Healing the Wounds of Trauma
The Whole Person Revolution
The language of trauma has become a part of our vernacular over the last decade. But how much do we really understand what it means to walk with scars? Dr. Steve West served for 40 years in the U.S. Air Force, eventually becoming a chaplain and being awarded the Bronze Star. Here he speaks with Anne to grant a compassionate picture of the experience of PTSD from the inside.
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Forming Peacemakers, Stoking Imagination
The Whole Person Revolution
What are the pathways of formation required to cultivate the kind of wisdom and forbearance needed for a very real world of constraints and differences? With Anne to reflect on this vital if contested work today are David Katibah and Sarah Sturm, who together serve Telos, an organization that equips civic leaders to help reconcile seemingly intractable conflicts at home and abroad.
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Institutional Wisdom in a Time of War
The Whole Person Revolution
How might an institution cultivate the courage and realism required to accept an imperfect set of choices in this broken world, and to choose wisely and in a timely manner? Today’s conversation with Anne’s Cardus colleagues, Ray Pennings and Brian Dijkema, reflects on the challenges and choices facing institutional leaders seeking to protect the common good in a year of war abroad and strife at home.
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The Grief-Catcher
The Whole Person Revolution
Is it possible for peace to walk in power anymore? This is the question haunting Comment’s work this spring, and launching this new season of The Whole Person Revolution is someone who answers it with a courageous yes. J.S. “Joon” Park is a chaplain at Tampa General Hospital, whose about death, grief, trauma, and loss have garnered a large following. When you read Joon’s words, you encounter someone who is no stranger to the things we naturally dread as human beings: the dark night of losing a loved one, of having to accept a complete lack of control, of having to face the...
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Sustaining Male Friendship
The Whole Person Revolution
Dolph Westlund and Matt Ritsman were given unusual advice their senior year of college: If you want formative friendships to last, start a shared third thing. They took this to heart and, now seventeen years later, steward a fund pooled with twenty other friends from college. Meeting in person on an annual basis, with punctuated points of contact throughout the year, the Shade Partnership Fund is a philanthropic organization, a community, and a structure for accountability all at once.
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Natality, Mary, and Feminine Wisdom
The Whole Person Revolution
We are often told to contemplate our mortality, but how often do we contemplate our natality? In this episode, Jennifer Banks, author of the new book Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth, and Margarita Mooney Clayton, author of the essay “The Marian Gift of Dependence,” in our fall issue, talk about the ways that gaining a sense of our natality overcomes our more destructive tendencies of autonomy and control. The Virgin Mary in particular exhibits this kind of receptivity and dependence in a way that speaks to people of all walks of life.
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Gender in Christianity, Gender in Judaism
The Whole Person Revolution
Judaism and Christianity are inextricably bound up in one another. Even when their histories split apart, the dynamics they negotiate in modernity often echo the other’s internal dialogue and communal practice. The case of gender is no exception. In this episode, New York Times columnist David Brooks and attorney and Jewish thinker Yishai Schwartz compare and contrast the overlapping inheritances. Cited pieces include David’s “” in the fall issue of Comment, and Yishai’s “,” also in Comment’s fall issue.
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Men Can Be Awesome, Men Can Be Awful
The Whole Person Revolution
For all the talk about the “crisis of masculinity,” few are providing a healthy vision for what masculinity in the twenty-first century could look like, and, perhaps more important, how men can get there. If becoming a man is better caught than taught, better modelled than talked about, what is going on that the formation seems increasingly rare in transmission? Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, and Christine Emba, columnist at the Washington Post, weigh in. Cited pieces include Richard’s “” in the fall issue of Comment, and Christine’s July...
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Transformation without Telos?
The Whole Person Revolution
The buzzword of the day in education is “transformation.” But transformation for what, towards what? Philosopher Douglas Yacek reflects.
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An Enduring Revival
The Whole Person Revolution
The Taylors of Tabernacle have spent a week together seeking spiritual renewal, a practice that started two hundred years ago. Susan Thornton shares about her family tradition with managing editor Beca Bruder, explaining the vision and practical tasks required to sustain a long-enduring spiritual revival.
info_outlineWhy is it that as human beings we so often see our limits as the enemy of the good life, and not as a helpful frame? Whether we’re chafing against 24-hour days, the betrayals of our bodies, our inevitable mortality, or the caps on our relational and psychological energy, it just seems like modern life tempts us to believe that finitude is a weakness to be overcome … perhaps even a sin. But what if that’s entirely wrong? Kelly Kapic is a theologian and the author of You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News. He joins Anne today to gently correct (and even heal!) the disorder of our weary self-flagellation.