What are you Reading? Part 1

In anticipation of summertime reading we recently asked our faculty to tell us what they have been reading and the answers may surprise you! Throughout March and April we will be sharing their book recommendations on the seminary's blog.

Our first entry comes from two of Garrett-Evangelical's newest faculty, Timothy Eberhart, Visiting Assistant Professor of Moral and Public Theology, and Karla Kincannon, Director of Field Education and VFCL.
 

Happy reading!

Dr. Tim Eberhart

Visiting Assistnat Professor of Moral and Public Theology and Director of the Course of Study

I am currently reading Frederick L. Kirschenmann's Cultivating An Ecological Conscience: Essays from a Farmer Philosopher.  Although not as well known as Wendell Berry or Wes Jackson, Kirschenmann is one of the most important agro-ecological voices in the growing movement today to transform the ways we produce and consume our "daily bread."  What makes Kirschenmann such an interesting figure is that he began his career in the early 1970's as director of the Consortium for Higher Education in Religious Studies in Dayton, Ohio after earning a Ph.D. in historical theology from the University of Chicago.  After hearing one of his students from Nebraska describe a calling to provide a "ministry to the soil" through non-conventional farming practices, Kirschenmann decided to return with his family to his father's North Dakota farmstead to figure out how to farm sustainably on the prairie.  Cultivating An Ecological Conscience is a collection of essays representing the accumulated knowledge of Kirschenmann's four decades as a minister with and to the soil.

In the introductory essay, "Theological Reflections while Castrating Calves," Kirschenmann recounts a Sunday morning years ago when his wife asked him where he saw God in their farm.  "I pointed to some Canadian thistles in a fence line," he writes, "and to the calves surrounding us and said, 'in every thistle in our fields and every calf humping another calf in our pasture.'"  He goes on to provide a theological account of the incarnation which affirms, not a pantheistic collapse of God and creation, but the truth that "the divine always meets us in the flesh -- all flesh - all relationships" and "not just our relationship with humans or relationships we don't like" (p. 17).  In an age of climate change, resource depletion, and mounting evidence that our present industrial food economy is not working for rural communities or rural landscapes, Kirschenmann's practical theological wisdom on food, community, and farming is desperately needed.  If you live in the Upper Midwest...actually, if you eat, you should read this book.

Rev. Karla Kincannon

Director of Field Education and Vocational Formation & Church Leadership; artist-in-residence

The top book on my stack of reading is The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Peacebuilding by John Paul Lederach. Lederach discusses four needed disciplines for peacebuilding: the centrality of relationships; the practice of paradoxical curiosity; providing a space for creativity; and the willingness to risk. Each discipline is essential to developing the moral imagination necessary for breaking the cycle of violence and building peace. Each discipline needs to be practiced in order to cultivate the moral imagination.

The first discipline is the facility of seeing the importance of all relationships, including relationship with the enemy. The ability to see ourselves in relationship to the enemy is the first step toward embracing God’s shalom and following the command of Jesus to love the enemy (Luke 6: 27-36). Imagining ourselves in relationship with the enemy means we understand that we do not exist in isolation. All of life is interdependent. Finding our place in the web of relationships that includes our enemy requires we develop the virtue of humility.

The second discipline for conflict transformation is the aptitude for seeing life’s complexities. This requires we move away from dualistic thinking into a paradoxical curiosity. This kind of curiosity gives us the ability to approach social realities with continuous inquiry, suspending our judgment toward what at first seems contradictory. Paradoxical curiosity takes us beyond face value into the ambiguity and complexity of the systems that hold communal life together. It opens the door to unexpected opportunities for peace because it looks beyond the biases, arguments, and narrow definitions of reality, to what is possible.

The third discipline for peacebuilding is creativity. Creativity transcends what is known and takes us into the unknown; it makes something new from what already exists. Artists know that new life is always possible. They give birth to possibility, teaching us the future is not a captive of the past. In conflict transformation the creative act moves from potential to actuality: it makes enemies into friends and violence into peace.

The final discipline for peacebuilding is a willingness to risk. Peacebuilding requires that we step into the unknown with no promise of success. Risk-taking requires faith and trust in the God who is both mystery and love.

This book is my top choice on the subject of peacebuilding.