Brain Holiday: Postponed
After a semi-tough academic week (midterms) and coming into our first totally clear (no immediate deadlines) weekend in a month, I was looking forward to today being a bit of a “brain holiday.” After Friday's chapel at Covenant, however, it is not to be.
Dan Zink, my Marriage and Family professor from last semester, interviewed visiting lecturer, Diane Langberg, a faculty member at Westminster Theological Seminary and Reformed Episcopal Seminary (both in Philadelphia), and a practicing psychologist whose clinical expertise includes 30 years of working with sexual trauma survivors and clergy (many of whom have inflicted such trauma on their churches).
Dr. Langberg speaks internationally on topics specifically related to women, children, sex trafficking, and other such abuses all over the world, and Covenant is sponsoring a conference with Dr. Langberg this weekend called Behind Closed Doors: The Abuse of Power in Marriage, the Church, and Other Relationships.
In addition, this coming Tuesday, Covenant and Memorial are co-sponsoring an evening presentation/Q&A with speaker Deborah Dortzbach, author of The AIDS Crisis: What We Can Do. Dortzbach is World Relief's international director HIV/AIDS programs, and mobilizes and equips the local church to promote and provide AIDS awareness, sexual education for youth, orphan support, and much more.
What do either of these have to do with my weekend? Physically, nothing - I have no plans to spend another weekend taking a class (I did that in January and again two weeks ago in February), and Megan has her “Teaching and Learning” class on Tuesday nights, so I'll be home with the ladies (that is, my four female children) and unable to make the discussion.
But mentally (and hopefully even spiritually), I have been thinking about injustice in the world a lot already this weekend, with plenty of horrible statistics and real illustrations of evil's awful atrocities floating around in my head. I've written about this kind of thing before, but am newly-reminded that having written about it doesn't mean I should stop writing about it now...or trying to do something about it soon.
Sure, it doesn't make for the most relaxing of weekends (at least mentally), but in the midst of our physical comfort and lower-middle class existence here in the richest and freest country in the world, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing.
More to come (I hope).