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Meditations on Matter and Loneliness
No full textWhat people consciously or tacitly believe about matter, that which constitutes the world of things, dramatically affects how we feel we belong to the cosmos. By learning to be playful with our concepts and perceptions, we can discover a form of spiritual care that can be a balm to loneliness and bring about flexibility and belonging—as forms of spiritual nourishment.
In the wake of the loneliness crisis, this piece explores how relationship with the world of matter affects loneliness and sense of belonging. It proposes that, like a poet, we can learn to be accompanied by tulips in a vase or rain falling on the roof when our perception of matter becomes creative and flexible. Through fragments and collage—personal narrative, lyrical non-fiction, quotes, poetry, and meditative practices—this piece offers lonely folks ways to inhabit a playfully re-enchanted cosmos.Author's Origina
Ride Dedications: Caring for Memories and Ritual Transformation on the World's Longest Charity Bike Ride
No full textAuthor's Origina
Judicial Bias and Religious Assumptions in U.S. Asylum Adjudication
No full textThis paper examines how religious and cultural assumptions held by immigration judges in the United States can profoundly influence the adjudication of asylum claims. Through detailed analysis of three appellate cases—Yan v. Gonzales, Pavlova v. INS, and Fiadjoe v. Attorney General—the study reveals how judicial decisions are often shaped by unconscious biases rooted in American religious norms and colonialist understandings of non-Western traditions. These biases distort the evaluation of asylum criteria, leading to unjust denials. The paper further explores the historical and ideological roots of these assumptions in U.S. immigration law and proposes concrete legal strategies—including expert testimony and culturally informed legal advocacy—to counteract bias and promote more equitable asylum adjudication.Author's Origina
Dancing with the Divine: Towards a Hermeneutic of Mystery
No full textThis thesis explores the limitations of language in expressing the Divine and proposes a hermeneutic of mystery grounded in Narrative Theology and midrashic imagination. Drawing on the work of theologians, philosophers, and literary scholars—including Alister McGrath, Iain McGilchrist, Herbert McCabe, and Robert Alter—it argues that the literary and narrative dimensions of Scripture are not mere aesthetic choices, but vital theological tools for approaching the ineffable. Through the lens of Narrative Theology, the paper contends that stories, metaphors, and parables offer a more faithful means of engaging transcendent truth than abstract doctrines alone. Mystery, far from being a hindrance, is framed as a necessary component of faith, inviting humility, communal interpretation, and spiritual transformation. The thesis culminates in a creative act of midrash, giving voice to marginalized women in the biblical narrative through poetry. These reimaginings serve as theological responses to the silences in Scripture, modeling a faithful wrestle with the Word that is both critical and devotional. In doing so, this work offers a vision of theology as a dynamic, imaginative, and participatory dance with the Divine.Author's Origina
A Modern Saint Francis Florilegium for the Morally Injured Fools Who Want to Stay in the World
No full textThis zine of short essays, collages, and erasure poetry stitches together representations of Saint Francis with texts like Hospicing Modernity by decolonial scholar Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti in order to explore some of the moral dynamics of modern living. Rather than claim to describe a historical Francis, instead this “modern florilegium” attempts to reconstruct a Francis who speaks to us as a companion in troubled times; as a patron saint of moral injury and as a willfully foolish figure. This Francis, “my” Francis, is one who troubles and complicates the desire to “leave the world,” as much as he insists we find ways to know, feel, and enact new ways of living.Author's Origina
The Conflict of Faith and Love: A Comparative Study of Feuerbach and Kierkegaard
No full textThis thesis examines the apparent contradiction between faith and love in Christian theology by placing Ludwig Feuerbach and Søren Kierkegaard into direct conversation. It begins with Feuerbach's critique in The Essence of Christianity, especially focusing on the chapter on the contradiction between faith and love, which argues that Christian faith constructs an exclusive framework that distorts love into a tool for conditionality. Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling introduces how he understands faith under the term “teleological suspension of the ethical.” In this framework, faith transcends human moral norms that impose the sacrifice of the ethical for the sake of the ultimate duty to God, grounded in faith. On the other hand, Kierkegaard's Works of Love describes how he comprehends faith. He reframes love as an unconditional ethical obligation grounded in divine command that surpasses exclusive love and partiality, which contradicts Feuerbach and Kierkegaard's own authorship.
Through close textual analysis, this study investigates how Kierkegaard's understanding of faith and love engages Feuerbach's concerns, especially the tension between religious exclusivity and ethical universality. The thesis argues that although Kierkegaard shares Feuerbach's critique of the precedence of faith over ethical love, he ultimately reconfigures ethics through faith, not by suspending or neglecting ethics, but by grounding it theologically.
Nevertheless, this solution is not without complications. While Kierkegaard offers a profound theological reconfiguration of ethical love, his account remains bound within a Christian framework. As such, it may not fully resolve Feuerbach's charge that faith distorts love through exclusion. This thesis thus concludes not with a resolution, but with a recognition: that Kierkegaard's response, though compelling, may still contain the very seeds of the exclusivist love Feuerbach critiques: a tension that underscores the ongoing challenge of reconciling faith with universal ethics.Author's Origina
See My Hands, See My Side: A collection of Rituals, Liturgies, and Poems for Clerical Abuse Victims/Survivors.
No full textThis thesis interrogates the Clerical Abuse crisis in the Catholic Church from the positionally of an adult, female survivor. This thesis offers a commentary on the theology of the priesthood and the ways in which systemically, the church's structure is such that it enables abuse when priests choose to transgress boundaries. This collection reimagines what a relationship with the divine and divine practice looks like in the aftermath of abuse. Foundational to this collection is the work of feminist theologians and trauma theorists. Beginning from the embodied experience of living in a clerically abused body, this thesis is comprised of four sections that grapple with abuse and imagine a way forward. From reimagined Catholic liturgies to poems to blessings, this thesis is situated in a practical theological framework, commenting on the relationship between clerically abused bodies, sacramentality, and the institutional church.Author's Origina
Description Changes in Architecture: Identity Rules in Shape Grammars and Multiplicity in Design Datasets
No full textThis paper argues that changes or shifts in descriptions of architectural objects or elements have played a critical role in advancing architectural design across history. Description changes are possible when the elements are amenable to a multiplicity of interpretation, to shifts in their structural configuration, appearance, or stylistic meaning. An original compilation of examples is presented that illustrates such descriptive changes across history. These range from the formation of the Doric order to Romanesque, Gothic, Modern and Postmodern architecture. These descriptive changes are shown to have stimulated important generative processes, from forming the triglyph to crafting a Gothic pinnacle or spatially and structurally organizing Terragni's Danteum. The diversity of the examples demonstrates the relevance of descriptive change to all aspects of architecture: from purely structural to purely ornamental.
"Description changes" are represented as rule-based computational processes guided by identity rules, a class of shape rules developed within the design computing theory area of shape grammars. The compilation of the examples illustrates how visual calculating with identity rules can be applied to real architectural contexts. Due to the rising interest in data-driven machine learning, whether for classification or for generative modeling, current architectural design discourse often revolves around a need for creating digital datasets that statically represent a record of architectural knowledge (e.g., plans, three-dimensional geometries, building component libraries). By raising the importance of description changes that have characterized architectural innovation, this paper argues for adopting a new lens in the representation of architectural knowledge in data, namely, one that embraces the possibility and need for changes in descriptions of architectural elements and a multiplicity in their meanings.Computer ScienceHistory of Art and ArchitectureVersion of Recor
Water Hammer Phenomenon in Coronary Arteries: Scientific Basis for Diagnostic and Predictive Modeling with Acoustic Action Mapping
No full textBackground: In the study of coronary artery disease, the mechanisms underlying atherosclerosis initiation and progression or regression remain incompletely understood. Our research conceptualized the cardiovascular system as an integrated network of pumps and pipes, advocating for a paradigm shift from static imaging of coronary stenosis to dynamic assessments of coronary flow. Further review of fluid mechanics highlighted the water hammer phenomenon as a compelling analog for processes in coronary arteries. Methods: In this review, the analytical methodology employed a comprehensive, multifaceted approach that incorporated a review of fluid mechanics principles, in vitro acoustic experimentation, frame-by-frame visual angiographic assessments of in vivo coronary flow, and an artificial intelligence (AI) protocol designed to analyze the water hammer phenomenon within an acoustic framework. In the analysis of coronary flow, the angiograms were selected from patients with unstable angina if they had previously undergone one or more coronary angiograms, allowing for a longitudinal comparison of dynamic flow and phenomena. Results: The acoustic investigations pinpointed pockets of contrast concentrations, which might correspond to compression and rarefaction zones. Compression antinodes were correlated to severe stenosis, due to rapid shifts from low-pressure diastolic flow to high-pressure systolic surges, resulting in intimal injury. Rarefaction antinodes were correlated with milder lesions, due to de-escalating transitions from high systolic pressure to lower diastolic pressure. The areas of nodes remained without lesions. Based on the locations of antinodes and nodes, a coronary acoustic action map was constructed, enabling the identification of existing lesions, forecasting the progression of current lesions, and predicting the development of future lesions. Conclusions: The results suggested that intimal injury was likely induced by acoustic retrograde pressure waves from the water hammer phenomenon and developed new lesions at specifically exact locations.Version of Recor
Collagen Scaffold Viscoelasticity Regulates Muscle Cell Phenotype
No full textCurrent biomaterial strategies are typically unable to return skeletal muscle to pre-injury function following damage, resulting in permanent loss of muscle function. Recently, there has been a growing appreciation for the role of matrix viscoelasticity in regenerative processes, and here we address the hypothesis that changes in matrix viscoelasticity regulate muscle cell function. Using norbornene-modified type I collagen hydrogels with a tetrazine-based crosslinker, it is found that myoblast spreading, proliferation, and differentiation are improved on and within slow-relaxing hydrogels. However, satellite cell stemness is maintained only with soft, fast-relaxing hydrogels. This indicates that there is a direct link between the viscoelasticity of collagen-based substrates and muscle cell phenotype in vitro. Together, these studies further the understanding of the role of tissue mechanical properties in directing muscle cell function and provide a tool for guiding specific behaviors necessary for muscle regeneration.BioengineeringAuthor's Origina