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Sowing the Seed

Fruitful Conversations in Religion, Culture, and Teaching

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new year

Grace Period

Posted on January 1, 2019 by Richard Newton

Throughout 2018, I gave myself a grace period. I knew the year was going to be one of a great many transitions-- more than I expected, so it turned out. My resolution to myself was to rethink imperfection as a facet of life.

Posted in Personal, UncategorizedTagged clocks, creative non-fiction, grace period, memoir, memory, new year, nostalgia, resolutions, time, writingLeave a comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKc0flajfV8
My Tweets

Instagram (@seedpods)

REL504 Religious Studies as History, Field, and Discipline end-of-term 🎉!
Nationalism will “see you at the car wash...” Similarly, in Alex Haley’s boyhood home, there is a Roots Car Wash. What can I say? Scriptures, it’s a living!
Soundgarden is getting a lot of play today. Don’t sleep on the B sides.
Aaron Sorkin has a line in The West Wing that I take as the challenge for my teaching: “An artist's job is to captivate you for however long as we've asked for your attention.” I think about this a lot in the classroom. So when students come to office hours or email me about what they’ve been thinking, I’m honored that they would take extra time to entertain what I’ve shared. This semester, some of my New Testament students wanted to discuss the Gospel of John outside of class time (FG gets the short end of the stick in my intro). So we did a mini-seminar. No extra credit was given, just students “...there to work” to paraphrase J. Z. Smith’s self-description when he visited as the @studyreligion Aronov Lecturer. Were I to tweak Sorkin’s line for pedagogy, I’d add that a teacher’s job is that they’ll learn to be captivated by the act of paying attention to the field in their vision. I learn so much by watching them develop this discipline. I hope I stay curious and continue to learn in the process.

Branching Out

  • Cold Takes: The Website of Writer Kelly J. Baker
  • Culture on the Edge
  • Practicum: Critical Theory, Religion, and Pedagogy
  • Religion Bulletin
  • Studying Religion in Culture
  • Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion

Elizabethtown College Student Introduction to Islam Website

The William V. Puffenberger Digital Collection of Religious Artifacts @Elizabethtown College

The William V. Puffenberger Digital Collection of Religious Artifacts

CalPolyPomona’s Murals of East Los Angeles

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