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
Wed 23 Apr 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Wendell Kimbrough (’07), Ali Phillips (’08), and Will Weir (’08)
Reflections on the Conference from three Academy Fellows
At this January conference you might have expected another fifteen-dollar guilt trip on how we’ve failed to serve the poor, but what these Fellows found was something a little different. Some new topics were part of the discussion—real estate development, racial reconciliation, and the arts—and a diverse group of people were in attendance. In light of this refreshing approach, new challenges also arise. How do we go beyond developing a fresh approach with different language and strive for a renewed heart?
Wed 23 Apr 2008 • Responses: 1 • by Josh Britton (’08)
“Here was a place that had not only given rise to jazz and jambalaya in the French Quarter but had sustained the Otts, the Joneses, and the Brittons in Livingston Parish—generations of my ancestors who had planted themselves in one place and worked hard to make it better. Aware of all this, I decided to leave.”
If I feel a sense of responsibility for any place in the world, it’s south Louisiana. I spent the first twenty-two years of my life there and I have been shaped by that place in more ways than I can count. Much of that shaping came from a dense network of family and friends. I went to college at LSU in Baton Rouge, just a short distance from the small town where I grew up amidst my extended family. Until I came to Maryland last August as a Trinity Forum Academy Fellow, the longest I had ever been away from home was two months.
It is perhaps unsurprising that much of my thinking and reading during my time at the Academy has concerned the notion of place—specifically, how relationships develop within the contours of shared places and how those places affect who we are and how we live. I began thinking seriously about place after hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit my state in the fall of 2005, as I was starting my senior year of college. The damage was a local and inescapable concern for residents of south Louisiana. After the storms, we couldn’t just change the channel or click a new link to escape the story. Even if the rest of the world moved on, we still had a devastated region and a dysfunctional major city to tend to.
Wed 23 Apr 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Malcolm Jeeves
Forward to Dr. David Norman’s Brain, Mind and Soul in the Theological Psychology of Donald MacKay, 1922–1987
The United States government named the 1990s the Decade of the Brain. The current decade has been labeled the Decade of the Mind. The media daily report exciting discoveries made by those studying the relation of mind and brain. But debates about the relation of mind and brain are not conveniently confined to cognitive neuroscientists and philosophers of mind. They spill over into the concerns of theologians, ethicists and those concerned with debates about how free we are to act and behave as we would choose.
For more than half a century the views of one neuroscientist/philosopher, the late Professor Donald MacKay, had a major influence on debates about mind and brain and soul and body. Donald MacKay’s views continue to influence discussions not only amongst philosophers of mind and brain, but also amongst philosophical theologians. This widespread influence calls for as clear a statement of the views that Donald MacKay had on a series of important issues at the interfaces of science and faith. This book provides it. David Norman has performed an invaluable service to scientists, philosophers, theologians and all those who take their Christian faith seriously.
Fri 16 Nov 2007 • Responses: 1 • by Anna and Josh Hayden
Anna Caruso Hayden, Class of 2004, and her husband Josh spent their summer vacation helping to train leaders in a region of Europe ravaged by centuries of conflict. “Other students remarked that they were eager to value everyone—except Serbs. At those moments we were reminded that without the transforming power of Jesus Christ, true change was impossible.”
When people asked us where we were going on vacation last summer and we responded, “Kosova,” most gave us a funny look and remarked dryly that it wasn’t the typical vacation destination.* They were right. A war-torn European province struggling for independence wasn’t exactly the beach. Yet this past July, we spent two weeks in the province of Kosova teaching a leadership workshop for Albanian college students. We were invited on the trip by a friend and colleague from Belmont University, never imagining that Kosova and the Albanian people were what God had in store for us this past summer.
Fri 16 Nov 2007 • Responses: 0 • by Miriam Moser
Each week, Academy fellows write journal entries about themes encountered in class and in their personal reflections. Fellow Miriam Moser shares her thoughts on the discomfort of “almost” as we live our lives on earth. “In the Greek language, two sorts of time are specified. Kairos is God’s time—the eternal, divine moment. Kronos is the time that we humans struggle through.”
During matins one morning, one of the fellows prayed that God would “rush through Windrush [our house] like a wind” and that his spirit would bring unity to our group. I thought about that twice. How would that actually appear? I have heard the terminology of the “spirit rushing through like a wind” many times. My entire Pentecostal heritage is based on the story of the upper room, a wind, tongues of fire and speaking in tongues. And so my idea of God being fully present always meant that everyone would be singing worship songs and praying and speaking in tongues every hour of the day and night. But this is obviously wrong. We must sleep sometime. If we spoke in tongues for the sixteen waking hours a day, our voices would go hoarse. Pity the fingers of the guitar-playing worship leader!
Fri 16 Nov 2007 • Responses: 0 • by Mike Metzger
Mike Metzger, president of The Clapham Institute, works to help people and organizations advance faith-centered cultural reform. In this essay, he discusses the need to view worship, art, work, service, and ministry as part of the same “fabric.” “Albert Einstein reminded us that we cannot solve a problem in the framework that created it. This is why efforts to ‘integrate faith and work’ generally fail.”
Imagine this.
Here’s an easy way to see the disconnect between Sunday and Monday. Ask a friend to draw the first five images that come to mind when he or she hears these words: worship, work, ministry, the arts and service. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, we now have five thousand words depicting the disconnect. We also have a clearer picture as to why efforts to “integrate faith and work” generally fail.
Wed 25 Jul 2007 • Responses: 0 • by Mary Catherine Caldwell
The artist comments on the artwork featured in the July Conversations newsletter, with larger versions of each work.
Mary Catherine Caldwell (’07) created these works of art as part of her final project for the Academy.
Click on each image to view a larger version in a new browser window.
Images copyright © 2007 Mary Catherine Caldwell. Used by permission.
Tue 24 Jul 2007 • Responses: 0 • by Aimee Beach
Our former assistant director of residential life reflects on her time at the Academy in this meditation written earlier this spring. “On Graduation Day I will not graduate, but I will pass through some sort of ending stage and leave the lodge that night with butterflies in my stomach, tears in my eyes, and a longing to look one more time around the dining room table with the ‘family’ filling every seat.”
I just finished reading Marilynne Robinson’s book, Housekeeping. I’ve been sneaking a few pages at a time all week and finally slipped away into the story on this peaceful, sunny Saturday until I reached the end. It seemed very appropriate to turn over and enter a dream state afterwards. I had to pause, to hold the emotions in their tender womb a bit longer.
