements. Participants practice art-making to encounter transformation firsthand, while also engaging the critical study of language, meaning, and presence.I now see that what I loved most about teaching—the chance to help others notice, pause, and see differently—still guides my days. I just do it now with ink, words, and color instead of “lectures” and syllabi. Art remains my way of thinking about meaning and presence, except now I practice it one small act of attention at a time, line by line, word by word.

In the old religious imagination, neighbor was commandment—love thy neighbor as thyself—a moral directive carved in sacred text, often recited more than practiced. But womanist knowing stretches that word beyond obedience into embodiment. Neighbor is not assignment; neighbor is encounter. It is the moment you recognize that your life is braided into another’s survival.To be neighbor is to resist the lie of separation.To be neighbor is to lean into the inextricable connection between us.To be neighbor is to know that heart, guts, breath, and soul are even now relationship—we know this is how the universe holds us, whether we consent or not. To be neighbor is to understand that justice is not abstract. It is as close as the nearest wound you are willing to see and bind up. This is not about convenience. Neighbor is not the one who lives next door. That is geography, proximity without promise. Neighbor is interruption of our indifference. It is the holy disruption of your comfort by someone else’s reality and need. Neighbor is memory: remembering that somebody once stood in the gap for you/us. Neighbor is risk: choosing connection when disconnection would be easier, less costly, less troublesome. Neighbor is sacred because it insists that no one is outside the circle of care.It is when you cannot unknow what you now know, and so you must respond—not out of charity, but out of shared humanity, communal obligation, and love. Neighbor is the woman whose name you do not know, but whose struggle you recognize in your bones. Your marrow knows she is tired in a way that feels familiar. She is carrying more than she should have to carry. And something in you refuses to let her carry it alone—even if all you can offer is witness and empathy.Womanist theology reminds us that survival is communal. Thriving is collective. Therefore, neighbor is not optional. Neighbor is the practice of showing up, especially when systems have decided someone is disposable, expendable, or useful only to the greed of others… and that someone is we, us, mine. And perhaps most truthfully—neighbor is action. It is doing. It is what you do when love refuses to remain a theory, an abstraction, or a fragile, contestable idea.I have vivid childhood memories of the ways the women in our church, including my mother, would band together to care for someone recently out of the hospital. When a person or household was in distress, they mobilized a circle of care.The women organized grocery shopping, meal preparation, house cleaning, laundry, medication schedules, transportation to doctor visits, errands, fellowship visits, overnight stays, pet care, plant care, and prayer. As many aspects of home life as were needed were tended to. Each woman took, or was assigned, a task, with one or two coordinating the efforts of the whole group.Sometimes this neighborliness supported family members who were caregivers. Sometimes, when there was no family—or when family was absent or unreliable—the women became the family.Most often, my mother cooked meals. My father and I delivered them. My mother gave us strict instructions—where to leave the food, what dishes to retrieve, how to be attentive without overstaying.As a child, I felt the weight and wonder of doing something important. I would talk with the person receiving care, even in my shyness. I would remind my father of my mother’s instructions. Together, we noticed what needed tending: the throw rugs that should be removed now that Mrs. Thurgood used a walker; the broken commode upstairs that needed a plumber before her grandson’s next weekend visit.We stayed just long enough—twenty to thirty minutes—present but not exhausting. Back home, we reported everything to my mother, who reported to the coordinating woman. Often, what needed fixing was already in motion before the next visit.We were neighbors, acting as neighbors. We were caring for someone in need, trusting that when our time came, we would not be alone either. No one was left to fend for themselves. Our care was how we moved and had our collective being in the world.The ethic of neighborliness is part of my DNA. And yet, for a long time, I believed I had not been part of a community that lived this way anymore—or so I thought. I thought I was alone. I was wrong. A recent health diagnosis placed me in the ICU for eight days. While I was in the hospital, friends and colleagues—local, regional, and national—banded together for my care. I am not alone.After my hospital discharge, my neighbor, Tom Traughber—a friend to me and to the Wabash Center for more than twenty years—stepped fully into the work of care. For two weeks, Tom stayed with me. He grocery shopped, cooked, did laundry, picked up prescriptions, drove me to follow-up appointments, watered my plants, and asked me every day, “How do you feel?” He watched over me. He took care of me. Tom’s radical, steadfast care returned me to my childhood—to that circle of care where being neighbored was simply a way of life.I am grateful beyond measure to be healing. I am on the mend. And I am humbled to have received the sacred and precious gift of being on the receiving end of neighboring. Time spent convalescing has given me space to remember, reflect, and pray. Before this moment, I would have said I had lost touch with this kind of neighborly faithfulness. But memory corrected me. I remembered faculty who showed up for one another. I remembered celebration—my first book marked with a sheet cake bearing its cover, joy made edible. I remembered the ways colleagues supported me during the ten years I was the sole caregiver for my parents. I remembered the affirmations—grants, tenure, promotion, and then promotion again—not as solitary achievements, but as communal investments.I had not named these moments as neighborliness before.I have made that correction.Neighbor is not lost. It is waiting to be practiced again, deliberately, tenderly, and with courage. In a world that profits from our isolation, to choose neighbor is to resist. It is to remember that we belong to one another, not as sentiment, but as survival. The question is no longer whether neighbor exists. The question is whether we will be neighbor—again, and again, and again—until no one is left outside the circle of our care.Thank you, Tom!  Reflection Questions Where, in my academic life, have I mistaken collegial proximity for genuine neighborliness—and what would it take to move from one to the other? When have I been carried by a “circle of care” in my professional journey, and how do I honor that memory through my own actions now? What risks am I unwilling to take for the sake of connection, and what does that reveal about my commitments to communal thriving? How do institutional norms (competition, productivity, scarcity) shape or limit my capacity to practice neighborliness—and how might I resist them? Who, in my immediate academic community, is carrying more than they should—and what is one concrete act of neighboring I can offer this week?

Part 1: “Hate”I came into academia sideways. At a slant, you might say. After seminary, I worked in multicultural student affairs at a small, private liberal arts college by day and attended classes in an educational leadership, research, and policy PhD program for working professionals by night. After earning my degree, I served my church denomination as a researcher and was happy in that role, but the constant travel was taking a toll on my health.I longed to find a vocational path that could ground me within a particular community, a place where I might have a day-to-day impact on others and vice versa. I also knew I didn’t want to pastor a church (I never did) but desired to continue engaging in relevant research for the church and community. This is when I saw a job announcement for an administrative faculty position at my alma mater to direct the school’s internship program and decided to apply.Little did I know what I was getting myself into. I quickly realized that “one of these things is not like the other.” My daily activities of running an internship program, overseeing adjunct faculty teaching seminar courses, and planning trainings for intern supervisors and students was quite different from the daily labors of my faculty colleagues. Sure, I taught half the credits that a tenure-track colleague taught, but this was far eclipsed by the kind of work that I and my staff—yes, I also have the responsibility of hiring and supervising staff—faced regularly. Think student affairs/academic dean type of work, with less responsibility but more external accountabilities.My first year was especially difficult. I was asked to conduct a review of the program’s curriculum and the department as a whole, and there was staff turnover during that time. While much of it was not unlike the administrative and supervisory work I had done for the denomination, it was a very different rhythm and workload from that of my peers.Because I came into academia at a slant—from the church, and with a non-religious doctorate from a non-ranked state school—I felt honored that the faculty had chosen me to join their exclusive club. I still feel honored. As a Latina and first-generation college graduate from a poor, rural background, working at a graduate theological school was beyond my wildest childhood dreams. Many of the faculty had been my seminary professors more than twenty years before. They, along with the administration, saw my gifts as a teacher and researcher and nurtured those gifts through various avenues of support and camaraderie. They are now truly my colleagues.Eight years into the life of a teacher-administrator, however, I am feeling the wear and tear of administrative work on my body and my spirit. Having earned a sabbatical (for which I am very, very grateful), I have tasted the sweet nectar of being only a teacher—someone who maintains a certain amount of autonomy over their own schedules for course planning, research, and travel. They are not beholden to staff or adjunct faculty supervisees, leaders in churches and nonprofits, or even students in the same ways. Even though there are committee and guild responsibilities for full-time teaching and research faculty (I have those too), there is more space to read, to think, to write. I realized early on that if I wanted to pursue a research and writing agenda, I needed to adopt a bivocational mentality as a teacher-administrator. Unfortunately, what this has led to is possessing two full-time jobs. Sabbatical affords me the luxury of holding just one full-time position, committing with gusto to research and writing. Adding the teaching of one or two classes and a few monthly meetings to that schedule seems pretty manageable compared to the pace at which I had been running. (I know boundaries are important, and so on; but I needed to produce scholarship at an accelerated pace in order to even be considered for tenure, which is a story for another time.)I don’t really have a “hate” relationship with the role of teacher-administrator because I do not ascribe to the action itself. But with each passing year, I find myself wanting to live more fully in one world or the other. Having now established myself as a scholar in the field, I want to explore further where my research and academic pursuits might lead. Institutions are demanding more from all of us these days, so many are feeling the tensions of the teacher-administrator conundrum in this era of scarcity and rapid change. These pulls often remain unacknowledged in academia, but if we begin to talk more openly about them, we might be able to imagine more sustainable paths forward (and more equitable compensation models).I came into academia sideways. At a slant, you might say. I still feel honored to be here. Might I dare to want more?

A few weeks ago, I stood in a sea of people at a Devo and B-52’s concert, feeling like I’d been transported back to the 1980s. I could see the waves of color from the stage lights, neon, and pulsing. It struck me that this, too, was a kind of art practice—a reminder that movement, rhythm, and attention are inseparable. Sometimes I meditate, and sometimes I find music has similar effects. The musical energy that others might find chaotic calms me. What some might label “angry” or “loud” music—whatever that means—has always soothed my Aspie brain. No, I’m not suggesting that Devo or the B-52’s fit those categories. 025 Mini #7, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paper That concert reminded me how fully the sensory world animates everything I do. The driving beat, the lights, the crowd—it all felt like a visual composition in motion. When I draw, I’m doing something similar: tracing the rhythm of sound and motion until the lines on the page start to breathe. There’s no boundary between listening, seeing, and creating. Presence isn’t achieved by blocking out the world, but by stepping fully into it.This, for me, is the foundation of Art as Spiritual Practice. It isn’t about ritual, belief, or meditation in the conventional sense. It’s about attention—fierce, sustained attention—to the moment as it unfolds through color, sound, line, and touch. Making art slows perception. It opens a space between thought and movement where something larger than language happens.  2025 Mini #11, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paper I don’t pretend to know what to call that something. Some might call it spiritual, while others might use the language of psychology, neurobiology, philosophy, or anthropology. To me, those vantage points all circle the same experience: the shift from distraction to presence, from noise to stillness. It doesn’t matter whether the source is a rock concert, a blank sheet of paper, or a kitchen sink filled with dishes. Each offers a chance to inhabit awareness more fully.The term “spiritual” itself is hotly contested—too elastic for some, too personal for others. Scholars of religion debate whether its very malleability renders it useless for any serious analysis. I tend to think of it as a working placeholder, a word that gestures toward the transformative quality of human experience when we’re paying close attention. Yes, this is among the varied and problematic definitions of spirituality, and I’m fine with that. I’ve moved toward immersing myself in the experience of art-making and away from debates over how to classify these experiences. Of course, that’s a perk of “retirement,” I suppose. I no longer need to engage in those debates, important though they may be.  2025 Mini #8, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paper That’s the spirit behind my forthcoming course, also called Art as Spiritual Practice. It’s designed primarily for non-artists, hobbyists, and anyone who feels the urge to express themselves creatively but doesn’t know where to start. You don’t need to identify as “spiritual,” and you certainly don’t need to believe in anything otherworldly. You just need curiosity—and a willingness to stay with your own process long enough to notice what shifts.Alongside the course, I’m also beginning to share my own sketchbook practice more publicly. The series of small 2½ × 3½-in. ink drawings I’ve been making—each one a study in rhythm, attention, and constraint—will soon appear in a monthly format for those who want to follow the work as it unfolds. 2025 Mini #12, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paper The course mixes practical exercises with reflection. We’ll explore how a daily sketchbook habit can become a form of grounding, how color and rhythm shape mood, and how repetition itself—the steady return to the page—creates meaning over time. Participants will also wrestle with questions that don’t have easy answers: What does it mean to call something spiritual? Who gets to decide who is or is not an artist? What happens when we replace the pursuit of perfection with the practice of presence?In that sense, the course isn’t just about making art; it’s about re-learning how to be with ourselves. Each drawing, each attempt, becomes a mirror for how we approach uncertainty, judgment, and even joy. There’s a moment—whether I’m drawing, cooking, or listening to Devo—when the line between effort and ease dissolves. That’s where transformation begins.I’ve spent much of my life teaching students to look closely, to question assumptions, to sit with ambiguity. I’m still doing that, but now the classroom is my desk, the lesson plan is a page of ink lines, and the students are anyone willing to pick up a pen and see what happens.Presence, not product, is the point. Art becomes the way we practice paying attention. And when we do, even the loudest music becomes a form of stillness.