Thinking, thinking and thinking again

Today has been an interesting day for me, in a lot of ways. It began with my foundations class, which is reading Gary Gunderson’s lovely little book, “Boundary Leaders.” We took a break (it’s a three hour class), to go to Herbert Anderson’s Hein-Fry lecture — which focused on “blessed ambiguity” — and then came back and launched into a discussion of boundary leadership, adaptive challenges, and the role of the religious educator in lifting up and focusing symbolic resources. All of this was powerful.

Later this afternoon, as I was waiting for my son to emerge from his weekly speech therapy appointment, I was reading an essay written by one of my students who has been doing an independent study with me to fulfill her polity requirement (she's Catholic, studying at Luther). Her essay was a profound and moving meditation on why -- after much soul searching and exploration -- she has remained Catholic, even though she is a committed urban activist and a feminist (another version of her essay will appear in a book edited by Claire Bischoff, soon to be released by Pilgrim Press).

Finally, this evening I've been catching up on weblog reading, and AKMA has a searching meditation on the dilemmas he faces as an Episcopal priest in the US context.

What do all of these activities have in common? The desire and need to proclaim and live a faith-filled identity that accepts paradox and ambiguity as a powerful element of Christian identity. I can think of no more important a witness!