Month: November 2022

‘Tis the Season: Advent, Justice, and Calling

Is the Advent season for anything other than waiting for Christmas day? I propose that it can challenge us to the continuous and transformative work of justice in our world.

Photograph by the author

“I’m not ready for Christmas.” This was my immediate thought in early November when I noticed that several houses were already displaying Christmas lights on their porches and in their front yards. At this moment, I was reminded of why I love Advent: it’s all about waiting.

A liturgical season in the Christian tradition, Advent begins on the first Sunday after Thanksgiving and extends to Christmas Eve. It’s a season of anticipation, during which we recall the humble birth of Jesus the Savior in Bethlehem. Within cultural Christmas practices, advent calendars are popular—those countdown calendars to Christmas that offer daily gifts or goodies. In the church, the Advent season appears unsensational, especially when compared to the twinkle of lights on trees, the array of musical concerts, and festive gatherings with family and friends. But is it? Is the Advent season for anything other than waiting for Christmas day? I propose that it can challenge us to the continuous and transformative work of justice in our world.

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How We Search Now

What if my students think about their vocational discernment like just another Google search? As the question sank in, I wondered whether such an approach to vocation might be feeding certain forms of anxiety in students.

Recently, I’ve begun to accept that an expanding part of my job as a teacher of undergraduates is to help them improve their information literacy skills. Digital culture has exponentially increased the amount of “information” available while also obscuring ways to make sense of it. Perhaps, like me, you can see the resistance flicker across students’ faces when you project the library’s website and broach the topic of search skills. I see students thinking, “Can’t Google just tell me what I need to know?” Perhaps, like me, you’ve worked up a spiel about the value of the databases for which their tuition dollars pay, including caveats about Wikipedia and the risks of broad Google searches made vulnerable to “optimization” and “content suppression.” Only recently did a new question cross my mind: What if my students think about their vocational discernment like just another Google search? As the question sank in, I wondered whether such an approach to vocation might be feeding certain forms of anxiety in students.

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Vocational Discernment as a Wellness Tool

NetVUE’s Fall 2022 Webinar focused on “Vocational Discernment as a Wellness Tool” and featured Elizabeth Kubek and Debra Minsky-Kelly

Campus life is gradually beginning to return to a new normal after two years of pandemic learning. Students are back in classrooms, and co-curricular activities are in full swing. However, there is still much healing and readjustment to do since the psychological impact of the COVID19 pandemic will be with us for years to come.

To address this new normal, NetVUE’s Fall 2022 Webinar focused on “Vocational Discernment as a Wellness Tool.” Exploring meaning and purpose can be a creative and effective way to integrate well-being practices on campus. A recent study, for example, indicates that exploring meaning and purpose for one’s life may lead to higher levels of life satisfaction, positive coping skills, and greater psychological health. The webinar on October 26 featured Elizabeth Kubek (below left) and Debra Minsky-Kelly (below right) and addressed the topic of integrating vocation as a wellness strategy in our work with students.

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NetVUE at the AAR/SBL Annual Meeting

Calling all faculty members in theology, religious studies, biblical studies, and related fields! If you will be attending the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature, please join us for one or more of the following NetVUE-hosted events:
    • Reception for NetVUE Members and Friends: Sunday, November 20, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., Embassy Suites Hotel, Leadville Room: come and go as your schedule allows. Light refreshments and cash bar (subsidized for NetVUE members).
    • An SBL Session on the 2022 NetVUE Big Read Selection (Patrick Reyes’s The Purpose Gap): Sunday, November 20, 1:00 to 3:30 p.m., Denver Convention Center, Mile High 3B (Lower Level): “Empowering Communities of Color: The Role of Faculty in Religious and Biblical Studies,” featuring a panel discussion with Stephen Fowl, Armando Guerrero Estrada, Kirsten Oh, and Hannah Schell, as well as a response from Patrick Reyes.
    • Vocation and Catastrophe: A NetVUE Pre-Conference. For those who can come a day early, NetVUE hosts a pre-conference gathering from Thursday, November 17 at 2:00 p.m. through Friday, November 18 at noon, in the Sheraton Downtown, Governor’s Square rooms. The modest registration fee ($25 for those at NetVUE institutions, $50 otherwise) includes a Thursday afternoon reception and dinner. The gathering features a panel discussion of Kiara Jorgenson‘s book Ecology and Vocation: Recasting Calling in a New Planetary Era, as well as a panel on how faculty members can help students who are called into “catastrophic vocations,” and a closing plenary address by David Clough, “Living Vocationally in a World on Fire.” If you can join us for this pre-conference gathering, please help our planning by following this link to register in advance.

Information on all these events can be found on the NetVUE website. If you are coming to Denver for the AAR/SBL meeting, please join us!

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