By Shannon Young

Arriving at Hans Schumm’s studio, there is a sign on the door: “No cell phones allowed inside. Leave them in your cars. You will feel the difference.” You do feel as though you have stepped back in time….

By Claire Jerram

It was Advent. I had spent all the autumn in a state of expectation. Like millions of eighteen-year-olds ready to leave the nest, I could not begin what was for me my mid-life change of course. The Canadian border, which stood between me and the The Seminary of the Christian Community in North America, remained closed.

By Robert Bower

As we continue into our studies, the Walking with Christ and Knowing Christ students, with some help from those who are in the Distance Learning Program, will be posting here weekly, sharing some of our experiences, artistic work and thoughts as we-somewhat precariously, but full of heart--wind our way through a pandemic version of the seminary spread out over our three locations.

By Anna Silber, student in our Ordination Preparation group

This is the eighth in a series of blogs meant to introduce our readers to participants in our ordination preparation course at The Seminary of the Christian Community in North America.

By Jong-Won Choi, student in our Ordination Preparation group

Dear Friends, I would like to share with you some writings, or rather some notes from inner hearing, of Claire Blatchford. They are published in two books titled Turning, – words heard from within and Friend of My Heart, – meeting Christ in everyday life. In these books, Claire shares with us, sometimes in the most simple, direct, and clear words, sometimes in beautiful poetic paintings, her inner experiences of someone whom she calls “the Friend of my heart,” and the words she has received inwardly from him.

Sacramentalism in the music of Sufjan Stevens

By Kate Kennedy, student in our Ordination Preparation Group

Every year or so, I get the urge to send some of my Christian friends the final track of Sufjan Stevens’ 2004 album Seven Swans. The song “The Transfiguration” relates the event in Christ’s life known by the same name.

Advent reflections and Sabbath poetry from Wendell Berry.

By Elizabeth Majoros, student in our Ordination Preparation group

As we sang “People Look East, the time is near” in closing, I recalled how Sara taught me that song when she was my 28 year old’s kindergarten teacher. Being a Waldorf mom opened me up to a world that changed my life and led me into a path that has guided me to this moment. We looked into each other’s faces and into the trees and gardens of her backyard, and (in the absence of a Christian Community congregation) I felt this was the perfect place to be on the first Sunday of Advent….

By Lesley Waite, student in our Ordination Preparation group.

I was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, a city established in the late 1840s by Scottish immigrants. They brought Presbyterianism and with gold found in Central Otago from 1861, built the first university in New Zealand that opened in 1869. I grew up with and developed a strong relationship to words and books, art and nature – then, as an adult found Colin McCahon, who brought all these together in his paintings….

By Mimi Coleman, student in our Ordination Preparation group.

Poetry has been a lifelong companion, sometimes other people’s poems, sometimes my own, as a way to voice something that is blooming inside my soul: Words, The Good Word, The Logos. I search for the right word, sometimes I find it. …

By Jeana Lee, student in our Ordination Preparation group

This week, guest author and ordination preparation student, Jeana Lee, brings us five poems by Mary Oliver. Her piece is really a spoken word piece; a beautiful reflection on each poem and how it has helped, comforted and guided her soul through life – and how these poems can do the same for us.

Memories of Childhood Contemplations

By Victoria Capon, student in our Ordination Preparation group

Standing in my grandmother’s dining room, studying her original crewel embroidery artwork hanging on the wall, I remember wondering why the flowers in the bottom third of the image were so indistinct and undefined. My grandmother had beautiful flower gardens outside her front door that met the woodland just beyond gracefully – the tiny bluets growing in the delicate native grass naturally blended the cultivated areas with the wild…

By guest author, Luis Gonzales

Some paintings can have an effect similar to a soothing balm for the soul. I think this painting of Karine Léger (Montreal 1977) is a subtle and potent medicine for the moment that we are living….

We offer you a poem this week that was shared by a friend to his congregation in Nashville, Tennessee in his weekly emails.

Today we share with our readers a piece by Bill Hutchins, a friend and patron of the seminary and a long time architect and artist, that explores the artistic path he has been taking to learn to know – and love – a forest.

Right at the time of Autumn, when our consciousness and our ability to think clearly intensify here in the Northern Hemisphere, we celebrate the festival of the archangel, Micha-el.

With an essay by guest writer, Laurie Clark

Every year or so, I get the urge to send some of my Christian friends the final track of Sufjan Stevens’ 2004 album Seven Swans…

By Friedrich Rittelmeyer - 1933

By guest author, Mary Graham.

“…a poem [is] a door into a temple that allows us, when we walk in, to feel less just ourselves [alone], more part of everything.” - David Whyte

“And the tree broke at once into blossom…”