AlumniArticles from TF Academy Alumni
Tue 19 Jan 2010 • Responses: 0 • by Mindy Hsieh (Academy Class of 2010)
A selection from the Research Portfolio of Mindy Hsieh (’10)
What Is Wild and Strange
And things conspire to tell us nothing,
half in shame, perhaps, half in unspoken hope.
—Rilke
When she moves,
she dulls her way through,
arms crossed against
standing still, receiving;
unfolded, she admits all
our folly—
i.
Hoping to show how beauty grows,
her teacher hands out seeds
and assigns them to plant bluebonnets;
she learns to take the wild
and plant it in something still
and contained.
ii.
When it is wild out, she thinks of you
walking away, with your thumbs tucked
along the straps of your pack;
it becomes May in the city
—mid-black and warm outside,
like some hot spring campers hike
to find. Her hands still
know how she kept your jaw,
from your ears to the square
of your chin; she knows how you sealed
the line of her forehead,
blessing a memory of them: keep-me-here,
or in youth, never-know-anything-sweeter.
iii.
The house diagonal is made
of deep-fire bricks. We all know
she is mad again; his cheek is laid flat
against the front door and his palms
slap softly against the wood.
The neighbors’ pull up small corners
of curtains, visiting them with their eyes,
leaving sympathy behind
the heaviness of their own drapes.
iv.
We wait
until rays drift far
enough below,
to stare boldly
into the strip
of dropping light.
The sharpness of Beauty
shadows here;
it is too much to know
alone, in the wild of day.
Tue 19 Jan 2010 • Responses: 0 • by Miriam Moser (Academy Class of 2008)
A Reflection on Integrity Weekend 2010: Responsible to Risk
I was squeezed into Integrity Weekend at the last minute. It was kind of like calling home to say I’d show up for Thanksgiving after all, and finding out all the couches had already been claimed, so I would have to sleep under the kitchen table. It’s my own fault for deciding to attend at the last minute. I live in Boston. After being swept away by the celebratory spirit of December, the sugar plums dissipated, and I realized it wasn’t dried fruit dancing above my head, it was icicles. What I needed was a trip south. Anyhow, in true Academy form, a nice bed was conjured up, squeezing was accomplished, and I jumped on a flight out of town, only to be greeted by a record amount of Maryland snow.
Despite the New England-worthy weather, my January doldrums began to dissipate from the very first meal. I get paid to cook every day, and I work alone. Working alone means falling into ruts; it is quite difficult to drag oneself out of ruts. Fellow Laura Ruth Venable was in charge of culinary operations for the weekend, and I jumped in the kitchen that first meal to lend my moderate knife skills. The ruts were all smoothed over in one fell swoop. “I’m making an upscale chicken pot pie,” she explained. It involved an assortment of fresh-looking veggies and an elaborately presented puff pastry. Elizabeth LeRoy was busy working on ‘seven minute frosting’ which took a heck of a lot longer than seven minutes and turned out to be the most deliciously light frosting I’ve ever tasted. My gastronomically attuned neurons were firing faster than a third-grader with a rubber band gun.
After lingering at dinner for a while, we moved in to hear the first session by Michael Lindsay. He discussed ten ways which people use power. Power is a terribly abstract word, but he grounded every point with a concrete example, which lent an incredible amount of clarity. (Dr. Lindsay uses enough concrete examples to build a military base.) All of his stories were incredibly helpful as they gave us very practical ways of viewing our lives and interactions with others in view of the implicit power we all have.
I don’t think I truly appreciated the way Integrity Weekend is set up while I was a Fellow. As a participant, you sit through some very thought-provoking sessions and then you have a break in which you inevitably begin talking about the thoughts that were provoked with whatever random stranger has the misfortune to be standing next to you. It’s small enough that no one is really random and there are few strangers left after the day. Most places when thrown into a group like this, you aren’t also thrown fodder for conversation.
The next morning we heard the keynote session from Andy Crouch. He discussed our discomfort with discussions of power – we tend to refer to it with more positive names such as “leadership” and “influence,” but in the end, we all have power and we all must find a way to manage it. You cannot possess power without it possessing you, to a certain extent. But power is not inherently evil. God has the power to create, power to be fruitful – the world starts off with power that is thoroughly positive, the power to be fruitful is shared with all of creation. We can confront the problems of power by allowing it to be transparent, surrounding ourselves with others who will speak truth, and through worship. As Andy reminded us, we do not have the power to raise the dead.
We broke into discussion groups that afternoon, and a panel discussion in the evening gave us additional time to work through questions of power. But they are too big for one weekend – I’m still mulling them over. I suppose we all will be in various states of mulling for the rest of our lives, as power continues to appear in new forms.
The power of conversation and community was both the form and content of the weekend. In all of our discussions lay the implicit belief that power, and knowledge of power, are neither implicitly good nor evil. We can imagine a world where power is not flaunted, hoarded or otherwise abused, a world where power is used only creatively and never destructively. But we can only maintain a balanced, constructive power when surrounded by others. And that, for me is what the Trinity Forum Academy is all about – re-imagining the world through the power of community.
Tue 19 Jan 2010 • Responses: 0 • by James Hall (Academy Fellow, Class of 2010)
A Reflection on Integrity Weekend 2010: Responsible to Risk
I was squeezed into Integrity Weekend at the last minute. It was kind of like calling home to say I’d show up for Thanksgiving after all, and finding out all the couches had already been claimed, so I would have to sleep under the kitchen table. It’s my own fault for deciding to attend at the last minute. I live in Boston. After being swept away by the celebratory spirit of December, the sugar plums dissipated, and I realized it wasn’t dried fruit dancing above my head, it was icicles. What I needed was a trip south. Anyhow, in true Academy form, a nice bed was conjured up, squeezing was accomplished, and I jumped on a flight out of town, only to be greeted by a record amount of Maryland snow.
Despite the New England-worthy weather, my January doldrums began to dissipate from the very first meal. I get paid to cook every day, and I work alone. Working alone means falling into ruts; it is quite difficult to drag oneself out of ruts. Fellow Laura Ruth Venable was in charge of culinary operations for the weekend, and I jumped in the kitchen that first meal to lend my moderate knife skills. The ruts were all smoothed over in one fell swoop. “I’m making an upscale chicken pot pie,” she explained. It involved an assortment of fresh-looking veggies and an elaborately presented puff pastry. Elizabeth LeRoy was busy working on ‘seven minute frosting’ which took a heck of a lot longer than seven minutes and turned out to be the most deliciously light frosting I’ve ever tasted. My gastronomically attuned neurons were firing faster than a third-grader with a rubber band gun.
After lingering at dinner for a while, we moved in to hear the first session by Michael Lindsay. He discussed ten ways which people use power. Power is a terribly abstract word, but he grounded every point with a concrete example, which lent an incredible amount of clarity. (Dr. Lindsay uses enough concrete examples to build a military base.) All of his stories were incredibly helpful as they gave us very practical ways of viewing our lives and interactions with others in view of the implicit power we all have.
I don’t think I truly appreciated the way Integrity Weekend is set up while I was a Fellow. As a participant, you sit through some very thought-provoking sessions and then you have a break in which you inevitably begin talking about the thoughts that were provoked with whatever random stranger has the misfortune to be standing next to you. It’s small enough that no one is really random and there are few strangers left after the day. Most places when thrown into a group like this, you aren’t also thrown fodder for conversation.
The next morning we heard the keynote session from Andy Crouch. He discussed our discomfort with discussions of power – we tend to refer to it with more positive names such as “leadership” and “influence,” but in the end, we all have power and we all must find a way to manage it. You cannot possess power without it possessing you, to a certain extent. But power is not inherently evil. God has the power to create, power to be fruitful – the world starts off with power that is thoroughly positive, the power to be fruitful is shared with all of creation. We can confront the problems of power by allowing it to be transparent, surrounding ourselves with others who will speak truth, and through worship. As Andy reminded us, we do not have the power to raise the dead.
We broke into discussion groups that afternoon, and a panel discussion in the evening gave us additional time to work through questions of power. But they are too big for one weekend – I’m still mulling them over. I suppose we all will be in various states of mulling for the rest of our lives, as power continues to appear in new forms.
The power of conversation and community was both the form and content of the weekend. In all of our discussions lay the implicit belief that power, and knowledge of power, are neither implicitly good nor evil. We can imagine a world where power is not flaunted, hoarded or otherwise abused, a world where power is used only creatively and never destructively. But we can only maintain a balanced, constructive power when surrounded by others. And that, for me is what the Trinity Forum Academy is all about – re-imagining the world through the power of community.
everal months into our year at the Trinity Forum Academy, the Fellows have more or less adjusted to the rhythm of life at Osprey Point. Receiving crash courses in commercial cooking and cleaning, meeting our three faculty members, and adjusting to our household duties at Windrush, we are moving around the Point as people who know what they’re doing (or at least think they do). As we meet the challenges of a reorganized curriculum, which combines adjusted staff roles with unprecedented collaboration from visiting faculty, a guiding principle for the Fellows has been improvisation: the spur-of-the-moment integration of numerous stimuli into a meaningful whole.
To those of us hailing from the world’s cultural capitals, Osprey Point can truly seem to be, as the Germans put it, am Ende der Welt (that is, the End of the World). Though each of us will be steeped in literature and culture this year through ambitious reading assignments, opportunities to experience performing arts of an equally high caliber will be few and far between. Hence our excitement in discovering that Monty Alexander, the world-renowned Jamaican jazz pianist and professing believer, would be performing at the Avalon Theatre in Easton, just a half-hour drive from our new home. Thanks to the generosity of a Friend of the Academy, the Fellows of the class of 2010 were able to attend.
The Avalon Theatre, a one-time cinema that still bears the Art Deco facelift it received in 1934, seats only 380. Jazz music is meant for an intimacy which cannot be experienced in the cavernous halls and sprawling amphitheaters defining much of the summer music festival experience. Fortunately, The Avalon possesses the right mixture of size and acoustical warmth to keep the listening experience authentic.
I heard Alexander perform in 2006 at Vienna’s Porgy & Bess with the German HR Big Band—a barely memorable performance that tried too hard to compose around Alexander’s improvisations. Consequently, my hopes for the concert at the Avalon were modest. Given these expectations, it is no exaggeration when I say that Alexander’s trio blew me away. Alexander expressed himself in a fluent blend of stride, blues, and bebop languages, quoting themes from the jazz canon with the frequency and conviction that characterizes the most experienced giants of the idiom. The highlight of the concert, however, was not the virtuosity of any one musician, nor the group’s seamless interaction, but the overwhelming sense of shalom emanating from Alexander’s presence on stage. One couldn’t help but feel empathy for the emotion displayed on his face and the passion that he coaxed, pushed, and sometimes pounded out of the piano.
As Alexander progressed through the program of jazz standards and original compositions, I realized that this was probably the most Christian jazz concert I had ever attended. The further he got into the program, the more deeply the influence of Gospel seeped into his playing. By the end of the concert, Alexander was throwing in renditions of such songs as Duke Ellington’s Come Sunday and Julia Ward Howe’s The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The centerpiece of the event was Alexander’s original composition, Hope, a ballad of surprising harmonic crunch that makes a gradual thematic shift from despair to hope over 10 minutes of composed and improvised material.
The nature of Christian leadership in this type of music is thought provoking; by moving fluidly in and out of Gospel styles, Alexander included his trio members, who are likely not religiously inclined, in creating hymns of praise and thanksgiving. Imagine setting a Bible before an unbeliever and not only hearing him read with fluency, but with deep conviction and love for the language. This is one of the joys of the Christian jazz band leader: to set a stylistic trajectory that moves collaborator and audience member alike toward the beauty of the Gospel.
For those of us grappling with the incorporation of seemingly disparate elements of theology, philosophy, and applied disciplines, there is much to be learned from Monty Alexander. Throughout the night at the Avalon, he deftly blended jazz languages, unified the diverse voices of fellow musicians into cohesive musical statements, and displayed a palpable joy, effortlessness, and gratitude. At the end of the concert, the question on many audience members’ minds was, “How much of that was improvised?” Indeed, Alexander’s passion seemed too genuine to be premeditated, yet too excellent and structured to be improvised. This spontaneous, exuberant precision is a posture to which any Christian leader can aspire.
Fri 17 Jul 2009 • Responses: 0 • by Will Weir (Academy Class of 2008)
“Find Your Way Home as a whole is an album that can deliver some peace and calm into a noisy life. Because even when he rocks, Wendell’s thoughts are clear and his clarity is convicting.”
Free MP3 Download: The Ballad of Freida the Goose
Purchase “Find Your Way Home”
Find Your Way Home, the first release from this Southern poet exiled to DC, reveals Wendell Kimbrough to be a trustworthy and capable songwriter with an ability to be simultaneously personal and prophetic. Stylistically nestled somewhere between James Taylor and Cat Stephens (and occasionally The Temptations), Wendell Kimbrough’s melodic instrumentation and compelling composition form a fitting vehicle for his insightful lyricism.
In a musical climate often plagued by melodrama and sentimentality, Wendell adds to the acoustic singer-songwriter role just the right touch of playfulness to lighten up even the most poignant ideas. Take, for instance, the fourth track, “The Ballad of Freida the Goose.” When was the last time waterfowl brought you close to tears? Not recently? Well, Freida just might. Because between a high-strung acoustic and some tasteful piano, Wendell gets it right: Freida, all of us know how you feel /We’ve been hurt, dear, we’ve been hungry in search of a meal. And the Academy—the backdrop for much of this album—is certainly an intense setting where we have all come to those realizations and seen wounds exposed and healed, God-willing. One’s tenure of community life during Trinity Forum Academy can be a spiritual and emotional pressure cooker, and a lot of well-kept secrets can surface where you wouldn’t expect, not least the secrets you keep from yourself. The Academy’s nine months and tight quarters are enough to wear down pretenses and exhaust resources of forced kindness, and Wendell, through Freida, describes this correctly. At the end of the day, when we’ve seen each other’s dirty laundry, we have to decide whether or not we’re going to follow Christ into that mess or gloss it over and accept only the prettiest portraits of each other. In this beautiful apostrophe to the lonely goose, Wendell explores the idolatry of the ideal over the experience of the real and concludes, with the lyrics of the album’s title, Freida, find your way home / It might not be perfect, but it’s better than being alone.
While much of Wendell’s folk eloquence follows Frieda’s pursuit of a sense of home, namely in the haunting “Come Back Home,” the music itself often tells a different story. Find Your Way Home certainly has its range of genres, but whether it’s folk or rock or Wendell’s very own acoustic Motown (surely he’s a pioneer here), he moves with distinct comfort and ability. In one highlight, “Sweet Virginia,” the beautiful interplay of acoustic, piano, accordion, and violin flows smoothly behind Wendell’s straightforward vocals. My route from the friendly South to frenetic DC has not been too different from my good friend Wendell’s, and this song perfectly captures the longing for old friends and the hunger for stillness that a city like this can produce. The music itself seems to deliver the very thing the song pines for: Give me a moment to begin to see my place / I need your landscapes for my rural mind / Give me a respite, give me some time.
In fact, Find Your Way Home as a whole is an album that can deliver some peace and calm into a noisy life. Because even when he rocks, Wendell’s thoughts are clear and his clarity is convicting. Find Your Way Home shines as the first effort from this promising artist, and his further projects promise to be, like this one, filled with thoughtful, endearing songs from a truly talented songwriter. Wendell Kimbrough is one musician well worth our attention.
Thu 16 Jul 2009 • Responses: 1 • by Katie Roland (Academy Class of 2003)
“Loaning money and borrowing it is not a simple, mechanical transaction. Innate human values of trust and fairness enable the system to work, giving people the faith to make loans with the expectation that they will be paid back…The transaction is relational as well as monetary.”
We made our way out of Phnom Phen, traveling along a dusty dirt road until the chaos of the city disappeared behind us. The shoulders of the country roads outside Phnom Phen were completely covered by trash, and I noticed a dog looking for food that would not be found, its bones poking out from under a sparse blanket of fur. As we traveled farther down the road, we came upon small tin shacks, set inches apart from each other. They seemed like they would tip at the slightest breeze, and yet these shacks provided much-needed shelter for dozens of children and their families.
Thu 16 Jul 2009 • Responses: 1 • by Joseph Sherrard (Academy Class of 2004)
“The family we come home to, the spouse we wake up next to, the communities we belong to—none of these offer a panacea for the feeling of loneliness…Loneliness is in many ways a defining trait of modernity, and perhaps no one is more vulnerable to its effects than the type of leader The Trinity Forum aims to form and empower.”
There’s a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn’t really expect to find it, either.
- Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
On my third Sunday as a newly minted associate pastor in Mississippi, I stood behind the Lord’s Table, preparing to preside over the sacrament for the first time. As the congregation sang “Let Us Break Bread Together” and I fumbled through my Bible, trying to find the words of institution in 1 Corinthians, I felt one overwhelming and distinct thing: loneliness.
Fri 05 Dec 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Jamin Brophy-Warren (Academy Class of 2006) and Amy Chozick
Link to story from The Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2008
Fri 05 Dec 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Amin Aminfar (Academy Class of 2003)
“The relationship between lawyer and client constructed by the rules of legal ethics does not contain, therefore, an absolute agreement that the lawyer will never betray the client, just that the lawyer is prepared to accept the wrath of the client (and subsequent wrath of the profession) should the lawyer make the choice to betray.”
Amin Aminfar is a 2003 graduate of the Trinity Forum Academy. Following the Academy, Amin completed a dual-degree program in theology and law at Duke University, and currently serves as a lawyer with the US Department of Justice in Washington, DC. The views expressed in this essay do not reflect those of the US Department of Justice or the US Federal Government.
Can an ethical lawyer be a moral person? In popular American sentiment, the suggestion that a lawyer may be moral is virtually a non sequitur. To the guild of lawyers, being ethical, that is, obeying the rules of professional conduct that guide the practice of law, is a profoundly moral task. Both of these responses elide a basic truth: the interface between legal ethics and moral responsibility is fraught with choices that threaten both.
Mon 15 Sep 2008 • Responses: 1 • by Sorcha Brophy-Warren (Academy Class of 2006)
The last year of economic upheaval in the US has proved unfortunately fortunate timing for researchers working on the topic of personal debt. Frightened by the subprime mortgage debacle, rising fuel prices, and usurious lending practices in the headlines, everyone is ready for some insight into the crisis of overindebtedness.
A 2006 graduate of the Trinity Forum Academy, Sorcha is currently a sociology PhD student at Yale University. She lives in New Haven, CT and Brooklyn, New York.
“It was easier not to look at them,” a guest meekly explained about her four-year collection of unopened (and unpaid) bills on a 2006 Oprah mini-series. The five-part series, “The Debt Diet” follows the lives of three families struggling with overwhelming amounts of personal debt. Each family is paired with one of three “Debt Diet Experts” – these financial planners are charged with helping them ‘trim the fat’ off their spending, get out of debt, and turn their lives around.
Mon 15 Sep 2008 • Responses: 0 • by TF Academy Staff
Each year the Trinity Forum Academy grants twelve outstanding young leaders a full graduate Fellowship to study, live and serve for nine months at Osprey Point. The Fellows are selected based on their proven academic success, demonstrated leadership ability, eagerness to learn, willingness to serve, and sincerity in following Christ.
Back: Drew Cleveland, Jon Skowera, Jake Thomsen, Kyle Hamilton, Adam Harris, Trevor Scott
Front: Jordan Lukianuk, Teresa Roe, Emily Parsons, Jenn Harris, Kateyln Scott, Hannah Stearns
Gastro Neurons and the Power of Community
Review of Wendell Kimbrough’s Album “Find Your Way Home”
The Relational Nature of Debt and Credit
“Learning to Laugh at Obama” from The Wall Street Journal
A Mandate for Human Rights Activism
Michael Clayton, Thomas More, and the Duty of a Christian Lawyer
