April 17, 2022 | by Aliénor Manteau H’23

Bells ring from Jerusalem’s church spires in the evenings. If you stand on tiptoe on the shower ledge of a hotel bathroom and look through the half-open skylight, or push open an unlocked door on the top floor of a restaurant and lean against an air vent on the roof, you can hear them ringing all over the city.

November 26, 2021 | By Raquel Sequeira TD ‘21.5

As I reach the end of my time at Yale, I’ve been reflecting on the highlights. I’ve realized that many of the best moments of the past five years have just been…talking to people. Brilliant people, it should be said. The kinds of conversations where you start with British Literature and wind your way to quantum computing, or from the philosophy of infinity to the meaning of joy. God is usually in there. You find yourself gesturing to invisible diagrams on the wall behind you. You forget your complaints and anxieties about school in this momentary oasis of dialogue.

November 19, 2021 | By Stephen McNulty MY ‘25

In 2013, an eighty-three-year-old nun stood before a court facing an odd charge — the year prior, she had broken into a Tennessee nuclear site, in what was perhaps the largest security breach in US atomic history. She and her collaborators were part of the Plowshares movement, a pacifist Christian movement infamous for direct action against US nuclear facilities. Their goal, as it were, was to beat the swords of the military-industrial complex into plowshares, as alluded to in the Book of Isaiah:

April 4, 2021 | By Serena Puang, DC ‘22 + 1

Happy Easter! He is Risen! It has been our honor to journey with you through Lent for the past seven weeks. I hope that wherever you are: whether at home or miles away, whether on fire for God or burnt out, you can take some time today to reflect on the miracle of the resurrection and its implications.

March 28, 2021 | By Brandon Cobb

21 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”

March 23, 2021 | Jason Lee TD ‘22+1

Repentance, cloaked not in Eden’s leaves, but the words of others, which are more familiar, and less agonizing to order, than any I could write myself.

“I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 

Genesis 3:10

March 20, 2021 | By Andrew Forrester

So why all the doom and gloom? If our Lord and Savior really is risen, and our sins have really been forgiven, why should we be sorrowful at all? During Lent, our preparation for the joy we take in the day of the resurrection, should we not be joyful since we know what’s coming? 

Feb 27, 2021 | By Jadan Anderson MC ‘22

Dear God,

I am always delighted to see a cross in ashes on the head of a person I know in passing. There are few signs more perfectly suited as a public declaration of faith in you: the ashes are quiet, yet bold, and its symbolic power is multiplied the more and more it is seen by others. Out of seemingly nowhere, people with this symbol populate the streets, workplaces, and schools.

Feb 17, 2021 | By Will Willimon, Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity.

“The truth about life is that we shall die,” said writer Philip Roth, just before he died. Death is as out of control as life can get. In my years of pastoral work, I have served as psychopompos helping some five hundred souls to the grave, privileged to say a few words on God's behalf at their end.

By Bradley Yam, SY ‘21. Bradley is majoring in Ethics, Politics & Economics.

This year I’m celebrating Easter all by myself in quarantine. It feels surreal to hear the sound of the hotel door latching irrevocably shut, knowing that it will stay shut for the next fourteen days. In here, it’s easy to hope. I could stream the Easter service from my local church, sing along with the songs and be satisfied with warm feelings and abstract ideas. This is the kind of hope of Dickinson’s “hope is a thing with feathers”, hope that whispers in the soul but asks nothing of you at all.

As much as I love Dickinson, that [hope] is too light and ethereal to stake action upon—only the shadow of the real thing.

By Jadan Anderson, MC ‘22. Jadan is majoring in Economics.

I was, and sometimes still am, dizzied by theological explanations for why my loving God must or chooses to allow evil’s presence. And at times, I fancied disbelief a far easier conviction to hold than belief in a good, or at least all-powerful, God.