interreligious chaplaincy

Consultations from India to Minneapolis: a United Student’s Reflections.

In winter 2018, I took a trip to India with a group of students from the seminary, visiting sacred sites of 7 religions – Baha’i, Buddhist, Muslim, Jain, Sikh, Christian and Hindu. The trip was called The Sacred Sites of India. It was amazing. There are temples and sacred art everywhere, pilgrims and worshipers everywhere. India is busy, beautiful, colorful, crowded –– filled with delicious vegetable curries, fresh fruit, palm trees, silk saris, pashmina shawls. There are men building roads, men building buildings, men with sewing machines on the street making clothes while you wait, men pulling people around in bicycle taxis, men cooking on gigantic platters in the street, men slicing coconuts with machetes. men carrying huge loads on their backs and on their bicycles. I have never seen so many men working so hard. (more…)

“Is this Naomi?” Reading into the Book of Ruth on Shavuot

On Shavuot, an annual two day holiday which just ended this last Monday, Jews across the world study the Book of Ruth. A prominent theme of the story is chesed or loving-kindness. Ruth’s devotion to Naomi is an act of chesed; Boaz’s aid and eventual marriage to Ruth is likewise an example of chesed. Using a hermeneutic of chesed is traditional in interpreting this story, with much grounding in rabbinic criticism. However while it is a story of acts of kindness, it also a story of an emotional, psychical conflict in the character of Naomi. (more…)