Tag: grief

Reclaiming Vocations: Finding Purpose Amidst Loss

This post opens by reflecting on a mock funeral at Montclair State University that protested cuts to humanities and social sciences, highlighting deep grief in higher education. This shared sense of loss prompts a need for vocational recommitment. The podcast episode featuring Victor Strecher illustrates how purpose can guide healing, emphasizing the importance of meaningful work amidst adversity.

gravestone with a concrete cross
Photo by KoolShooters on Pexels.com

A photo from a recent news article in The Guardian stopped me in my tracks. It featured a black tombstone memorializing 15 departments within the humanities and social sciences facing cuts at Montclair State University, where students organized a mock funeral in protest of this proposal. At the top of the tombstone, a large RIP dramatically introduced the list of the departments, starting with anthropology and ending with English.

This story is an all too common one across higher education right now, leaving students, faculty, and staff in a state of grief over profound vocational dislocations as their callings are being devalued by college administrators and policymakers. This student-organized funeral resonated with me upon my return from a recent retreat for educators, who gathered to reclaim our vocational visions and voices. One undercurrent in our conversations was a deep sadness for all that has been lost in higher education in recent years: departments slashed, dedicated colleagues terminated, harmful narratives about our work increasing.

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Ten Things that Make Life Worth Living

Jacqueline Bussie shares her top ten insights for what makes life worth living.

If you have never met Jacqueline Bussie, then you should just skip to the video clip below so that you experience her uniquely exuberant form of wisdom. Jacqueline is the Director of the Forum on Faith and Life and a professor of Religion at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. Her book Love Without Limits (Fortress, 2018) was declared a “must read” book for Christians by Publisher’s Weekly. Her book Outlaw Christian (Thomas Nelson, 2016) won a 2017 Gold Medal Illumination Award for Christian Living. She has been an active member of NetVUE for many years, including speaking as part of a panel at the pre-conference gathering at the American Academy of Religion meeting in San Diego last November.

Jacqueline recently recorded a short video slip (26 minutes) in which she shared her “top ten” thoughts about what makes life worth living. The video is part of a series put together by the Living Well Center for Vocation and Purpose at Lenoir Rhyne University, where Mindy Makant is the director.

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Grief as the Garden of Compassion

The profound connection between grief and compassion can easily be forgotten, especially when we grow impatient with the long fingers of grief’s grasp (on ourselves, or others). I was reminded of their connection by Colleen Dunne, the Director of Campus Ministry at Saint Martin’s University in Washington State, who participated in a recent Zoom conversation among NetVUE campus ministers and afterward shared a piece she had written for her campus community. It begins with a quotation from Rumi:

Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.

Jalalu’ddin Rumi
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Lost Causes

It’s difficult to think productively about the future when the world seems pitted against your very well-being and existence. That is how many of my students are feeling these days.

Obj. No. L.3.2010 Henry Mosler (American, 1841-1920) The Lost Cause, 1868 Oil on canvas 36"H x 48"W 91.44 cm x 121.92 cm Note: signed and dated lower right, Henry Mosler. / 1868. Image must be credited with the following collection and photo credit lines: Lent by the Johnson Collection. Courtesy of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Photo: Travis Fullerton© Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Henry Mosler (American, 1841-1920), The Lost Cause, 1868. Lent by the Johnson Collection. Courtesy of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.  Photo: Travis Fullerton © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Their hopelessness is earned, their despondency legitimate. It is not born of fragility or a lack of resiliency, as some pundits of higher education often want to suggest. My otherwise hard-working and motivated students are demoralized and exhausted.

And so are most of my colleagues at the small college where I teach — as are most of my friends who teach, in one capacity or another, spread all over the country. And so am I. Many of us trying to understand our own devotion to what seems, at least at the moment, to be a lost cause.

I have previously written about Continue reading “Lost Causes”