Releasing Toxic Souvenirs. I. Christian Union. It is early evening, and the September rain drizzles incessantly outside Room 231 in the Students’ Union building. The single-pane windows soon steam up as the room fills with students, the chatter increasing in volume as hugs are exchanged and holiday stories told. I sit toward the back, making […]
Shaking My Shadow
by on April 15, 2019 Leave a Comment
By Nichole Woo It was a fun game, for about thirty seconds. Darting, ducking and dodging over playground pavement to lose it. Loose the dark, distorted image spilling out from your toes. Shake your shadow, and win. Then reality reeled us back in. It diverted us to more realistic pursuits, like digging holes to Australia […]
We Do Not Liberate Ourselves
by on April 10, 2019 Leave a Comment
We do not liberate ourselves. No matter how deeply I pressed into liberation theories and practices these past few weeks, I reached the same conclusion. We cannot be our own agents of liberation. Liberation is the action taken up by an agent of change who often does not even realize their defiant disruption becomes the […]
Liberating Hagar
by on April 8, 2019 Leave a Comment
Hagar gets the short end of the stick. Sunday School lessons describe her position as a servant, waiting hand and foot on Abraham and Sarah in Canaan. When barrenness got the best of Sarah, she eyed Hagar who was ripe for the picking. So she sent the servant into Abraham’s tent. This is how Ishmael, […]
Real Freedom is Not a Spa Experience
by on April 2, 2019 Leave a Comment
I wanted the quail to stay trapped. I was ten or eleven, and the quail had a broken wing. It was caught in our yard, where a low brick wall hemmed in the desert plants decorating the front of our house. I found the bird there one day, huddled next to a barrel cactus, and when […]
