On October 5, 2019, The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology hosted our fifth annual Symposia, featuring presentations by twelve alumni and Dr. Chelle Stearns as keynote speaker.
The spirit of dialogue and collaboration behind Symposia is rooted in this basic premise: We all have much to offer, and we all have much to learn. Our alumni engaged topics ranging from flourishing and female subversion to flourishing after suffering, reframing anti-oppression work, and internalized racism. We’re grateful for what our alumni are offering the world through their intelligence, creativity, and compassion.
In her keynote lecture, Drawn to the Water: Longing, Grief, and Flourishing, Dr. Chelle Stearns closed with these remarks:
“Human flourishing requires solace and expansiveness—it requires time and space to nourish one’s inner oceanic life. Flourishing also necessitates provocation and complaint. We need truth and honest engagement when it’s hard, perhaps especially when its most difficult or impossible. An expanded imagination is vital for any form of flourishing. Flourishing demands time and process, it needs people and many hands – like a labyrinth we have to take time to walk to the center of memory in our own lives, in the lives of others, and in our own culture. Then we need time to return to the outer edges of the labyrinth once more to reclaim what has been lost.”
Videos of the presentations will be shared in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, be sure to check out these notable presentations from our 2018 Symposia:
Step Into the River: Love that Crosses Barriers, by David Rice (MDiv ’10)
Grief, Compassion, and Connection, by Jeffrey Batstone (MACP ’10)
A Life-Giving Vision of Fat Bodies in the Church, by Kristen Gilfillan (MACP ’13)