Hieronymo's mad againe.

A sundress, a tank top....throwing sunscreen on my shoulders before I run out the door...that's when I see the scars. The thin raised lines left by a razorblade or exacto knife, they're mostly on my left shoulder. Sometimes, on waking, I mistake one of the lines on my forearm for a crease left by a folded sheet. The sudden shock that it's a permanent mark I've given myself makes my stomach turn, no matter how many times it happens. Is it possible to explain? The remnants of some of the very worst days are etched on my body. I'm not sure which bit of the latticework belongs to the day S. died...even though I didn't know at the time, it's there, written in my skin. It's funny. The handful of people who happen onto this bit of knowledge shudder in horror and quote Bible verses. Or shrug, depending on where they've come from. It's an almost commonplace reality for some of of my generation. What drives this? The answers aren't the same for everyo...

I'm the girl in with dangley earrings and a tattoo in the back pew. The one who looks like a pretty heathen unless you happen look long enough to notice that she knows when to genuflect,she thumbs through the Book of Common Prayer with ease, her favorite hymns are translations of the writings of Thomas Aquinas and she has to restrain herself from running up to the altar at Communion. In many ways,I and those like me are the new face of the Anglican/Roman Catholic/Orthodox triune. Serious, thoughtful,devout....who may not agree with every jot and tittle of church tradition but who love it, who have experienced traditional Protestantism and are painfully aware of its failings. Mother Kirk is accustomed to Cradle Catholics and is uncertain of how to embrace us seeker mystics. This hesitancy and confusion is what currently has me bouncing between two Anglican churches in town with very different strengths and weaknesses. The church I was at this morning is a lovely Anglo-Catholic ...

One of the great gifts of being Catholic is not being confused or overwhelmed when saints and Bible characters step off the pages into your life at the moments when you need them most. You are free to rejoice in the realization that you have a relationship with the Church Triumphant. Ironically, I think Martin Luther was the first person I experienced this with, and his passion for grace, love of Scripture, devotion to truth, perseverance, and reverence at the Real Presence of Christ at Communion were instrumental in leading me to the Church of England (in a similar vein- I have an Episcopalian friend who's been known to request prayer from good St.Martin on All Saint's day). Next was the Apostle Thomas, as I stood at his tomb in India, at a point in my life when I had been nearly destroyed by doubt and fear. He showed me that doubt could be restored; by grace, the man who has become a near universal symbol of doubt and unbelief had enough faith to travel to India, to pour out ...

It's time...to begin slowly sharing the news: I'm going to Belize in July. This isn't something I feel compelled to advertise to every random friend and acquaintance, and I doubt that it will be mentioned on Facebook (well, I'm likely to post photos after the fact). But I am going. Cornerstone Foundation is an intrinsically interesting organization, that seems to be about the same things I am (community empowerment, respect for culture and the individual, AIDS outreach). In some ways it seems like an ideal setting for my practicum project, and I'll be exploring that as well. My adviser and I are planning an independent study based around this time...likely including a literature review on Complementary Alternative Medicine. And then there are the things less easily explained. The appeal of the rainforest- Nathaniel Hawthorne would find this extremely interesting. That's a fascination I've had my whole life (For the past fifteen years, Madagascar has bee...

For me, one of the biggest differences between being a student of biology and a student of public health is the emotional exhaustion I now experience. Biology was a much more mentally demanding discipline- demanding memorization of countless organisms, structures, cell signalling pathways and the interactions between everything under the sun. Health Promotion, Education and Behavior places more strenuous demands on my heart than my mind. It also orders me to a careful reckoning of how my mind and heart are interacting- is my compassion for a particular situation leading me to jump to a solution, rather than deliberate over the best use of limited resources? How do I balance the urgency of life and death with the need to not be wasteful, to choose the best intervention? This week I've been working on a short paper on the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, which has necessitated reading a vast quantity of UN "on the ground" reports. I sort of stumbled into this topic, having...

Some days I really miss my Conservative Christian Ghetto. That place where no one admitted to smoking or drinking, divorce was unforgivable, people with same sex attraction were sick and twisted, and the goal of everything was to lead people to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I'm not romanticizing that place. . . but everything made so much sense there. The black and whites of "never do anything that might possibly cause anyone to stumble," "love the sinner and viciously condemn the sin," and "you have a responsibility to share the Gospel with everyone you meet" are difficult to carry out, but simple in conception. I don't know when I left it forever. It could have been the day a left-leaning Episcopalian priest's daughter became one of my best friends. Perhaps it was the day I enrolled in college as a biology major. Maybe it was the day the guy with whom I danced my last dance at senior prom hung himself. Somewhere along the way...

Somewhere, in my daily routine of prowling through news and blogs, I stumbled across the upcoming film A Powerful Noise . While I added it to my mental list (along with Milk and Slumdog Millionaire ) I found myself annoyed by what feels like a glut of "activist movies" in recent years. On one level, I feel guilty about that annoyance. My sister considers me an "Eco human rights nazi," and she's not without cause for that assumption (the organic tea in my cabinet, my canvas grocery bags, and personal boycott of Hershey, Nestle and M&M/Mars, for example) I have been thrilled and grateful that movies like Hotel Rwanda , Amazing Grace , and the three above are being made and watched. However, I'm perturbed that what I see happening is people watching these movies, having an extreme emotional reaction and then joining half a dozen facebook groups. Then it clicked- stage theory. The bane of my existence this semester has been a class called "The Theore...