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Whitman's Self-Prescribed Sounds
No full textArgues Whitman’s journey is a spiritual attempt at expanding the boundaries of self, particularly as illustrated in “Song of Myself” as it contrasts to “Song of Songs.” Further contends Whitman’s poetic experimentation is inherent with anxiety and a prescriptive dialectic
The Hollywood Mafia
Get PDFAbstract only for thesis.The Hollywood Mafia is a novel-in-progress that focuses on one woman’s desire to redeem her family’s legacy by seeking revenge on a sect of the Italian Mafia, called The Six, who took out a hit on her father when she was a teenager. Alessandra Capella enlists the help of her younger sister, Luciana, to unravel and publically expose the most secretive and successful Mafia in the history of the United States.
Alessandra’s father was murdered before her eyes, and she seeks revenge with an eye-for-an-eye mentality by killing Joseph Messina the son of the Mafia boss who pulled the trigger on her father. The murder is a declaration of war against the Mafia, and she follows it with a list of demands that will cause the Mafia to choose between exposing themselves or risking the lives of those they hold most dear.
Jack Pennington, Head of Security at the Vegas casino where Alessandra killed Messina, leads a massive manhunt for Alessandra, but Jack isn’t the only person seeking answers. Messina and his friends, members of a group known as The Hollywood Mafia, are tabloid darlings, which causes his murder to make headlines around the world. Soon his death becomes fodder for entertainment blogs and gossip magazines, and the world watches as confidential and shocking information about the killing is exposed. In a time where the media and paparazzi control much of the way the world sees certain events, it is up to Jack protect the evidence and find the killer.
The novel takes a cinematic approach to storytelling with Alessandra, Luciana, Jack, The Six, and The Hollywood Mafia all serving as stars. Las Vegas, brimming with seduction and sin, co-stars and serves as a reminder that what happens in Vegas does not always stay in Vegas. As with any mafia story, the book explores motifs of family, power, greed, redemption, and retribution, but it does so from a female’s perspective in what has historically been a man’s world. Alessandra wants to turn that world upside down and utilizes all of her assets, some legal and some otherwise, to rise to power in the Mafia and to eventually become the first female Don
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CONTROVERSY OF KADHIS’ COURTS IN MAINLAND TANZANIA
Get PDFThis study analysises the demand for kadhis’ courts in Mainland Tanzania. The controversy of kadhis’ courts is creating conflicts and tensions between some Christians and Muslims and between some Muslims. The Muslim demand is complicated by the failure of the government to demonstrate its clear position on this matter. The controversy raises issues about constitutionalism, secularism, justice, and Christian-Muslim relations. Some Muslims in Tanzania want to include kadhis’ courts in the constitution; they want the operation of kadhis’ courts to be supported by government funds, the national chief kadhi to be appointed by the government, and the president to officially announce the establishment of these courts.
In support of this demand Muslims argue that kadhis’ courts are part of Muslim worship; these courts were in operation in Mainland Tanzania prior and during the colonial rule and were abolished after independence in 1963 by the government without consultation with Muslims; kadhis’ courts are in operation in some states in which Christianity is predominant; current civil courts have some English, Indian, and Christian elements that are irrelevant to Islam; Muslims are prohibited by their faith from presenting cases related to family matters in civil courts; kadhis’ courts will address historical injustices against Muslims by the government and Christians; Christians dominate social, political, and economic opportunities; kadhis’ courts will decrease immorality in society, unite Muslims, preserve Muslim beliefs, values, and identities; and advance development in Mainland Tanzania; and kadhis’ courts have distinctive features.
In reaction to the Muslim demand, Christians argue that the establishment of kadhis’ courts in Mainland Tanzania is against the current constitution, the Muslim demand is intended to Islamize the country, to eradicate Christian influence, to introduce corporal punishments, and to create employment among Muslims; the demand is influenced by terrorist groups of Al Shaabab and Boko Haram, and some Islamic states in which kadhis’ courts are operative and other Islamic extremist groups; the Muslim demand is motivated by religious prejudices, politic, and poor leadership of the government; and kadhis’ courts will violate human rights.
My major thesis for this study is that, given that Tanzania is a democratic secular state and signatory of the Universal Declaration Human Rights and African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, the current constitution should be amended to allow provisions for the establishment of other courts, including kadhis’ courts. Kadhis’ courts should deal with Muslim family matters and are to be consulted by Muslims on a voluntary basis. My support for the Muslim demand includes the inclusion of kadhis’ courts in the constitution, the appointment of the national chief kadhi by the government, and official announcement of the establishment of these courts by the President. Given that government funds for kadhis’ courts will cost all Tanzanians, I propose a national dialogue on this matter involving the government, representatives of all Muslim and Christian groups, other religious communities, and organizations.
My support for the Muslim demand is motivated by my understanding of the holistic nature of Islam, legal recognition of kadhis’ courts with government funds in Zanzibar (which is part of the United Republic of Tanzania), my interpretations of constitutionalism, secularism, justice, religious freedom, and human rights, and legal recognition of religious courts in secular states such as the United Kingdom, Kenya, and Uganda. My thesis does justice to all religious groups who want their courts to have legal recognition. In order to test my thesis I carried out field research (in Kigoma and Dar es Salaam) of which this study is a report. The term “kadhi” is used in this study to refer to a Muslim judge and kadhis’ courts are Islamic courts
Nearer God’s Heart: Church Gardening as a Christian Practice
Get PDFIn March of 2014, my parish broke ground for a church garden we called Shepherd Farm. We chose a 30’ x 90’ plot on the far side of the church building, visible from the road but not taking too much out of our five-acre property, surrounded it with a deer fence, and got to work. Eight to ten core volunteers gardened regularly throughout the spring, summer, and fall. It was not a big group, but was significant percentage of the parish: our average Sunday attendance that year was 65. According to the volunteer log book we kept on hand, another 40 or so people spent at least one hour each in the garden at some point during the season. By the end of October we had harvested 2,083 pounds of food, almost all of which was delivered to various hunger ministries. In our second season, in spite of more challenging weather conditions, we harvested slightly more: another 2,107 pounds of produce, also for the benefit of those in our community who are in need.
This project is made up of two parts. The creation and implementation of the garden itself is the first part; the three months spent planning and the following 14 months implementing the first vegetable garden in our parish history took up a sizeable portion of my time and energy as rector of Good Shepherd and taught me a great deal about parish dynamics and my own strengths and weaknesses as a parish priest. The second part is this thesis itself, a written record and analysis of what has been learned and what still merits further consideration.
In this thesis I will outline the story of the garden and analyze the impact of the garden on our parish through the lens of Christian practices. The first two years of Shepherd Farm were a resounding success, although it was not without its challenges, conflicts, and disappointments; documenting this process from concept to completion provides the skeleton of this thesis. Additionally I include some analysis of the process, including insights and questions that arise only in retrospect and with the added benefit of extensive reading done in the academic areas of agrarianism, religion and the environment, and spiritual practices. My research also includes the results of a parish survey and follow-up interviews conducted after the second season of the garden was complete.
The principal claim arising from this research and analysis is that caring for Shepherd Farm, our church garden, became a central practice of our congregation’s faith, forming and defining our community in positive and life-giving ways. This practice brought to the forefront of our common life several other important practices, especially discernment, hospitality, and what can broadly be called “community shaping.” Our experience suggests that other churches could have similar results: by approaching church gardening as a Christian practice, a congregation can find in the garden a place of formation and a catalyst for transformation, as well as experiencing growth in other practices in their common life. Given that we live in a context of great anxiety about the shrinking size of the church, of our denomination, and of individual congregations, our experience is also significant for other congregations because it shows that even a small parish can participate meaningfully in what is a growing and important movement, that is, the development of church-based farms and gardens.
It will be clear from the chapters that follow that in the implementation and analysis of the garden I utilized the “action-reflection-response” model, as opposed to working from the assumption that shared beliefs were necessary before any action could be taken. This approach is not unconcerned with issues of justice and sustainability, nor is it anti-intellectual or anti-theological. Rather, it is pragmatic in nature and is consistent with the meaning and purpose of Christian practices as defined by Craig Dystkra and Dorothy C. Bass: “Christian practices are the human activities in and through which people cooperate with God in addressing the needs of one another and creation.” In this approach I have also attended to the distinction between a “cosmological strategy” and a “pragmatic strategy” as defined by Willis Jenkins. I am especially persuaded by his distinctive understanding of the problem of Christianity and culture. He argues that
Christian social ethics arises from missional projects that bear and respond to the world’s problems as their own. Doing so, Christian ethics does not sanction industrial powers or submit to market relations; it rather opens those powers and relations to different uses by inventing ways to live faithfully within them. By bearing responsibility for emerging problems of human power, the church learns to sustain the practices that carry its faith […]. In other words, the church sustains its unique sociality precisely by taking seriously the world’s problems.
By no stretch of the imagination do I qualify as an ethicist, but I see in Jenkins’ argument strong support for the seriousness of this project and justification for our pragmatic approach. The garden at Good Shepherd is a clear example of a local church community choosing to “bear and respond” to the problem of hunger and food insecurity as our own (elsewhere Jenkins uses the term “wounds” for “problems,” which strikes me as especially apt). I believe this project will show that by “bearing responsibility” for this problem we have indeed learned “to sustain the practices that carry our faith.” And of course there is a circularity or complementarity to this dynamic: our church is learning to sustain these practices, in the face of our own incompetence and insufficiencies, while at the same time we are learning how profoundly the practices sustain us.
From the ground of lived experience and theological reflection, some preliminary claims about the spiritual benefits of church gardening will grow. I note that these claims can only be modest and contingent, which I believe is appropriate for the scope of this project and also inherent to the nature of parish ministry, where the story is always unfolding and rarely provides a straightforward trajectory. The foundational concern at all times will be to explore how our congregation has been formed and transformed by gardening, with a secondary focus on what this might suggest for other congregations interested in undertaking a similar journey. Spiritual growth is not easily tracked or quantified; it can, however, be glimpsed in stories and reflections. These stories and reflections are gleaned from my own experience and observation as well as from the surveys and interviews completed by parishioners.
What follows this brief introduction are four chapters and a conclusion. The first chapter explores the overall concept of Christian practices in much more depth than I attempt here in the introduction. The next three chapters each focus on a single practice; perhaps in an unconscious homage to the famed three-legged stool of Anglicanism, these chapters all begin with Scripture, move on to the realm of tradition (in the sense of how discernment, hospitality, and “community shaping” can be understood as spiritual practices within the Christian tradition), and then consider our own congregation’s experience with each practice. The project’s overall structure has a linear and chronological shape to it, as it follows the course of the Shepherd Farm garden from idea to implementation to growth and impact. This helps explain the focus on these three particular practices, when of course any number of practices could be shown to relate to church gardening in interesting and even important ways. Additionally, these practices—and therefore, to some degree, the chapters—are intertwined and overlapping. This gets to the very nature of practices—they are interrelated, each one supporting and influencing the other. As Dykstra and Bass put it, “In real life, it is very hard to separate the practices. They flow into one another, each one making a space for God’s active presence that then ripples out into other parts of life. […] Thus focusing on even a single practice can lead you into a new way of life.” It makes sense, therefore, that a process of discernment led our community to embrace gardening as a means of practicing hospitality, which in turn helped us to discern how much our community already valued and was practicing hospitality. Gardening then strengthened our hospitality “muscle” even more, which in turn led us to new opportunities to expand and shape our community. And so it goes, as the following chapters will illustrate
Lena in Lent and Other Stories
Get PDF“Lena in Lent and Other Stories,” a collection of eight pieces of short fiction, explores ideas of desire, agency, obligation, faith, isolation, and community.
The first four stories in the collection, the Lena stories, center on the life of a young woman as she struggles to navigate the waters of conflicting self-interests. The stories spotlight four episodes in one year of Lena’s life, from summer to spring, and her long awakening to the truths of where both her own agency and her own passivity have brought her.
“Mildred Corey” observes a day in the life of a seventy-something woman experiencing frustration and displacement in her later years, annoyed by the ever-presence of her retired husband, and preoccupied with her disappointing relationship with a mostly absent daughter. (Mildred is a minor character in “Lena in Lent,” the third Lena story, but “Mildred Corey” is roughly concurrent with “Lena in Summer.”)
“May Belle” is the story of a recently widowed young truck-stop waitress barely keeping it together to parent her young son as she grapples with grief, anger, isolation, and near poverty. When her son’s behavior at school begins to deteriorate, contributing to stresses at work, May Belle reaches a breaking point.
“Hershey” is a coming-of-age story about a girl who spends many idyllic summers with her grandparents in the country before her grandfather’s descent into mental illness and her own ascent into adolescence herald the end of the era.
“Drew Tyler,” the final piece in the collection, follows a twelve-year-old boy in his quest to replace his sister’s destroyed birthday cake, the latest casualty in his mother’s onslaught of “diabolical tricks.
Towards a Spiritual Formation Model of Clinical Pastoral Education
Get PDFClinical Pastoral Education (CPE) traditionally applies the disciplines of
psychology, education, and supervisory theory to raise into consciousness students’ inner
landscapes and help form them as persons and pastors. CPE supervisors are trained to
uncover students’ buried or hidden wounds and unconscious agendas, in order to help
them grow in self-awareness, maturity, and compassionate care. However, through years
of experience as a lay chaplain, professional hospice chaplain, CPE student, and
supervisor, I have noticed that traditional, psychology-based CPE ignores a dimension
and perhaps foundation of spiritual formation that could deepen the student’s interiority,
consciousness, and potential transformation.
This project’s goal is the creation, implementation and evaluation of a CPE
curriculum that incorporates an integral approach to CPE, incorporating spiritual
formation into the traditional CPE model. Previous models of CPE suspended attention to
the human relationship with the sacred, focusing almost exclusively on intra-psychic
drama and on what happens when the student relates to other people. The traditional
method has avoided intentionally addressing what happens when the student relates to
God. Within this dualistic, unnatural separation from the spiritual dimension, students
were listening for patients’ experience of the divine without intentionally attending to
their own religious experience, or exploring their own integral development. Only
pastors more in tune with their own religious experience, biases, fears, and blocks to
intimacy can truly listen for, notice, and compassionately tend to the religious experience,
struggles, and formation of others.
The project’s new curriculum intentionally integrates the dimensions of human
development that are already inherently integrated: the spiritual and psychological. One
ancient approach to human formation that has always emphasized the development of the
whole person can be found in Benedictine spirituality and the Rule of Benedict. Thus the
new curriculum incorporates the principles and practices of Benedictine spirituality into
the CPE process, while maintaining the integrity of the traditional CPE model and
standards. Reflecting on the principles and adopting a rule of life cultivates the students’
interior lives. Within a balance of contemplation and action, they become immersed in
humility and accept a lifelong process of conversion. They develop a sense of stability,
fidelity, and obedience as they face the struggles and challenges. Ultimately, as they learn
to appropriate their own religious experience, they develop into more integrated,
compassionate, and effective persons and pastors.
The project’s strategy encompasses planning and implementing a new CPE
curriculum infused with ongoing conversion based in the Paschal Mystery: life, death,
and resurrection. I have applied teachings and reflections based in part on the Rule of
Benedict. Dating back to the sixth century, Benedictine spirituality provides a point of
departure for other spiritualities. The Rule of Benedict emphasizes a life of balanced
prayer and action (ora et labora). While unapologetically Christian, the Rule reflects on
the process of formation in language that other religions may also appropriate for human
development.
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This new curriculum incorporates some components of the Community of Hope
(CoH) International’s Lay Pastoral Training Program. Developed by St. Luke’s Episcopal
Hospital in Houston, the CoH connects principles discussed in Sr. Joan Chittister’s book,
The Rule of Benedict: A Spirituality of the 21st Century, to aspects of pastoral care and
formation. However, by itself, the CoH’s spirituality-based curriculum lacks beneficial
clinical exercises that the traditional CPE model includes, such as verbatims, individual
supervision, and group processing.
In contrast, the current psychology-based CPE model lacks spiritual grounding
and a more universal, integrated and redemptive vision. In fact, this model seems
dualistic, creating a false division between spirituality and psychology. One formation
model without the other seems deficient, particularly for the training of ordained and
professional ministers. Therefore, this project integrates into CPE both the psychological
and spiritual dimensions, which I will argue are already inherently related. I will draw
upon the integrated models of Ken Wilbur and other developmental experts such as
James Hillman and Robert Kegan. I will demonstrate that incorporating an integrated
model of human development is a more effective approach for CPE.
After developing a new, integrated curriculum, I scheduled and implemented a
CPE unit using that curriculum over a span of nine months. The CPE group met one 10-
hour day per month at Baptist Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, then skyped or face-timed
in-between classes. Students made at least 300 hours of pastoral visits. The six students,
four of whom were Episcopal deacon postulants, responded favorably to the spiritual
formation emphasis. Demonstrating less resistance than traditional CPE students, the
class developed a receptivity and willingness to enter into a difficult process. They
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recognized that balanced practices of prayer, meditation, and action cultivated a keen
self-awareness and compassionate acceptance of themselves and, as a result, others.
Ultimately, with teachable hearts open to Christ-consciousness, and through deliberate
spiritual practices, they were receptive to the graces of transformation. They became
more humble, effective, and compassionate pastoral caregivers.
The six students, my supervisor, and I each wrote a final evaluation about the unit
and the individuals’ progress. The Diocese of Mississippi’s bishop and directors of the
A.C. Marble Institute for Theological Formation also offered feedback on the unit. The
evaluations and feedback indicate that the students developed a willingness to be
transformed and demonstrated personal and pastoral growth and commitment. They
experienced heightened awareness and receptivity to God’s presence and voice as
encountered in themselves, patients, CPE group, and others. The students enthusiastically
embraced and grasped connections between human spiritual formation, self-awareness,
pastoral care, and theology. They progressed in their ability to self-supervise.
Based on the results of this project, I plan to continue supervising the deacon and
bivocational priest candidates in the A.C. Marble Institute, as well as other ministry
students. I may eventually offer this curriculum to other Episcopal dioceses and
potentially to other CPE centers.Dr. Martin Smit
