A Summer Full of Spirit

June 7, 2005

It has started for real - this amazing summer I have planned. Most
students at Columbia are doing their internships this summer or Greek
School this summer, but not me. No sir. I have this amazing fellowship
that gave me money and told me to create a summer project that I would
love and I have done just that - and I am SO excited for it.

It’s
all about spirituality. Perhaps this is a strange topic to be
passionate about, but not in my world. In my world it makes more sense
than sliced bread. I know spirituality gets thrown around a lot and
means all these different things depending on context (and that is part
of what excites me) but what I love about it is underneath all the
different definitions and uses there is this call for awareness and
attention- there is a sense that listening and paying attention is
important and I just think that is so key.

I know - a dork. But
I’m going to go ahead and claim it. I want to know more about how
people pay attention to what is sacred in the world - how they connect
to what is holy - how they make sense of their lives and the world. I
want to know if what we call spirituality has anything to do with our
theology of the Spirit (pneumatology). I want to know.

I want to
know because I find it interesting. I want to know because it has been
a huge part of my life - this connection with the holy and paying
attention to what is sacred. I want to know because I think a big part
of my call to ministry is a passion to help people find what is holy in
their lives and learn to pay attention to what is sacred around them.

So . . . here are all the really cool things I get to do this summer:

June
5-10: A class on Art and Spirituality at the Calvin Center outside of
Atlanta (lots of playing with crayons and paint and glue and stuff)

June 14-19: FTE conference in St. Louis

June 25-29: Home to Rochester to preach and get in all those drs. appts.

June 30-July 17: Studying the theology of the Spirit in Atlanta

July 18-22: A class on Spirituality and the Two-Halves of Life with Ronald Rolheiser at Boston College

July 24-August 7: Two seminars (on Sabbath and  Living out our faith) at Ghost Ranch

August 8-12: More theology of the Spirit in Atlanta

August 14-24: Scotland

August
29-September 7: To Washington and Idaho for vacation with Adam (and to
meet his family and such) before classes start on the 8th.

It’s gonna be good . . .

Posted in spirituality by Sarah