Writing, Parenting, and Working in the Mess: Authentic Spirituality and Social Justice

I slept deeply last night, but woke at 5 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep, so I took a walk around the hotel when I finally gave up at 5:45. We are literally across the street from Hadrian's arch. Andy says his sense of awe is not as strong this time, but mine is--I still find the arch breathtaking. I walked around the perimeter of the gated temple and down some side streets. There were already people heading to work, the air heavy with pollution. A few stray dogs begged me for food. Hardly anyone was walking on the streets--I saw only two women waiting for a bus, one runner (I think she was American), and a man who was in a hurry. Nobody makes eye contact in the city except the hotel workers and bartenders and shop owners. I am used to greeting everyone I see in Morris, whether or not I know them, but here, the women looked suspiciously at me when I greeted them, as did the man. I looked funny, I'm sure, with my long t-shirt and gym shorts, and as usual, I'm very co...

I am in Athens! It is 12:20 a.m., so I'm heading to bed shortly, but it feels good to be back in Greece. Returning to Greece is always a strange feeling--half homecoming, half entering a strange land in which I'm only a passing visitor with a strange Kariotiko accent decorated with old-fashioned words--when I can find the right words. My friend Andy and I are teaching a class in cross-cultural aging again this year. We'll visit Athens and Kalavrita--and spend a lot of time in class--between now and Sunday, when we'll head to Ikaria, the island my family is from, the place that feels most like "home" to me besides my little house in Morris, MN. Visits to the "gerokomeio" in Ikaria are an important part of this service-learning study abroad class. Two years ago, we painted a mural, planted a garden, created a brochure to recruit more volunteers, and created a scrapbook of stories based on interviews with the elders. We also planned daily activities, fr...

Acts 11:1-18 Psalm 148 Revelation 21:1-6 John 13: 31-35 A few weeks ago, a former student of mine and I took a walk around town to talk about our very different spiritual beliefs. I approached her because she had hurt some GLBT students in conversations about her faith; she admitted immediately as we started walking that her goal was to convince them that they were not living the life they should be by living as “out” GLBT people. Our conversation was not an easy conversation, to say the least, but in the end, we hugged, and she agreed to be more careful about how she approaches GLBT people about her faith, and I agreed to try to be more accepting of the Evangelicals I encounter, working to treat them with love instead of anger. We both feel equally strongly that we are right about our reading of the bible; we both feel equally strongly that we have the truth about what Jesus’ message means in relation to GLBT people. At one point, we talked about what made us each so sure we were righ...