Intersections at The Seattle School

“Fiction is rooted in an act of faith: a presumption of an inherent significance in human activity that makes daily life worth dramatizing and particularizing.” – John Updike, speaking on religion and literature, 1994 I have this photo on my phone that I flip to often, probably more than I am comfortable admitting. It’s a […]

At seven years old, I experienced a mind-bending crisis of identity. There I sat, watching the LA Olympics on a small black and white TV, as boxers from the United States and South Korea took the ring and began pounding one another senseless in mutual pursuit of gold and glory. The official result of that […]

Can I be honest? The nativity story has grown a little stale for me. Those of us raised in the Church, at least, have heard the story multiple times each December for every December of our lives. For evidence that the store is tired is easily found at many Christmas services: it seems every year […]

Our stories are like a book unfolding, pages worn and marked, dog-eared to recall at a later time. Sometimes the page turns and we do not love what the next chapter holds.  I thought my chapter of graduate school would go a certain way.  I entered it with a grand naiveté and glamour around the […]

For the past several years, I have been imagining what it would look like to use surfing as a platform for community engagement in a rural village along the Indian Ocean coastline of South Africa. Toward this goal, I formed a partnership in 2010 with a Denver-based nonprofit named Empowering Communities to Transcend Adversity. ETCA […]

In the past, I have operated primarily through rationale and logic. Now, at The Seattle School, instead of relying on my ability to comprehend, understand, and analyze, I was being asked to wait, to ponder, and most of all to allow myself to be changed before looking for comprehension. It is scary, however, to stumble […]

Grief speaks. And, last week, it declared, “Here I am, Mallory! I’m not going anywhere and this time, I cannot be ignored.”  I had just returned to Seattle from the funeral of my paternal Grandmother, the last of my grandparents to see this side of Heaven. Nine months earlier, I had attended the funeral of […]

I got away for the summer, seeking a sabbatical away from the city. I wanted to slowly chew on what this year has been. The quietness of the Island made the memory of this year alive with the newness, change, grief, and relationships it brought. I had nothing to distract or inoculate the process, just […]

Should all go according to plan, I will graduate next summer with a Master’s degree in Theology & Culture (MATC). When asked about my studies, the question that most often follows is what I’m going to do with such a degree. Unlike the other two programs at The Seattle School, the Master of Divinity (MDiv) […]

This year, I had the privilege of taking a course from Tom Cashman during his last semester at The Seattle School. The course was Celtic Spirituality, and I take away far more than knowledge of celtic culture and history and the feud between Augustine and Pelagius. What lives with me most is an appreciation for […]

I used to be a violinist. I had wanted to play professionally with orchestras and small ensembles, perhaps doing movie soundtracks. Those are always the best pieces – the narrative lays the groundwork, but it’s the music that really conjures emotions in the audience. Requiem for a Dream  and Schindler’s List both rely on the intensity of a […]

I wandered away from The Seattle School, my face red and tears still lingering in my beard. I found my way to a small rocky beach in the sculpture park that overlooked the choppy water toward West Seattle. The sky was nearly pure grey everywhere like it had been for weeks, but over the water […]