Spiritual Practice

Lacy Clark Ellman explores Sabbath as an essential practice that connects us with the holy in the midst of day-to-day work.

Brittany Deininger offers a ritual for waking that is helping her learn how to remain close to herself as she begins each new day.

As we near the end of the Lenten season, here’s a roundup of a few of the resources that are helping ground us in this season. May they allow you to pause, breathe, and feel the movement and hope of new life—even long after Easter Sunday has passed.

As we near the end of our Lenten journey, Dr. J. Derek McNeil, Senior Vice President of Academics, reminds us that the challenges of the wilderness are part of the quest toward transformation and the call to collective healing.

Beau Denton writes about the Lenten invitation to wait in the wilderness without looking for a quick, shallow fix—an invitation to the kind of healing that only comes when we witness and acknowledge each other’s pain.

For the first minisode of the text.soul.culture podcast, we wandered our building to ask faculty, staff, students, and alumni a simple question: What does the season of Lent mean to you?

Brittany Deininger turns to the wisdom of pilgrims and scholars as she writes about “the art of beginning” and the beauty of starting a new journey.

“Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”—Luke 2:10 That original “Silent Night” celebrated in song was not easy to secure. The Holy Mother was a pregnant teen on the move. Mary and Joseph had to deal with an oppressive, occupying government. They crossed canyons […]

Artist Statement Before the birth of Christ, the world waited and hoped in deep anguish for the fulfillment of their Messianic expectations. This song shows that even today, we are not yet done with our waiting. As individuals and as a world today – whether we are aware of this or not – we continue […]

Artist Statement There is always a dry season, a waiting season. In calling out to God to be refreshed, willing these words to seep into my bones, Elohim blew, flowed… gentle and powerful. Rûach (רוּחַ) has the meanings “wind, spirit, breath,” and elohim can mean “great” as well as “god”. In Genesis 1:2, the ruach […]

Let me tell you how stars are born. A ripple perturbs the cloudy deep of a nebula, and gathers its dust into dense thickets. The gravity of matter binds one of these clusters together and it attracts more dust and gas, until its own immensity compels it to burn. A proto-star is formed—a newborn. Yet […]

Artist Statement This song was born in the oral culture of African slaves in the American south, and was embraced by the civil rights movement in the 1960’s. It was originally written by African American composer, John Wesley Work. Go Tell It on the Mountain has come to mean many things depending on the time […]