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We live in a world fraught with compartmentalization. Work outfits vs. weekend wear. Neighborhood friends vs. work colleagues. Convocation vs. chapel. I get it. We like to orient our world based on neatly stacked boxes where we can stuff the various facets of our lives. The problem is this doesn’t reflect the design principles that surround us or the various environments in which we live and operate. We know from a study of nature that everything is connected to everything else. Callenbach reminds us that there is a mutualism or symbiotic relationship in natural ecologies that prevents compartmentalization. He asserts, “Nothing alive exists in isolation from its ecological context. . . . Symbiotic relationships . . . are a universal way in which life forms survive and coexist.”[1] Each of the various ecological elements mutually interconnect with one another. As Taylor reminds us, “Apparently, there is little rugged individualism in nature.”[2]A few summers ago, I took up gardening. More specifically, I attempted to grow my favorite tomato variety, Celebrity. I found planters under the deck with some soil already in them and plopped my seedlings into those boxes. I found a shady spot by the house where they could thrive. I finished my project and waited to see what would happen! However, the saying “out of sight, out of mind” very much applied to my situation. They were out of sight, so watering wasn’t a priority. I barely even tended to them other than to impatiently check for growth. You can probably guess what happened to my hopes of a plentiful tomato crop. I discovered that tomatoes need a lot of sunlight. They also need regular watering, proper soil nutrition, and ongoing tending. This includes removing suckers, staking the plants, and checking for blossom end rot. Everything in that tomato’s ecosystem impacted everything else. Sadly, we didn’t eat a lot of tomatoes that summer, but I learned some important lessons: nothing thrives in isolation and intentionality is critical to growth.These lessons from the natural world apply to teaching and learning. We may think that teaching is a disconnected enterprise, but just like the tomato garden, it is part of a larger ecosystem or constellation of interconnected elements. Our students are connected to one another in a variety of ways including their families of origin, friends, neighbors, co-workers, faculty, staff, communities of faith, and to the broader world. They bring all these social connections and relationships like checked baggage to our classrooms. Not only that, they also take what they have learned back to their respective relationships, responsibilities, and even life contexts. The reciprocal dynamic at work in all natural, social, spiritual, and learning ecologies nurtures growth because of the impact bi-directional engagements have on the teacher and learner.[3] The learner isn’t an isolated element in the classroom but rather brings a number of connections from their social networks, life experiences, ministry opportunities, and adult responsibilities. Bronfenbrenner used the language of nested ecologies to describe the various levels or environments in which a person engages and develops.[4]These complimentary ecosystems interconnect with each other as a way of facilitating and stimulating mutualistic growth.When learning is connected to the student’s multi-contextualized realities, we see impact not just in test scores or nicely articulated papers but also in a holistic approach to navigating the world around them. In one class I teach, my students learn how to develop and use a modified form of Hartman’s ecomap[5] called an ecoplan. In this plan, they must identify a daily strategy to address an activity or a way of being, centered around all six dimensions of a whole person formation model, (physical, mental, emotional, social, moral, and spiritual) first proposed by Ted Ward.[6] For example, on Mondays, they will commit to some form of physical activity, intellectual exercise, emotional engagement, social practice, moral obligation, and spiritual discipline. Something similar is identified for each day of the week. At first it seems overwhelming to them but once they start implementing their plan, they’re often amazed at how easy it is to incorporate an integrated approach to how they live. They begin to understand that what happens in one of the dimensions impacts and is impacted by all the others. They see that proper attention to physical activity has an impact on emotional health. Similarly, intentionality with respect to spiritual practices has an impact on their relationships to one another, and healthy emotional habits may influence mental health as well.In all that we teach, we should be mindful that there is an inherent and inescapable connection between the content we deliver, the teaching that we facilitate, and the way in which students live out what they are learning. When our teaching accommodates these human ecosystem dynamics, we create a far richer learning experience and one that potentially creates lasting impact. Teaching, from this perspective, shifts from content management to formative integration of content.Once we understand that the educational compartments we construct have to be permeable and connected to others, we have an opportunity to radically reshape teaching and learning paradigms. Here’s to a bumper crop of tomatoes andintegrated learners! Notes & Bibliography[1] E. Callenbach, Ecology: A Pocket Guide (University of California Press, 2008), 134.[2] W. Taylor, “Significance of the Biotic Community in Ecological Studies,” The Quarterly Review of Biology 10, no. 3 (1935): 296.[3] S. Lowe, and Lowe, M., Ecologies of Faith in a Digital Age: Spiritual Growth through Online Education (IVP Academic, 2018).[4] U. Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design (Harvard University Press, 1979).[5] A. Hartman, Finding Families: An Ecological Approach to Family Assessment in Adoption (Sage Publications, 1979).[6] T. Ward, Values Begin at Home (Victor Books, 1989).

Watching news of ICE arrests and protests in Los Angeles, I cannot help but think how we have got here. The perception of many people who voted for President Trump is that there are too many “illegals” in this country. The reason for this impression, perhaps, is that the Latino presence in some states has increased exponentially in the last few decades. Towns with minimal or no Latino presence now have significant immigrants. The image below demonstrates this change in non-traditional Latino states, where the unprecedented growth has taken place.[i] According to the U.S. census bureau, between 2022 and 2023, the Hispanic population accounted for just under 71% of the overall growth of the United States population.[ii] Hispanics of any race grew to just over 65 million, an increase of 1.16 million (1.8%) from the prior year.[iii] This growth significantly contributed to the nation's total population gain of 1.64 million in 2023.[iv]I live in the small town of Cleveland, TN. I remember first arriving in Cleveland when I was in the first grade. I have been in and out of Cleveland since I was six years old. Back in those days—and aside from my sister—I was the only “Hispanic” kid in the school. No one knew much about me except that I spoke Spanish and that I was learning English. I may not have been fluent in English, but I was good at learning things and came to the classroom with strong abilities. Though I did not have the language skills to keep up with my peers at the beginning, a particular instance let me know that I could do what my peers could do. I remember the teacher gave out a math worksheet on my first day of class that I finished before all my peers. I also got all my answers correct. Later, I steadily learned English and spoke it fluently within a year. In fact, I spoke English with a southern accent. One time, my parents recorded a greeting to send to my grandmother on a cassette tape. When I visited my native Honduras in the late 1990s, my sister and I found the exact cassette tape with the recording on it. When we listened to it after all those years, we laughed because we had a thick southern accent.            I am now in my 40s, and the school system has changed. There are many more children of Latin American descent, as well as other heritages. My son’s middle school has a lot of Hispanic students. He played soccer on his team with children whose parents were 1st generation immigrants of Argentine, Chilean, Dominican, Honduran, Guatemalan, and Mexican heritage (among many non-Latin American backgrounds, of course). He would sometimes come up to me and ask me questions about what certain Spanish words meant. Here I am, nearly forty years after I first arrived in Cleveland and things have changed in this small town. But even though all the children I have met here have arrived through the proper channels or are born U.S.-citizens, there is a strong anti-immigrant sentiment in my community.            This is xenophobia: the dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries. Just because a person is brown, it does not mean that they were or have been “illegal.” Seeing ICE arrest U.S. citizens even after providing proper ID is a clear sign of racial profiling by those who are supposed to keep us safe. Seeing the military deployed at protests is a politicization of the military. The way that these politics are working out makes me wonder if brown people will ever be perceived as true U.S. citizens and equal. The Latino community has increased exponentially. It is nothing to fear. And even if one day they were to become a majority in the U.S., like the case of Blacks in South Africa, it appears they would still be a minority in terms of economics and/or power. I am a Christian and there are two important elements of faith that are important for us. The first is hospitality as a qualifier for leadership in the local church (1 Peter 4:9; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:8). I would also argue that it is a mark of a true Christian and a Spirit-filled life (Hebrews 13:2). The other element is compassion. If we remember the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10), good will and compassion extend beyond cultural, ethnic, racial, socio-economic, and nationalistic barriers. The radical nature of the Samaritan’s aid to the Hebrew man cannot be understated. The immigrant—whether legal or “illegal,” documented or undocumented—is our neighbor. We must now consider what it means for them to be our neighbor and what hospitality requires of us. Notes & Bibliography[i] US Census Bureau, “Percentage Change in the Hispanic or Latino Population by Country: July 1, 2022 to July 1, 2023,” https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2024/comm/hispanic-population-change.html, last accessed June 19, 2023.[ii] US Census Bureau, “New Estimates Highlight Differences in Growth Between the U.S. Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Populations,“ June 27, 2024, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/population-estimates-characteristics.html (last accessed June 5, 2025).[iii] Ibid.[iv] Ibid.

Like so many of us, I’ve spent the past two years in a paralyzed panic over artificial intelligence’s effects on my classroom. I teach undergraduates, mainly gen ed philosophy courses, and writing has been a key component of all my courses. When ChatGPT hit the mainstream, it became a constantly looming presence, threatening to devour every part of teaching that I care about. I didn’t “wrestle” with it. Nothing so active and dignified. I went on an emotional roller coaster of ignoring it, freaking out, wishing it away, catastrophizing, and then ignoring it again.It didn’t work. AI was still there. I tried writing about it, but that just made me feel worse. And my writing was awful, page upon page of “Oh my god, the sky is falling.” Depressing, unhelpful – and bad writing. I trashed every single page.Some of my colleagues argue that we must incorporate this wonderful new tool into our teaching. We should encourage students to use AI for “basic” tasks like summarizing texts and outlining arguments, freeing them up for more advanced work. Others point out that summarizing and outlining are advanced tasks for many of our students since they don’t know how to do either, and that students need to first acquire skills like summarizing in order to later acquire more advanced skills. To make that learning possible, they argue, we need to build protective walls to keep AI out of our classes. Several want our Writing Center to ban Grammarly and its ilk.I agree with the second group that our students usually don’t summarize or outline well. And I agree that allowing students to outsource tasks they haven’t yet mastered to AI will make it harder for them to learn to read, write and, most importantly, to think critically. I’d love to operate in a sheltered space behind protective walls. But I don’t think the walls will hold.Hence my freaking out. But after two years, I have finally managed a few moment of calm thought, aided by James Lang’s wonderful blog post. I’ve come to the following key conclusions:AI-assisted writing isn’t going away. Damn it.We aren’t reliable AI detectors and we don’t have reliable automated AI detectors (although we can catch blatant and unskilled uses).If we continue to assign take-home essays, some of our students will use AI to write them. We won’t know how many or how much they will use it, and we won’t catch many of them.Take-home essays are important pedagogical tools, and I don’t as yet have any promising substitutes.My immediate task is to figure out how to navigate my classroom spaces with all this and my own teaching goals in mind. What do I want to prioritize, and what am I willing to sacrifice?It is tempting to prioritize not being duped. And making not being duped the priority has the clear advantage of producing simple action steps: No more take-home essays. Switch to lockdown browsers or old-school blue book exams.Following James Lang, I am not switching, at least not yet. This is because I think there are more important things at stake than minimizing the risk of cheating.As I listen to colleagues who are switching to in-class exams, I am thinking about why I’ve been avoiding them for my entire teaching career: They do not test what I want to teach.Switching from essay-writing to in-class exams requires moving from messy and open-ended discussion towards lectures. I don’t want to make that move. My students have enough lecture classes. They don’t need another one from me. But they do need what I am good at teaching. My students need a class that focuses on discussion and self-reflection, inviting them to engage each other and the materials and think through their own lives, actions, and values. I want to teach those classes, and then I want my assessments to provide opportunities for students to chew over things we’ve talked about and the views they’ve encountered in class, developing arguments, reflecting on their experience, pursuing thoughts and objections, and seeing where it all takes them. Take home essays do that.But assigning those essays leaves me wide open to cheating. So what do I do in my classes to reduce the risk?I include more low-stakes writing.I make the papers worth less and include plenty of scaffolding and in-class work on them.I grade a little differently, rewarding bland, generic, but correct writing less and messy and creative writing more.I add some quizzes – and I am experimenting with using AI to draft multiple choice questions.I keep an eye out for obvious AI misuse and I use the built-in detection software. But I try not to obsess about it, and I try to be OK with knowing that some students will get away with things they shouldn’t (this part is definitely a work in progress).Most importantly, I try to connect with my students and I try to convince them that I want to hear what they think, and that their opinions matter to me and to the world. I encourage them to draw on class discussions and their own experiences when they write, and I encourage them to say what AI cannot say because AI is not them.I’m also looking around for guidance from others. Reading a Chronicle of Higher Education newsletter, I just came across Kimberly Kirner’s writing assessments. She sets out to help her students develop their own voices, and she grades based on the students’ progress towards goals that they develop together. I plan to learn from Kirner and others like her over the summer and experiment with her assignments next semester.AI is here to stay and our students have access to it. It’s not the situation I would have chosen but it is what is in front of us. It will be on us as educators to guide students so that they can still develop as critical thinkers and writers. That work has many parts, and thankfully we don’t all have to do all of it. Despite the peptalks from the AI-optimists on my campus, I don’t see myself working with students to help them write better AI prompts, and I don’t yet see a good role for AI in my courses. But reading Kirner and Lang reminds me that there is important work here that I am suited for and that I care about: I can help students see that they and their voice matters and I can help them develop their voices and become better informed so that they can speak and write more effectively. Notes & BibliographyKimberly Kirner is Professor of Anthropology at California State University at Northridge.James Lang is Professor of Practice at the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Notre Dame.

On a Sunday morning in mid-April, my students and I gathered around the firepit in the open-air Council House at the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont. Light drizzle pattered on the roof and danced through the open smoke vent, speckling the dust and ash at our feet. Just out of sight the Middle Prong river thundered, singing to us through a grove of Hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis), Sycamores (Platanus occidentalis), and Tulip Poplars (Liriodendron tulipifera). The deciduous trees were leafing out, sprouting and unfurling fresh, vibrant spring greens. They would’ve been blinding in the sun, but the clouds softened and dispersed the light so it felt as though the whole world had been dyed green. Soon pale yellow and orange tuliptree flowers would explode from buds to beckon hummingbirds and bumblebees into the bustle of spring.“The body of Christ, broken for you,” I addressed each student. “And the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation, given for you.” We ate and drank, tasting and seeing, overwhelmed by the goodness of creation and her Creator. Our shared experiences throughout the semester and during that retreat weekend transfigured the embodied, communal practice of eucharistic thanksgiving. We’d seen many broken bodies together – I remembered the sun-bleached skull of a buck, its flesh long returned to the soil. And there’d been at least some blood shed, mostly my own, given to thorns and briars in our adventures and exploration.While that Sunday service was especially powerful, the “normal” religious rituals of prayer and Scripture reading that began each class session took on new resonances as we learned outside. I probably should not be as surprised at these developments as I sometimes still am. The Bible is “an outdoor book . . . a hypaethral book . . . a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better,” according to Wendell Berry.[i] While Berry denies that he is “an accredited interpreter of Scripture,” I have been learning and practicing the tools of disciplined, responsible, faithful biblical exegesis now for two decades.[ii] The work of considering the words of Scripture outside has had a greater transformative effect on me, I have to admit, than the whole sum of my academic research and theological reflection.[iii] My eyes have been opened anew to the power and beauty of the creaturely imagery of Sacred Scripture. Study and even religious reading inside now often feel sterile, and sterilizing, to me. One student commented that while she’d never before considered reading the Bible from the imagined perspective of a plant or animal, now she could never imagine going back to the way things were before.Last year, on Earth Day, my Creaturely Theology class invited fellow students and colleagues to join us in a new tradition. We chose not the conventional activity of planting trees – though our future work will certainly involve much planting – but instead to uproot. There are times for both (Eccl 3.2), whether in farming, or faith, or academic formation. In the outdoor classroom of Johnson University’s campus, non-indigenous privets (Ligustrum sinense), honeysuckles (Lonicera japonica and L. maackii), pears (Pryus calleryana), and tree-of-heaven (Alianthus altissimua) are abundant, especially on borders between fields and forest. They obscure the vision of the goodness of this place and crowd out the native lives that once thrived more freely here. Ivy (Hedera hylix), kudzu (Pueraria montana), and wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei) smother large patches of soil, devouring all available nutrients and making it impossible for indigenous plants, fungi, and animals to dwell where they once did.One must first have eyes to see to identify such obstacles, and then one can work to uproot them, making possible renewed thriving and good growth. Practicing seeing and reading, giving and receiving, outside, even especially in the traditional practices and words of our faith, has caused scales to fall from our eyes. It has transformed and is transforming us to see, believe, and be empowered to get to work in trust that the God who has begun such work in us, and in God’s world, will be faithful to bring it to completion. Notes & Bibliography[i] Wendell Berry, “Christianity and the Survival of Creation,” Cross Currents 43, no. 2 (1993), 155.[ii] See Wendell Berry, Our Only World: Ten Essays (Counterpoint, 2015), 168.[iii] This is not to repudiate or downplay any of that work, which I still stand behind. See Joseph K. Gordon, Divine Scripture in Human Understanding: A Systematic Theology of the Christian Bible (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019) and also Joseph K. Gordon, ed., Critical Realism and the Christian Scriptures: Foundations and Readings (Marquette University Press, 2023).

The task is impossible, yet ours to accomplish. Our students need us to shape our classrooms for a future we cannot foresee or anticipate. In the courses we design, our students need us to hone their voices, imaginations, and problem-solving abilities for a future that is unmappable yet will require their navigational skills for survival of our families, neighborhoods, and nation. The world powers are shifting before our very eyes, and we must teach to prepare our students for this change.  A call for agency is not a call to act out or act up. Agency has more to do with activating the responsibilities and powers which came with faculty hire when we joined an institution with a commitment to mission. We are bound to the promise of educating – come what may.Typically, the mission of the school has to do with educating for the moment at hand, and with an eye toward the coming future. Faculty, as stewards of knowledge production, have a professional obligation to adapt, pivot, adjust so that education remains future minded – especially in a moment when the future will not look like the past. We are teaching in a moment when we do not have the luxury of thinking that adhering to established traditions will save schools or educate our people into the next fifty years. While we need those with agency to guide us into the new possibilities, the new approaches, the new sensibilities of education, too many school contexts have punished, jettisoned, or abandoned those with agency.Agency, or lack thereof, is one of the perennial themes discussed in gatherings of early career colleagues at Wabash Center. Colleagues invariably bring to the discussion their fears, misinformation, unarticulated needs, desires, and hopes. They disclose their disappointment and misgivings about institutional citizenship and the lack of ownership they feel for their own professional duties. When asked by the workshop leaders why they feel so disregarded, they say:“I assumed that my needs are just like everyone else’s. They (the administration) should know what I need without me asking.”“I don’t ask questions in meetings because I do not want to appear stupid.”“I don’t like to ask too many questions because I am new.”“I really think someone else knows the curriculum better than I do, so I leave it up to the senior scholars.”“I have decided to wait until I am – [tenured, promoted, finished with my book] – THEN I will start speaking up about the workings of the school.”“I do not want to ask for a faculty handbook because they might think I am causing trouble.”“When colleagues ask me to lunch, I say no. I don’t want the department head to think I am colluding with them.”“I say “yes” to every extra assignment. I don’t want colleagues to think I am unavailable or lazy.”“I don’t make use of the teaching center. I don’t want my colleagues to think I do not know how to teach.”“My only mentor is my dissertation advisor who retired three years ago. I do not want colleagues to think I need advice.”“I am going to pitch my idea for a new class after Dr. XXXX retires in two years.”“I do not vote in faculty meetings because I do not want colleagues to think I take sides.”“I wanted to say something, but I did not know how the colleagues would react.”These are the kinds of responses given by the fearful and the distracted. The lack of agency signals that there is a denial of authority, an abdication of responsibility, a giving away of power, a squandering of opportunity. As some of the most educated people on the planet we are asking permission to do the jobs for which we are depended upon. My fear is that now, in this crisis, we are incapable of shaping our classrooms for the unknown future — we might be, as my father would say, “a day late and a dollar short.” As educators, we are in a reckoning moment when we must take agency if our craft of teaching is to be relevant and worthwhile.  Moving forward, we know that higher education will need to imagine, invigorate, and conjure up new schools as well as establish new approaches for entire systems of education. Professional timidity will sabotage these efforts. Faculty colleagues who have no agency, no forthrightness, no vision for the new, and who refuse or are unable to take authority for the job will only serve to further compromise the system and foreclose the freedom and creativity needed now and in the future. Leadership that is flexible, resilient, imaginative, and willing to convene open dialogue and struggle with challenging questions is what is needed as we press onward through the fog! Reflection QuestionsWhat are the obstacles to your own agency?How has your agency grown with the seasons of your career?What is at stake should your leadership go unvoiced?Who are your conversation partners for discussing this moment of crisis and the ways it is affecting teaching?Where are the open dialogues that address the new possibilities for the coming future?

In a previous blog, I highlighted courage as a a key factor in teaching. It ultimately pointed to a struggle for the affections of our students. I discussed the importance of winning their affection as a key component of my work as a teacher. It is a valuable step to gain credibility in the classroom. Below, I continue addressing this battle for the affections.I teach at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. Many of my Academy peers at non-Pentecostal institutions, in Wabash workshops, and in other settings have expressed their interest in Pentecostalism. It is like a hobby or curiosity due to the perceived eccentricity of Pentecostal belief and practice. I have also met many in the Academy who grew up as Pentecostals but are now a part of other religious traditions. Somehow, their experience still informs their identity and they now work in theological education even if it is through different lenses. Others hear the word “Pentecostal” and just raise their eyebrows because of the many misinformed stereotypes.Perhaps the most groundbreaking work for Pentecostals was Steven Jack Land’s Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (1993). To this day, I understand that it is the all-time best-seller for the Centre for Pentecostal Theology. Land’s title is descriptive for Pentecostalism.[i] Land connects systematic theology and spirituality. For him, Pentecostals are a Wesleyan form of religion similar and different from other streams of Christian thought in that their theology stresses the affections. Post-Land, Pentecostals understand that theological education is about “knowing in one’s mind” (orthodoxy). It is also about “knowing how to do” (orthopraxis). Yet, education also involves feeling or aligning one’s affections or disposition the right way (orthopathos).My tradition points to the importance of winning and molding the affections of the human being.[ii] This is something that can help us as we teach. Theological education most certainly includes the mind; however, it is much more than rational assent. Theological education is concerned with the student engaging in the right practices, but that is not its end. Theological education is concerned with things that are at stake in our culture and are of utmost importance; as such we are in a struggle for the heart of our generation, for the affections. Nonetheless, the affections must also involve the mind and our practices. Too many Pentecostals love God, but they do not love God with their minds or with their practice. The three (orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathos) go hand in hand as a perichoretic philosophy of learning, if you will.My concern is with this latter orthopathic dimension in theological education. Let me clarify, Pentecostals are known for “tongues and drums.” In what I describe I am always conscious of the mind and action. However, religious or theological education must be concerned with orthopathy. This term comes from the Greek roots, ortho and pathos. Ortho refers to the “correct manner” or to a “proper way”; pathos refers to suffering, or in the literal sense, a quality that evokes pity. Theological education must not only be concerned with the right information about God or the right practice. It must also be concerned with producing the right passion, or the right affections, concerning the things of God.Let me provide an illustration. A person may not know about justice in Scripture or in a particular religious tradition. We do the difficult work of presenting students with this hard intellectual fact. Second, a student may be acquainted with the notion of social justice and may even participate and engage in activities promoting justice or the right social action. However, even in my intellectual knowledge of justice and the right practice of social justice, I must remember the underlying need to love my neighbor as myself – even when this neighbor may not think or act like me. This is a profound affective move that conditions my relationship to all human beings, even if I rationalize that they do not deserve to be treated as such. Thus, orthopathos refers to a gut check about being invested in the right way of being in the world or feeling in the world towards God, neighbor, and self – vertically, horizontally, and dispositionally.I know this is a brief essay and I may not have time to write more about this. But in my particular tradition (wesleyan-pentecostal), any writing about teaching must include these three dimensions: orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathy. As a result, theological education must include those elements that evoke the most poignant affections, such as (but not limited to) music, poetry, dance, art, and other media. People wonder what makes Pentecostals grow. It is this radical inclusion into liturgy and beyond (such as the world of the Academy) of this oft-forgotten part of our humanity – the affections. Orthopathos is a powerful composition that produces lifelong learners that are passionate about theology, education, and God. Teaching seeks to live out these vibrant vertical and horizontal relationships.  Notes & Bibliography[i] There are many different types of pentecostalisms. There are charismatic Pentecostals, third wave Pentecostals, reformed Pentecostals, and anabaptist-like strains of pentecostalism. But I teach at Pentecostal Theological Seminary, a school that traces and articulates the development of its Pentecostalism to the nineteenth-century Holiness Movement (i.e. Phoebe Palmer, Charles Finney, etc.) and eventually to John Wesley (pentecostalism’s grandfather). It is known as “the Cleveland School” for its Wesleyan-Holiness-Pentecostal perspective.[ii] Jonathan Dean, A Heart Strangely Warmed: John and Charles Wesley and Their Writings (Canterbury Press, 2014).

Humans, like all living things, are creatures of habit. The familiarity of my classroom spaces, whether indoor or outdoor, is profoundly comforting to me. The established structures and routines – the layout and furniture of the room (or patio), where everyone sits, the specific times we keep for prayer, discussion, board work, and listening all come together – a spatiotemporal synergy – to create an atmosphere of healthy safety that makes the gentle provocations and challenges needed for learning, growth, and even transformation possible. We can address ideas and issues in the unique space and time we have together because of its set-apart particularity. And stability, predictability, and repetition are integral ingredients for the very possibility of such work.When I take students outside for Creaturely Theology, though, such routines and structures are out the window, literally. The changes and challenges of the seasons demand adaptability. We must be ever ready with open minds, hearts, and even hands to receive whatever is offered, moment by moment.There are certainly rhythms and regularities. Throughout the semester we return to the same places again and again, often via the same trails and routes. Every time we arrive again to where we have been before, things are new. The cold browns and grays of January and February give way to rich, vibrant greens, and then whites, yellows, pinks, oranges, and blues, as herbaceous plants awaken and show off beautiful ephemeral blooms in March and April. In the cool, wet winter, we regularly encounter salamanders, small mammals, and ground-dwelling invertebrates, but as the world warms, the diversity of lives multiplies before our eyes. Flying insects appear seemingly from nowhere, and snakes, lizards, and turtles emerge from the subterranean slumber of brumation into the lengthening brightness and warmth.Chorus frogs and spring peepers announce the inevitable coming warmth before we can feel or believe it. Overwintering birds depart and spring migrants arrive, transforming the diurnal soundscape, filling each holler and hilltop with new harmonies. Even aromas shift dramatically. The moldering, earthy wetness of winter gives way to the spice and sweet sap of buds unfurling and swelling into leaves and verdant new shoots greedily pressing through previous years’ detritus, pushing aside soil and rock, to meet the sun. Later in the semester, petrichor – the scent of warm rains on drying soil – lifts our spirits, even when our hair and clothes are dampened.Every change and happening has its particular power for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, but sometimes the experiences are more personal. Some scents and sights have almost bowled me over, returning me to the sensations of my undergraduate self – now twenty years past – in this same but different place.In my last blog I mused on the importance of recognizing and learning the names of our living non-human neighbors whose ancestors have dwelt here for countless generations. It is, of course, impossible for my students and I to know, and to draw near to, all of them in just one semester. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer stresses the desperate need for indigeneity in our age of globalized placelessness.[i] We must shed our restless destructiveness to become grounded again. The health of our environs, their non-human inhabitants, and our own well-being, both physical and psychological, depends upon such attention and connection. It cannot happen completely while obtaining a Bachelor’s degree, let alone during a semester, but I can help plant its seeds, and tend its early growth, with each new cohort of creaturely theologians.The seasons and lives of this place are constantly reshaping the typical rhythms of academia and my own teaching life. I no longer feel as if I am passing through these woods and fields in unassailable ignorance, taking from them what I can. However slowly, I am becoming naturalized. The more I learn, the more palpably I know my ignorance and limitations; and yet, paradoxically, the more I feel at home. As this place and its inhabitants remake, and renew, me, I am better able to share such intimate care with my students.As one student put it at the end of the semester, “We kept coming back and getting to know the area. . . [I]n a way it became ‘our campus,’ not in the sense of ownership, but in the sense of friendship.” Notes & Bibliography[i] See Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2013), 205–15.

I hinted in my previous post that maybe I should do an illustrated version of my in-process book, Zen and the Artful Buddhist: Asperger’s, Art, and Academia. I have illustrated a few pages, but it’s taking far longer than I imagined it would. This book idea has been percolating for a few years. Some days I want it to be published by an academic press, but now that it’s morphed into an illustrated book, I’m not so sure about an academic press. The book meanders. As does my mind. All the time. Illustrating the book feels right: it’s creative, innovative, and will illustrate (literally) my evolving understanding of how I’ve been impacted by learning late in life that I have Asperger Syndrome (now, a part of ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder). One need not have Asperger’s to reflect on one’s life, to be sure. Yet this is the lens through which I see more clearly my years as a professor.Before starting to illustrate the book, I was working on and off on another large (31x51 inches) painting. I only work on the painting an hour or so at a time, since it requires intense concentration and it is physically demanding. It requires standing, and the more I paint, the further I have to reach to complete rows higher on the paper, creating strain on my back, eyes, and wrist, to name a few. This current painting is precisely what I have been working on at various points for the past several years, namely short, parallel lines in multiple rows. While working on the piece, I thought a lot about my teaching style.So far, my illustrated book project shows various connections between my art, Asperger’s, Buddhism, and academia – all large topics themselves. I’m not an expert on Asperger’s, but what I’ve learned provides insight into my art-making. And insofar as any artwork contains the “fingerprints” of the artist, my pattern-heavy, highly-repetitive paintings also connect to themes I recognize in how I taught my courses. Of course, I could add much more nuance, but here is a short list of Asperger-related traits that run through my art and teaching:Detail: I always thought it was normal to focus on details, but I see now that I was having students look at the trees so much that we sometimes would miss the forest;Precision: accurate pronunciation of foreign terms (e.g., Sanskrit);Repetition: similar assignments, just different material;Nuance: overall picture shows nuances, but one still needs to look intently at the details first;Plans: agonizing over planning the syllabus every semester.My latest large painting contains roughly thirty-one thousand parallel lines, each one fitted within a half inch band of parallel lines. Like my teaching, it contains lots of details, all of which are necessary for building the overall painting. Looking back on my teaching, I now wonder what sort of balance I struck between looking at the individual lines/trees and making clear the connections that were being constructed throughout the course/forest. While illustrating my book project, I see similar challenges emerging. My next (illustrated) post will delve into more nuances about my progress.

The following is adapted from a talk given by Dr. Jennings during the 2024 Wabash Center’s BIPOC Faculty Luncheon at  the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). You sound   What do you sound like in the rain, Standing between claps of thunder and lighting strikes, untamed and terrifying?   Silence, though wise, is not an option given your task of directing toward shelter, while rain drops clean your face including your teeth, as if it were their right and duty.   Storm time covers your time, threatening to last as long as your will to communicate, your willing locked into battle against blowing wind, promising many episodes, several seasons.   But what do you sound like? Does your sound collapse under the weight of the elements, reduced to a shouting whisper, only inches from your inner voice?   Or   Have you found a bullhorn with fresh batteries that give your sound that familiar grabbled sound indistinguishable from anyone else seeking quick victory?   Choices must be made in the storm, since you are yet directing and eyes blurred with much wet are still watching, straining to hear.   But maybe the question to dis-cover the sound of your voice is what do you hear in it?   One of the most challenging tasks of life in the academy, especially for people of color, is cultivating one’s own voice—and within that cultivation, to know one’s own sound. Voice and sound here, as I am using them, are thick metaphors that bring together the one and the many, the self and the institution. Voice in this regard is your self-witness, the testimonies you give, big and small; the pieces, the fragments of yourself you present; your showing and telling, depending on what you need or want to communicate in this world—in this academic world. Your sound is your way with your voice. At one level, your sound is your style inside your drama to speak and to tell. It is your bend with your pen as you write your own story page after page. But at another level, your sound is how you hear others hearing you. Your sound is your awareness of other voices and the way you weave in and out of other sounds. My friends, in the academy being heard (having voice) and being able to hear (knowing your sound) is still frontier work for us. I named two things here, voice and sound—being heard and being able to hear. Being heard and finding our voice in the academy is a challenge in the best of times. As I have written about this, it is the struggle against white self-sufficient masculinist form—that suffocating form of self-presentation and self-articulation around which flows the evaluative ecology and reward systems of the academy. We struggle against the pull to mimic the voice of that man, the finished man, who shows he has mastery, control, and possession of his knowledge. That struggle comes at us from outside of us and from inside. Outside, from the forms of formal and informal evaluation layered across our bodies. Inside, from the often-severe voices that we have internalized; those voice which place on us a quest for unattainable excellence. Inside and outside, forces bound to our will to survive—for our own sake and for the sake of our peoples. We know, however, its possible to resist that voice and find your own voice. We stand in the legacy of people who have, and are, doing just that. There is a poem in my book, After Whiteness, that tells the true story of how one sister helped another sister begin her journey toward her voice in the academy. It begins with the elder sister’s recognition of the struggle: My voice trembles always at the sound of your voice, which began for me so long ago, gently guiding me to what was good, great, weak, strong, straight into the vise, tightening ever so slowly that I mistake the hurting for stability, constrictions for conscientiousness I learn labored breathing, tighter thinking until I make the sound for help with every sound I make. But I think, this will not be forever. I will break free even if I must tear skin from my flesh to loose your stability. Sara saved her, took Joan from the other voice and placed her inside. She knew how, having lost enough skin to form a womb outside her body – the mindbodywomb - where bathing light would cover Joan’s thinking, protecting her from glaring light – light against light – knitting truth into her inward being before it could be snatched away by the other voice, until she emerged from Sara’s wombbodymind intact, and hearing none, the i passed unharmed into Joan’s voice flowing like refreshing waters ready to heal torn skin and cracked voices.[i]   Finding voice is a constant work of abolition, of freeing your voice from his voice. But I have come to realize that the work of finding voice carries within it the task of learning to hear your sound. Over the years, I have met too many scholars, especially BIPOC folk, who do not know their sound. What do I mean by not knowing their sound? On the one hand, they have very little idea of what they sound like, they do not hear others hearing them. And on the other hand, they do not know how to move in sound and let the sounds of others flow through them. Let me tell you a story: There was this scholar who always spoke truth to power. He had made it up the rough side of the mountain. He knew what needed to be said in every setting, to every individual, every administrator, every colleague, and every student. Right, bright, brilliant, and insightful, he claimed his voice in white spaces, announced his present freedom to speak and his commitment to the struggle. His voice was and is urgent, vital, and necessary, but his colleagues have longed for his absence. They can’t stand him. Without knowing more details, you might say that he was simply being prophetic, marking the journey of so many BIPOC folks struggling against white hegemony. But in this case, the desire for his absence is unanimous among everyone, including BIPOC folk. He cannot hear himself which means he cannot hear others hearing him. He closed himself off from the sounds of others, and turned his own voice, aimed toward freedom, into his own prison. He is alone, bitter, and convinced he is too controversial and radical for the academy. He may be too controversial and radical for the academy. But, he is also bound to the voice of the white self-sufficient man even as he articulates freedom. What is missing from this scholar’s voice is the working with sound.   Allow me to return to the first poem and add a few words:   Choices must be made in the storm, since you are yet directing and eyes blurred with much wet are still watching, straining to hear.   So maybe the question to dis-cover the sound of your voice is what do you hear in it?   Do you hear others dreaming out here exposed to the elements, sharing in feeling fragile flesh, turning their bodies this way and that to negotiate with the wind?   Do you hear the thunder calling you to join its rhythms, the lighting awakening you to surprise, pulling toward oneness with flashing light, accepting the risk of free air? Do you sense the rain as your support, your pips to your Gladys Knight, moving when you move even at midnight.   The key here, my friends, is delight, delighting in the sounds, allowing the sounds to move through us, never seeking to possess them but to give witness to a hearing that is without end. Every musician knows, the character of your voice and the power of your sound depends on your ability to hear and keep hearing. What is critical in cultivating your voice is your ability to hear in ways that free you from being pulled toward mimicking the white self-sufficient masculinist voice even as you assert your freedom.   How do we sound freedom even amid despair? This is the urgent question we face as we navigate Trump 2.0. The temptation at this moment is to give into the despair and allow that despair to hollow out our voices. However, we will need to speak prophetically. We must speak powerfully and urgently, speak truth to power. Our speaking must show our hearing, or our voices will reveal that we have closed ourselves off to the sounds around us. For the sake of our students, our communities, and for the sake of our scholarly work, we need to attend to our sound and show both our delight and our freedom for others in, and through, our voices. The sounds of many need to flow through us, merging and weaving in slices and pieces inside our own speaking, thinking, and writing, inside our own self-testimony. If not, we run the great danger of our having our own voices turned against us, weaponized and made dismally predictable in how they do not show a lively hearing. Allow me to close with just another stanza from this poem:   If you hear, they will hear in your sound, glimpses of their sounds, then and there you will know your sound, directing toward shelter, announcing a free place.   Notes & Bibliography [i] After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020), 119.

The Wabash Center teaches toward freedom in hopes of liberation and healing. We have learned that acts of freedom occur in many forms, and occasionally involve receiving permission. Since 2019, I have had the honor of reading the feedback forms completed by participants at the end of events and programming experiences. In addition to reading the feedback, there are regular occasions of extemporaneous comments from participants about the insights they have gained during the convened conversations. There is a reoccurring theme: the experience of having been given permission. They have reported having received permission to move towards new habits, practices, attitudes, approaches, and aspirations. Permission to strive for improved teaching is a key theme. Permission to expect more care, consideration and regard from the institutions by which our participants are employed is often mentioned.Much of this feedback comes from early-career colleagues for whom learning to navigate faculty culture is new. Similarly, there are a significant number of seasoned colleagues for whom the Wabash Center sponsored conversations are lifegiving and permission providing.I hear gratitude in this feedback. More importantly, I hear that the giving of permission has been moments of empowerment, agency, healing and inspiration toward freedom. I want to share with you a list of the kinds of permissions that are reported in hopes that you too might be encouraged towards new freedoms.Participants have said that, I received permission …….to develop my own voice, to speak up and speak out without embarrassment, fear, or guiltto take the authority given me by my role and responsibility through hire, tenure or promotionto think differently about the established traditions or about the outmoded presumptions of my institution or academic fieldto, rather than give my power away, make decisions that are faithful to my values and ethicsto command and adjust my own syllabus in my own coursesto act as a good citizen in my institution in ways that align with my own needs, wants, aspirations, desires and longing; to work in integrityto prioritize my mental or physical health and the wellbeing of my familyto teach across disciplines for the benefit of my students and in ways that meet their expressed curiositiesto strive for a work/life balance and maintain that balance over my careerto say “No” to requests which do not suit me or which would overload or overwhelm meto ask that I be called by the name of my choosing (with or without title) and that my name be correctly pronouncedto report acts of bullying and aggression against me or othersto seek counseling, coaching, mentoring, spiritual direction throughout my careerto take the time and needed psychic space to grieve over the failure of a significant achievement or the loss of a belovedto be creative, imaginative, and wonder as an approach to teachingto pursue outside interests, hobbies, and playto resist grind culture, to resist productivity at the expense of my own wellness or the wellness of my familyto communicate when acts of violence like racism, sexism, classism, homophobia occurto parse between the obligations of my scholar/teacher identity and my employment dutiesto rest.The list is in no way comprehensive or exhaustive. I give you the list so you can see the kinds of issues which need to be attended to so that a healthy work environment is created and maintained. It takes hard work to move from a toxic and unhealthy culture to a culture of care, belonging, and justice. Perhaps giving permission to individuals to make healthy communal choices is a start.