Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

rest

Healing…Fiction…Connectedness [Balm in Gilead / Summer Read…Quote…Reflect]

Balm in Gilead: A Theological Dialogue with Marilynne Robinson, edited by Timothy Larsen and Keith L. Johnson (InterVarsity Press, 2019).

All that Gilead puts to us is the plain reminder goodness is not enough. Goodness, self-defined and self-contained, is something which will be poisonous if we’re not careful. Without the wound, the openness, the crack that connects us to reality, to one another, and to God, healing doesn’t happen. The “good“ can so easily come to believe that healing is natural and simple. But revelation tells us that healing is indeed the restoration of a broken nature, but precisely because our nature is broken, this healing must be more than “natural.” . . .

Fiction, if it’s doing its work, will always, I’ve suggested take us deeper into connectedness. And in a fiction that works with and is inspired by Christian themes we are taken into the deepest connectedness of all; in the light and in hope of which we live and pray for one another. – Rowan Williams, “Beyond Goodness: Gilead and the Discovery of the Connections of Grace,” 166-167.

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A Prayer for Summer Break

college quad summer photo
Photo by UGArdener

This summer, we’re sharing prayers for and by Christian scholars in our network. We hope this is a chance for readers to connect with each other and with God, to be encouraged, and to pray together. May this series remind us of how the church is connected across time and space in the love of Jesus Christ our Lord. Today we welcome back IVP and ESN author Ken Litwak. You may enjoy browsing his other work for Emerging Scholars Network, or you can explore Ken’s InterVarsity Press book (coauthored with Paul Copan), The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas.

O Lord, you have brought us through the spring term to the summer break. This is our chance to recover from stressful course work, teaching, and engaging with students, faculty, and staff involved in the tasks of the semester or quarter. We have time now to rest our minds, hearts, and bodies from the rigors of academic life. It’s mid-July and we can now spend more time with family and friends, attend to things we could not do during the spring term, relax, and read things that feed our souls and not only our minds. We come to you today in prayer to ask for your help in finding refreshment and renewal in the midst of summer. [Read more…] about A Prayer for Summer Break

God’s Abundance: Prioritize a Few Strategic Things, Damage Control the Rest (Time Management Series)

rest photoWe continue our series on time management with a brief reflection by Heather Peterson. For more ESN posts by Heather, click here. To explore the time management series further, click here. 

As a department chair, I could pick up my kids at 4:45 p.m. each day, put them to bed at 8, and then neglect my husband while I spend the next 2 to 3 hours catching up on more chair duties or grading. Occasionally, I do do this, but I try to make it once a week and not the rule. I plan 1 to 2 hours each weekend working, and that time slot doubles a couple times a month. These hours are piddly for a chair, but to live a life where I’m present to my family and rested, I’ve had to prioritize a few strategic things and damage control the rest. This decision has been tough because I tend to compare myself to my colleagues. I see them already on task in their office when I walk in at 7:30 a.m. and still there when I leave, and I receive emails from them at night (which I never answer unless a crisis exists). [Read more…] about God’s Abundance: Prioritize a Few Strategic Things, Damage Control the Rest (Time Management Series)

Time Management (is a modern fantasy)

As we begin Advent, we bring you a special edition of our Time Management series. Anthropologist Kevin Birth draws on his extensive research on concepts of time in different cultures to challenge our modern concepts of time management and point us to other possible ways of experiencing time. We hope that his description of “kairotic time” helps you find a meaningful way of experiencing time, especially as we enter the Advent season with its liturgical timekeeping that points us to God’s presence. 

Kevin is the author of three books about time, including Time Blind: Problems in Perceiving Other Temporalities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Objects of Time: How Things Shape Temporality (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); and Any Time is Trinidad Time: Temporal Consciousness and Social Meanings in Trinidad (University Press of Florida, 1999). He has also presented extensively on the topic, including appearances at the United States Naval Observatory and the Frick Collection in New York, and on Talk of the Nation  (National Public Radio).

You can read earlier posts by Kevin here, and you can also explore ESN posts on his book Objects of Time: How Things Shape Temporality.

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Summer Snapshot: Reimagining Work

hiking books photo

This summer I have been focusing on reimagining work instead of escaping work.

I started the summer completing one of the heaviest projects of my life, my dissertation. PhD in hand, I spent a good few weeks reflecting on how to “come out of the tunnel” after an intense academic year. It felt like walking into a sunny afternoon after nine hours in a dark library. I spent plenty of time on long walks and lying in my hammock looking at treetops. [Read more…] about Summer Snapshot: Reimagining Work