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Dear Wabash Blog Readers~ Welcome to our blogosphere innovation for the beginning of this new school year.  For the month of September, we will offer Dr. Hong’s masterful reflection on powerful, creative pedagogical pivots that she made in a course in the Spring Semester.  Log on every Wednesday of September to for the next compelling installment. (Part One of a Five Part Serialized Blog) I’ve always loved art. Some of my earliest memories are of coloring on the walls, much to my mother’s dismay. Today, I enjoy sketching and painting, but as a disclaimer, I’m not a skilled artist by any means. I am someone who enjoys creating art and has grown to appreciate the way the arts have shaped my life and personhood. In my adolescence, I was hungry for art. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t the best at it, just that somehow it filled me up in a way nothing else did. In my search for art, I took every available fine arts class offered at school. I took lessons on Korean calligraphy and painting at my Korean immigrant church on the weekends, joined all the choirs, and tried out for school and community theater. I fell in love with the synergy between the physicality and spirituality of what art did in and through me. The more I learned and engaged in the practice of art, the more art became a necessary spiritual practice. As a young person who was still trying to understand religion, I somehow sensed that the divine met me in those nebulous and vibrant spaces where art was made. There was nothing as exciting as a blank sheet of paper and that first mark of graphite pencil on its surface. What came after—whatever image or pattern appeared on the page—took on a life of its own, almost of its own accord--sacred about making, giving something shape and meaning. All of us did this so naturally as children. Do you remember? When was the last time you picked up a pencil, crayon, paint, or markers, for fun? When was the last time you built something just to try it? As I grew into adulthood, I continued to love art, but I had a narrower view of it. I thought there was a place and time for art, that I had to carve out intentional space for art to happen. After I had children, I lost that sense of order and time. Day and night blurred as did my sleeping and waking hours. There was no such thing as carving out space for anything on my to-do list, let alone art.  The way I understood and recognized art began to expand to include the practice of noticing. I began to notice the artistic quality of things created and growing around me. It started when I began to see the world through my children’s eyes. As their grownup, I had a lot to relearn from them. Do you also find it sad that we so easily forget the perspective of noticing and marveling as we grow into adulthood? As adults, we need to work hard to relearn and regain the perspective that came so naturally in childhood. For instance, my children gasp when they see insects, not out of fear, but out of interest and wonder. I still only scream. During my journey to adulthood, I had learned appreciation for the fine arts, but I had forgotten to stop and notice the beauty and artistry of everything around me. Art didn’t have a designated place and time. Life is art. Art is life. During the first year of the pandemic, when both my children were learning virtually at home, so was I. My children shared with me their love of dandelions, ant hills, finding cicada exoskeletons in the summer, and marveling at the chaos of a thunderstorm from the safety of our porch. For them, there was no mundane. There was no simple. It was all gloriously complex and wonderous. How marvelous that those branches were just right for climbing! How curious that there are so many shades of red, orange, and yellow in tomatoes. How weird that cats have whiskers on the backs of their legs. (They do! Check it out.) I keep learning from them that the artistic exists in everything, in both the order and the mess. I keep learning that it is a spiritual practice to relearn appreciation for the miracle of the everyday. It connects me to the divine and back to myself, back to the earth, and back to the people with whom I am in community.

In the late 1970s, the summer day camp hosted by my church was filled with children grades 1 to 6. The counselors, including me and my best friend Michele, were high school aged people. I taught Nature Studies and Michele taught Spanish. Along with these two subjects, the campers also took classes in recreation, and crafts. We swam at the neighborhood pool in the afternoons and on Thursdays we went on excursions to Philadelphia sites like the Fairmount Park summer theatre, Music at the Del, the Philadelphia Zoo, the Franklin Institute of Science, and boat rides down the Delaware River. I had fun teaching, learning to teach, playing with the kids, and having a summer job with a pay check. Snack time was a highlight of most days. Served immediately after swimming, the thirty-minute afternoon break typically provided a choice between cookies or fruit. At each snack time, baskets of treats were placed on the table for campers and counselors to take what they wanted. By Fridays, the cookies, having been the choice for most of the children, were depleted. Friday snack choices were limited to fresh fruit, apples or oranges. Much to my surprise, only a few children would eat the fruit – choosing instead to have no snack. Children who took a piece of fruit would only take a bite or two, then discard the rest. Jamal was a bright, intelligent camper – age 10. He had beautiful cinnamon colored skin, stood about four foot/ten inches tall - he looked like a baby Denzel. He was mostly lanky arms and giant feet in high-top sneakers. When he played half-ball, red light/green light or tag, he had an awkward grace as he galloped in play - never tripping over his giant feet. Jamal could also be described as being “smart-alecky” as he often was sarcastic to adults. I liked Jamal for all of these reasons. He was confident, thought-filled, interesting to talk to. He was funny and he liked the attention I gave him. Jamal and I developed a quick rapport during sessions in my classes on urban trees, flowers, and pet care. He enjoyed caring for the classroom rabbit (named TR i.e. The Rabbit), hamsters (Sid and Natalie), snakes (Adam and Eve), and voles (no names given). I soon learned that it only took a stern look from me for Jamal to temper his audacious behavior and curb his insolent tongue. This also endeared him to me. At snack time, rather than sitting with the other counselors or campers, Jamal and I would sit together to talk. We talked about current events. I would pepper him with questions about his aspirations – “Why do you want to be a truck driver?”. Jamal was one of the kids who looked disappointed when the snack baskets only offered apples or oranges.  On a particular Friday, Jamal placed an orange on the table, then climbed onto the picnic bench and seated himself across from me.  Jamal stared at the orange. I asked him, “Why don’t you eat the fruit?” Without hesitation and still staring at the orange with suspicious eyes, Jamal answered, “You can’t trust it.” I repeated his comment, but made it into a question, “You can’t trust it?” I continued, “Little boy, what does that mean?” Jamal, still looking at the orange, answered, “You can’t trust what it’s gonna taste like.” Jamal then looked at me with an expression that conveyed I had little common sense. “Boy, what are you saying?” – I asked with impatience. Peering at me over his wire framed glasses, Jamal said, “It’s like this. When you bite into an Oreo cookie or a potato chip – you know what it’s gonna taste like. It tastes the same every time. But! (Jamal put his finger up and pointed at the orange for emphasis as if he was accusing the orange of wrong doing) If you eat a piece of fruit - you don’t know what its gonna taste like. It might be sweet(?) (dramatic pause) It might be sour(?).” While speaking, Jamal pulled his shoulders up to his ears and turned his palms up to communicate the uncertainty – “You just don’t know what you gonna get.”  Now forty-years later, I have not seen Jamal since summer day camp days, but his insight and perspective continue to teach me. The finicky eating habits of Jamal, and the other campers, might be what I witness in some college and graduate school students. The dietary preference for processed foods over nutritious organic offerings might be the same sensibility expressed by students who resist creative assignments in our courses. At the risk of overworking this day camp story – what if our students prefer that which is predictable, formulaic, and expectable in our courses? What if our students reward our predictability with their affirming behaviors and chastise us when our assignments pull them out of their comfort zones? More to the point, what if the lack of variety in our assignments is a detriment to our students’ formation? What if our narrow offerings keep students from learning needed lessons for expansive formation in the digital age? In other words, risk averse students are difficult to teach and risk-averse teachers might be harming the learning.   Like apples and oranges, teaching is organic, alive, unpredictable – often conflictual. Even with the best preparation, in the words of Jamal about the fresh fruit snack, “You don’t know what you gonna get.” Teaching is more art, finesse, delicacy than science, recipe, or formula. Predicting how a class will go with ironclad certainty is for people who do not understand the nature of teaching. Students’ sensibilities to newness, risk, and exploring the unknown impact the dynamics of the course. I remember summers of designing course assignments and learning activities which were tailored for my upcoming fall courses. I would consider the climate of the school, the events of the larger society, the students enrolled that particular semester.  I would design assignments which would connect our classroom learning to congregations as well as the wider society. I would dream up writing assignments which asked for creative non-fiction genres – letters, personal reflection, op-ed/opinion pieces, and project proposals. I would assign mapping, charting, poster-making for hallway exhibits and public displays of learning. Some assignments required group presentations, creation of scavenger hunts, bibles study lessons (written and demonstrated) or creation of playlists, reports of excursions taken beyond our class time. I developed an entire repertoire of assignments complete with detailed instructions, assessment rubrics, and foolproof encouragement!  I made these course design efforts because I believe students need to develop problem solving skills, hone their own creativity, and get acquainted with the makings of innovation and newness. As is typical, on the first day of class I would review the syllabus with the students. Oftentimes my creative assignments were met with grimacing faces, untrusting eyes, hesitate students who preferred the predictable critical essay and term paper over the creative. So many of my students were like Jamal who wanted to know the taste of everything before risking the bite. Many students preferred an intellectual encounter more like processed foods than risking learning activities for which they were uncertain, unrehearsed, and unfamiliar. Adult learners prefer to be affirmed for what they already know than meeting the challenge to learn the new. Much to my joy, each class had four or five students who delighted in the creative, in the unpredictable and the innovative. I depended upon them to coax, model, and bring-along those students for which my unorthodox assignments were too scary. For those of us who are interested in preparing students for the complexities of the 21st century, forming students into societal change agents, or simply teaching creatively for our own artistry and sanity – we must ask ourselves about our student’s palate for the uncertain, the unpredictable and the unfamiliar. In my early years of teaching several students found their way to the Dean’s office to complain about my assignments. Thankfully, I had a supportive Dean. My hunch is that teaching predictably fosters students less prepared to handle surprise, adversity, or the chancy sour notes of life. Worse yet, predictable teaching rarely challenges the status quo or shows students ideas beyond their established norms and previously uninterrogated values. Adeptness with diversity is a key to student formation. Better formation of students requires we teach to invite them to be more aware of and able to traverse all kinds of diversity. Our classrooms are rife with the possibility of exposing students to the complexity of many: races, nationalities, genders, cultures, religions, theologies, ideologies, perspectives, preferences, values, learnings, etc. In so doing, we debunk the notions of supremacy - in all of its forms. I am not suggesting class assignments should be like amusement park fun houses with trap doors in the floors, wavy mirrors and scary things jumping out of dark shadows in vulnerable moments. I have never been a proponent of pop-quizzes, adding assignments onto a syllabus as punishment, or attempting to control poor student habits with unexpected tests. We are not trying to induce fear or panic in our students. But neither do we want to lull students into complacency and complicity with redundancy, staleness, and musty, formulaic teaching. Embracing a wider palette of assignments models for our students the expectation of grappling with diversity as learning. While Jamal and I sat together at the picnic table - I peeled the orange. I handed him the peeling to take to the trash. By the time he returned, I had placed half the orange on a napkin on his side of the table – the other half I held in my hand. Jamal looked at his orange half. I looked at Jamal. Jamal looked at me. I pulled two segments from my half and popped them into my mouth and chewed. The orange was slightly tart, but not offensive to my pallet. I gestured to Jamal to try his half.

On March 30, 2020, Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Black man, died a week after being pinned to the ground by police officers in Rochester, New York, where our school is located. This incident sparked protests, with some former and current students serving as public street chaplains, providing prayers and spiritual support and calling for police reform. When students expand and act out what they have learned in the classroom, should I pretend nothing happened in the community and the world? Although the professor tries to take an apolitical position, students do not separate their learning from reading the world and living in the world. In a group addressing “Things they didn’t teach in Seminary,” a few former students asked practical questions such as how to respond to parishioners who resist sermons explicitly addressing or supporting social movements like #BLM. While types of activism vary—from hashtag activism to solidarity activism on the ground—and even if we do not use the term “activism,” our teaching necessarily involves our perspectives on social justice and our political positions and actions. Paulo Freire argues that because education functions to reproduce dominant ideologies, it can never be politically neutral.[1] Teaching involves “reading the world” beyond the boundary of the classroom. Teaching the biblical text and its cultural and geographical world is not limited to the historical past but addresses highly politicized territory where people still suffer from wars and occupation. Some may be concerned when teachers impose their political perspective or ideology upon students because teachers have power, but when we find our former, current, and future students acting as civic agents for change and religious leaders in social movements, our activism as teachers does not force them to believe or act according to our convictions. Instead, as Freire teaches, students have the right to challenge or reject the teacher’s perspective and the ability to form their own views and speak and act out their opinions. Many activists in the present time understand that what is critical in social movements is not charismatic leaders but the community. The student community has had to grieve and reflect on what they have learned, engaging the world. The pedagogical potential of performative grieving in times of state violence, argued for by scholars in education, came to the fore in my online teaching during the pandemic. I often had students who broke down because of losses—losses of persons, jobs, health—and because of the confusion that systemic racism brought during the pandemic. I was able to say to them, “It’s okay to say it’s not okay” or “It’s okay to cry,” not because I was stronger than my students, but because we needed such collective grieving. For me, building a community of mourning in the classroom was a gesture of activism.  However, as Angela Davis said, if “freedom is a constant struggle,”[2] how long should we perform grief in our teaching? Teacher-activists have become exhausted, particularly in the past years. Critically-minded professors are wrung out by bringing social justice issues into our teaching, one after another (racism, gender inequality, heterosexism, economic injustice, colonialism, climate change, etc.). I create and teach courses like Global Read of the Bible, Feminist and Womanist Interpretation of the Bible, and Migration, Immigration, and Diaspora. Teaching such courses requires continuous engagement with and activism for social justice, as well as a breadth of knowledge. Such continued social challenges and grief causes emotional exhaustion. This is why we need to find communities of mourning and moments of contemplation. As I offered space for students in my classes to mourn, the Pacific Asian North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry community (PANAAWTM) offered me a space for mourning when anti-Asian racism was climactic in the Atlanta mass shootings on March 17, 2021. Wo/men professors, students, and activists of Asian heritage gathered online to grieve, reflect, and pray together. A few sang Asian traditional songs and offered prayers of our ancestors. Through these practices, I gained spiritual strength, intellectual courage, and a clearer sense of commitment to teaching for social justice.  I am grateful for another opportunity that the Wabash Center is giving four Asian and Asian American female professors in New Testament through a Peer Mentoring Clusters grant next year. I am sure that reflecting on teaching—even such seemingly objective courses as Hebrew and Introduction to New Testament, which two of my colleagues are teaching this summer—will lead us to grieve and be “contemplative in action,” because our teaching is not an individual act, but is always situated in the particular contexts where we struggle against oppressions and injustices on the institutional and social level.  [1] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998). [2] Angela Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (Chicago: Haymarket, 2016). Photo: Justine Murphy (@CitizenMurphy), "Brown," Twitter, September 16, 2020

We get that email from the library staff asking for our book selections for our upcoming course. We have taught the course before, so the library is kind enough to send the list of books we used the last time. In most cases we use the same books, but from time to time we add a new selection. Our courses look the same, they sound the same, and in many instances we teach the same books that we were taught. We can become complicit in petrifying the canon. Even if it is a new canon, it becomes constrictive and many of our courses privilege reading. We start with “books.” What if we started with the visual, sound, and look of the course? What if we were bold enough to do something we had never dreamed of doing in a course, designing experiences that were inherently transformative? I propose that if we are to do the new, the challenging, the daring, the unusual, we have to expose ourselves to the new in our daily life and practice:  my wife and I dared to kayak! We had never kayaked before but as our practice is to do the new in the schools that we serve, we are doing new things that will make us new. Things that will expand us and transform us. We took an REI Class on kayaking at Sweet Water Creek State Park in Atlanta. The park is only thirty minutes from our home but when we’re on that lake it feels like we’re miles away. In doing the new, we are becoming new. Becoming new naturally pushes me to try the new, to experiment and develop classes that take students out to kayak with me. While we might not literally kayak, we will do the new, the different, the exciting. The more we do the new, the more we will try the new. Try something new and exciting that takes you out of your comfort zone and see how these experiences transform your teaching!

What happens at the Wabash Center is not meant to stay at Wabash. This is not a statement about confidentiality nor about alleged indiscretions. By design, the unambiguous gift of the Wabash Center to faculty colleagues in religion and theology remains conversations to support the life of teaching. Our workshops, colloquies, digital salons, and consultations create conversations to open new, and reinvigorate old, dimensions of teaching. It is our hope that the gleanings, learnings, new perspectives, reaffirmed approaches, needed information, refreshing analyses, renewed skills, modeled competencies, newly introduced notions, and the sheer fun of gathering together in hospitality and camaraderie will be implemented into classrooms as well as reinvested into faculty ecologies. What happens at Wabash is meant to be shared, taught, imparted, imitated and made public. As such, we hope our most recent workshop will be mined for distribution and circulation. The workshop was “Breaking the Academic Mold: Liberating the Powerful, Personal Voice Inside You.” It is a new collaboration with the Collegeville Institute. The online cohort gathered to learn the practices of creative non-fiction writing. We were led by Sophfronia Scott, Director of the Masters of Fine Arts Program, Alma College and Michael N. McGregor, Collegeville Institute faculty. A complete description of the workshop is on our website. The premise of the workshop is that learning to write in creative genres will improve teaching. The depth and critical importance of our conversation was revealed in the kinds of questions we raised and explored. Here are examples of our wonderings: What if developing your writing voice simultaneously assisted with developing the teaching voice? What if learning to operate in your power as a writer impacted your teaching capacity? What if by learning to claim the agency and power in creative writing you ignite your teaching? What if the skills, competencies, capacities of creative non-fiction writing had direct bearing upon your pedagogical decision making and judgement? What if getting a better handle on the human condition meant writing about it, then teaching about it - or vice versa? What if deeper understanding of religious experience was inherit in learning to write beyond the academic genre of writing? What if the hermeneutical challenge of our teaching can be best met through better story telling? What if developing and improving writing skills is a way to better communication and organization skills often lacked in the classroom? What if learning to write so that readers are emotionally moved would improve the ways we design courses or teach a session? What if freeing your imagination for writing contributed to freeing your imagination in teaching? What if the narrow and humdrum restrictions of academic writing was maintained as much by scholar’s self-policing as by the guild’s rigid expectations? What if writing was a tool to narrate yourself into new life as a teacher? What if the power and ability of voice could be unlocked by learning creative writing? What if moving people into new understandings and new grapplings with old ideas, meant harnessing the power and ability to write creatively? What if strengthening the voice for personal expression resulted in more authentic scholarship? What if through creative non-fiction writing our ideas were made more accessible to a wider audience who are asking similar questions as our students and colleagues about religion and theology? During the 6-day workshop we were afforded the luxury of large chunks of time to write into these questions, or to write about anything else we desired. It was a joy. These provocative, permission giving, and counter-cultural questions permeated our workshop and shaped our conversation in generative ways. Questions bubbled and were engaged in daily plenary discussions. The two workshop leaders made themselves available for one-on-one sessions where these questions were answered in private and focused on the personal. These questions surfaced in the sessions where we workshopped one another’s writings. Three times during the workshop each participant read aloud his or her original writing. One of the sessions was dedicated to the entire group providing constructive feedback to each writer while the writer listened to the critique (There are no tears during workshopping sessions!). Hearing from generous and care-filled colleagues about new writing was an act of trust and vulnerability. Providing feedback to colleagues during their writing process was a genuine act of confidence and collaboration. The mutuality, solidarity, and shared wisdom gave me a renewed sense of creativity and hope. I am able to provide a first-hand account from inside the workshop because I was a participant. It was my privilege to learn and grow alongside my peers. As Wabash Center Director, I want to continue to actively learn about teaching. Even at this advanced stage in my career, I want to learn more about teaching and the teaching life. I want to learn to write better, more accessibly, and with a more authentic voice. I have no doubt that by improving my teaching and my writing I will clarify my vision for the Center and lead us to a more generative future. After the workshop, I returned to my desk with this quote resonating in my spirit. It captures my experience in the workshop as well as provides me with clarity as we move into our future. Ralph Marston wrote: “Go often to where you have the indisputable knowing that life is good. Do, again and again, those things that affirm your highest hopes and best instincts … Touch, taste, feel, see, hear what compels you to care. Let life be good in ways that drive you to make it even better.” Thank you Sophfronia Scott and Mike McGregor. Thank you, Collegeville Institute. I hope our collaboration grows.    A special thanks to my fellow writers and workshop participants for this adventure!

Sufia Uddin Associate Professor Connecticut College No better time to teach how Islam is “raced” than now. Comments by the likes of Donald Trump provide excellent fodder for discussions about race, religion, and racism. It is also true that the kinds of questions asked by journalists and the stories they

Steed V. Davidson Associate Professor of Old Testament Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and Church Divinity School of the Pacific Each night I watch Jeopardy. Occasionally I am thrilled when Tobago or Trinidad features in a clue. This thrill comes from knowing that the island where I grew up (area of 116 square miles) has found its way into the knowledge required of Jeopardy contestants. I take this small thrill, and I am painfully aware of how small it is, because for most of my life I have been told that the intellectual knowledge that matters consists of material outside of..

I like questions. Interrogatives entice me. Answers are low-hanging fruit. Social media lends towards making everyone an expert, and experts tend to have all of the answers. However, questions can change the course of a conversations. Inquiries make space for new ideas, new practices, new programs, and new ways of being. As a biblical scholar questions from this text appeal to me. God asks Cain, “Where is your brother Abel? (Genesis 4.9)” The Lord inquires of Ezekiel, “Can these bones live? (Ezekiel 37:3)” Jesus quizzes the crowd, “Who touched me? (Luke 8:45)” Each question respectively provides a lesson on communal accountability, national atonement, and social acceptance. Questions can change the course of a conversation. Questions allow one to pivot an approach to pedagogy. Before I begin class, I often ask my students, “How are you? How’s it going?” There is no rush to exegesis, cultural studies, biblical interpretation, or any path to hermeneutics. I frequently start our sessions checking in and making space just to sit, hear, and be. It is challenging to process words and thoughts of people distant from us when we are wrestling with trauma and pain close to home. Since March these moments have taken on more meaning. It is one thing to pause not knowing what is unraveling in another person’s life. It is quite another to stop when what stumps you, also stumps me. To begin class unaware of any individual difficulty presents one type of challenge. However, when there is a communal, national, global vicissitude that is no respecter of persons, the classroom becomes a place where traditional pedagogical hierarchy is impudent and irrelevant. Yes, there is the professor, and of course, there are students. Yet, an invisible pathogen called COVID-19 has compromised all displays of visible power. In our current context asking, “How are you?” takes on new meaning. As I ask my students about their well-being, it gives me the space to ask myself, “How am I doing?” Such fragile moments thrust professors to center stage of navigating self-care and classroom-care. In this pandemic when each day there is a startling increase in cases, a rising death toll, and still little progress towards a vaccine, pedagogy and pastoring have become strange bedfellows. Such times call for professors to tap into emotional reserves while discerning portals of spiritual connection. Our tasks before reading essays, facilitating conversations, or sharing our slides via Zoom, require that we don ecclesial attire, access priestly garb, and step into the role of professor-pastor-priest-rabbi-iman-cleric-shaman-spiritual sage. I am not belittling these much-needed roles by suggesting they are easily or readily adaptable. These professions require much credentialing and processes. As an ordained National Baptist and Disciples of Christ minister, I know this from experience. I must admit that prior to this COVID-19 crisis, I kept “Rev.” out of the classroom so “Dr.” would carry the day. Today is a new day. Both must enter fully in light of this global disease and dis-ease. Now I ask new questions before we dive into the gospels, epistles, Jesus, or the mother of James and John. Here are the inquiries from which my pedagogy now proceeds: What gives you joy? Social media and health reports make it the default to dwell on the negative. To seek joy in a death-dealing context is fodder for educational reform. Our coronavirus-context focuses on the pessimistic. The classroom should be the place for cultivating the positive even when its opposite seems overwhelming. As a professor, I want my pedagogy to challenge the norm, even as we live during abnormal times. What worries you? We do not teach in a socio-political or socio-economic vacuum. Students had worries and angst pre-COVID-19. But now, families, finances, challenges to faith, physical wellness, and friendships have all undergone some shifting. Our students’, and our, anxieties about these and other matters are more pronounced. While wrestling with this pandemic, students remain curious about finishing the semester. I wish . . . Okay so these last two are not questions, but they seek information nonetheless. Fill in the blank queries offer a way for students to express how they feel. To engage in wishful thinking provides a forum for helping us see that things won’t be like this always. A pedagogical pivot to wishing helps us ponder and put into place what we project for the future. I am grateful for . . . When the gravitas of sheltering in place can weigh heavily on all of us, finding something for which to be grateful is paramount. This should not be an exercise in comparison or competition, but an act of contemplative practice in chaos. This is a practice of thanksgiving in the center of turmoil. Questions can change the course of a conversation. Questions allow us to pivot our approach to pedagogy. Questions help us pray through until we get through. *Original blog published April 23, 2020

emilie m. townes Dean and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society Vanderbilt Divinity School The opening paragraph of the Vanderbilt University Statement of Commitments: The Divinity School is committed to the faith that brought the church into being, and it believes that one comes more authentically to grasp that faith by a critical and open examination of the Hebraic and Christian traditions. It understands this faith to have import for the common life of men and women in the world. Thus the school is committed to assisting its community in achieving a critical and.

Who or what is God? Words can only say so much about who God is or what God isn’t. Thankfully our thinking isn’t limited to words. Through Art Theology -- using the creative languages of the arts -- we can form new ideas, questions, and perceptions about God. Let the words go and think in color. Thinking back to the very first ideas of God you ever had, what color comes to mind? Gray... Gray was the color of the beard of the old man in the sky, the first image I had of God the Father. Gray was the color of the clouds he sat on. In painting this first idea, I used cold, dark, black grays illustrating the vast remoteness of this idea of God. I began incorporating yellows and whites and softening places within the gray, creating warmth in the painting. As I did so I recalled my childhood struggle to comprehend how this cold, dark, mysterious God also made me and loved me unconditionally. [caption id="attachment_247214" align="alignnone" width="467"] The Cloud of Unknowing Angela L. Hummel 11x14 Acrylic on Wood[/caption]   My concept of God changed when I was introduced to the idea of Jesus and the idea of God’s personal love. The gray remains but softens even more and I introduce an abstract brown line. God’s love expressed through Jesus felt so intimate and personal that I have at times a sense of knowing the nook of his neck, of having rested my head upon that shoulder line. Yet, I could not tell you what his eyes or nose look like. In some ways I do not know him at all. In other ways, that personal love of God is the most real thing in my experience. [caption id="attachment_247215" align="alignnone" width="390"] Personal Love Angela L. Hummel 11x14 Acrylic on Wood[/caption]   Stepping back and looking at the first two paintings I felt a new question arising. I was physically uncomfortable as I reflected on how masculinely gendered my ideas of God had been. No matter what we think and understand theologically about God language, we carry these memories in our bodies. I felt myself reaching for new colors and lines: purples, blues, gold, and undulating lines. This next painting incorporates my reflections on Shekinah. Both women and men are made in the image of God. The divine feminine reveals a love that conceives, gestates, labors, births, nurtures, and sustains. [caption id="attachment_247216" align="alignnone" width="467"] Shekinah Angela L. Hummel 11x14 Acrylic on Wood[/caption]   God is love. This love is mysterious, personal, intimate, boundaried, male, female, non-binary, fluid like water, beyond our comprehension. How can we reflect the love of God and learn to love in this dynamic way? Regardless of bodily function, all of us can learn to love more deeply by reflecting on how love conceives, gestates, labors, births, and sustains. The Christian focus on moral theology has led to judgmentalism that has caused some people to reject religion. Why don’t we devote as much attention to Christian love -- what this love is and how we live it? We need new ways of exploring this vast idea. We need Art Theology. Art Theology has helped me to move away from a monologic pedagogy into a dialogic way of teaching. When my students paint the colors and lines of their thinking about God they move into new ideas, questions, and dialogue that discursive reasoning alone could not take us into. The understandings that we have arrived at through this method have transformed my classroom into a dynamic place of collaboration where together we have learned to see God as truly other, for who God is, not constrained by our previous limited definitions and arguments.                                                                              Angela L. Hummel