This week we are featuring another artist conversation, adding a new voice to a growing dialogue about art as an important facet in religious interpretation. 

Melissa Webster is an artist, art teacher, and art historian, who has agreed to share with our community some of her woodcuts illustrating themes of Advent.

JODY W: ...

This week many in the United States pause, gather together, and give thanks. Giving thanks is a practice preserved in cultural memory and recorded in written texts. In Jewish literature, the Psalms are a testament to this tradition of giving thanks. For over two thousand years, psalms of thanksgiving have been read in services and in homes.

But...

Artwork by Diane-Blair Goodpasture at www.goodpastureart.com. 

She is considered a “black feminist pop icon” to some, and to others the ancestor of Ethiopic kings. But to all the Queen of Sheba is a powerful figure of biblical narratives who is portrayed as an auspicious authority in international politics and whose...

Dear D,

When you were little you had one of those rubbery seats that lets babies sit up before they are sitting up on their own. It had a little plastic tray attachment for toys or food. We would sit you in there, pressing your thunder thighs into the leg slots, and pile cubed avocado and sweet potato on the tray. You’d squish those...

Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey is a fervent plea to contemplate how our productivity and worth are intertwined. The premise of the manifesto is that we are divine beings who need to be reminded that we are enough. She argues that the toxic productivity culture that we are immersed in is dictating the pace of our lives. Until we...

Song of Songs is a book of the Bible celebrating romantic love, desire, and yearning between a couple. It is a wedding song full of splendid anticipation and amorous longing. The book's title - "Song of Songs" - is a Hebrew phrase communicating an emphatic superlative, and might best be translated "Best Song Ever!"

The song's dramatic unfolding...

Today I will attend the final monthly mentoring session in an 11-month applied compassion training (ACT) program through the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University.

Grateful and a bit frantic—that’s how I’d describe my feelings about finishing the program. I am full—full...

How do you feel about change? Are you someone who embraces new experiences even if they disrupt established patterns? I crave the constant; those moments when things appear to be working in sync. The daily rhythms of school drop off, waking up before anyone else to soak in the morning light, and work projects meeting deadlines. Even on the...

Protests that began in the streets of Iran are blazing across the globe. In Seoul, Istanbul, Auckland, New York, Paris, Zurich, and Los Angeles protesters are chanting the slogan of the 2022 revolutionary movement: “Women, Life, Freedom.” [1] 

The bravery of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini to stand up to the Iranian “morality...

“Look around you. Everyone you see shares a deep and terrible secret that no one ever talks about.”[1] This is how Gerald Loren Fishkin begins his book The Science of Shame. If trauma is essentially a loss of connection, perhaps shame is a force that not only causes but also maintains broken connections—with ourselves, with...

Dear D,

A friend recently told me about spanking their little girl, who is around your age. At one particular point in the story, I felt my throat constrict and I noticed a tingly feeling in the top of my head. Once alone, I played the scene over and over in my head.

“I asked her to pick up her clothes, and she said,...

We only remember so many of the millions of moments that make up our lives. Certain memories stick like Velcro, and all it takes is a particular angle of wind, a certain tone of voice, or a specific combination of smells, and we’re reliving that moment.

Dr. Ashish Ranpura says we remember “because the connections between our...