REFLECTIONS
Reflections
Hope and Healing Amidst Deep Division Cherie Harder Wednesday, August 12, 2020 This year has brought dramatic and unforeseen changes and challenges to virtually every American. Assumptions, plans, and schedules have changed; industries have been upended, schools shuttered, churches closed, much of everyday interactions moved online. But amidst all the churn and change, one trend
Character and Culture Cherie Harder Wednesday, July 29, 2020 A month after graduating, I moved to DC to start work on Capitol Hill as a junior legislative aide. Over the next several years, I would work for a House Member and three Senators in a variety of capacities. Relatively quickly, I was struck by how the
Take Up and Read Cherie Harder Wednesday, July 15, 2020 One of the silver linings of this cloudy year is that the forced isolation and confinement of our once-flitting selves, unwelcome as it has been, has provoked new interest in and efforts at reading. While reading overall has been in steep decline in the country
Customs and Constitutions Cherie Harder Wednesday, July 1, 2020 In 1831, a young Frenchman named Alexis de Tocqueville visited America intending to study its penal system and provide a recommendation to his home country as to whether the US offered a worthwhile model to follow. But he was also personally curious about why the US
Crisis-Ready Leadership Cherie Harder Wednesday, June 24, 2020 "Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm." — Publilius Syrus These are troubled times. We simultaneously face a health crisis in the form of a global pandemic that has killed more Americans than citizens of any other country; an economic crisis in the form
The Weight of Words Cherie Harder Wednesday, June 17, 2020 Words are weighty things. The Bible begins with God speaking the world into existence, and culminates with the Word himself becoming flesh. The reader is cautioned that our words have the power to wound, poison, and destroy, as well as heal—“a word aptly spoken is