Fall 2016 Vol. 5 No. 1 Will There Really Be A Morning? Kerry Maloney….….……………….……………………………………..………………………………....2 Harry Lyn Huff, 1952-2016. …………….………………..…………..………………………….………………………………………...……...4 Anti-Racist Pedagogies: A Reflection Tyler Schwaller….………………………………………………..…………………….……………….....5 The Mirror of Advent Regina L. Walton………………………………..………………..…………….…………………………...8 On Groping, Trump and Jesus Stephanie Paulsell…………………………………………………………………………………….....10 Bearing Witness at the Tomb: Being White in Trump’s America Wilson Hood………...……...…………………………….………………..…………………………….….12 Fierce defiance. Faithful memory. Mandi Rice…………………………………………………………………………..…………………………..14 This, I Think, is Ministry Dudley C. Rose………………………………………………..…….……………………………………....16 Religions and the Practice of Peace: A Student’s Perspective Jenna Alatriste………………………………………..……….……………….……………………...…..19 Prophetic Grief Sana Saeed……………………………………..…………………….……………………………………....20 With Faith and Hope: Somos Gente Que Lucha (“We Are People Who Struggle”) Alfredo Garcia……..…………………………………………………………..…….…………………....21 Unveiling the Stories of Dreamers at HDS Diana Ortiz Giron……..…………………………………………………………..…….…….………....24 Will There Really Be a Morning? Kerry Maloney HDS Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life Will there really be a "Morning"? Is there such a thing as "Day"? Could I see it from the mountains If I were as tall as they? Has it feet like Water lilies? Has it feathers like a Bird? Does it come from famous places Of which I have never heard? Oh some Scholar! Oh some Sailor! Oh some Wise Man from the skies! Please do tell this little Pilgrim Where the place called "Morning" lies! -Emily Dickinson A hauntingly beautiful musical setting of this plaintive poem by Emily Dickinson filled the air in Andover Chapel at this year’s annual Seasons of Light celebration on November 29, 2016. Recorded by HDS’s late musical director Harry Lyn Huff and Tom Bogdan, the song gave melodic voice to our communal grief and rudderless angst twenty-six days after our beloved Harry’s sudden death and twenty-one days after the shocking, if not surprising, election of Donald Trump as President. At the 2015 Seasons of Light service, we were gathered unwittingly on the eve of the San Bernadino massacre. The subsequent twelve months have only plunged us ever more deeply into the blood shed on that terrible day. We have found ourselves drenched in the publicly sanctioned hate speech of the Presidential campaign, particularly against Muslims, immigrants, people of color, and Jews; and now we are watching the appointment of a white supremacist and inept cronies to the Presidential cabinet. We are living with and raging against the continuing state-sponsored murder of and threats against black and brown people. We have heard with our own ears reports of the sexual assault of women by the occupant of the nation’s highest office. We have grieved the terrorism committed by non-state actors in every country across the globe, not least in Orlando, Florida, where dozens of lgbtq people were slaughtered in June at the Pulse nightclub. We have watched in horror the terrorism of the permanent anti-terror police state advancing everywhere, glaringly evident in the war on indigenous communities protecting their water at Standing Rock. And we have watched in disbelief the state-sponsored terrorism of oppressive regimes and the imperial powers of war across the globe, yielding incalculable devastation and unprecedented numbers of refugees seeking safe haven and signaling ominous threats to the ideals of democracy and freedom everywhere. By the end of 2016, those in privileged classes, religious traditions, and ethnic groups in the United States and Western Europe have found themselves/ourselves—at last, like most of the rest of the world which has suffered for centuries under the daily brutality of colonialist terrorism without much notice or empathy—entangled enough in that web to have been threatened with the genuine terror of despair. And if it wasn’t clear before, by now it has become abundantly apparent: the real war against terror turns out to be fought in the heart. 2 Will There Really Be a Morning? Kerry Maloney HDS Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life Hope demands ferocious spiritual and intellectual discipline. Practiced as a spiritual virtue, it can develop the soul’s resilience; when assailed by trauma, something like healing may emerge, or when assailed by guilt, something like repentance may occur. Practiced as an intellectual commitment, hope can develop the mind’s rigorous resistance; when confronted by propaganda, something like truth may break out, or when confronted by evil something like holiness may erupt. At Harvard Divinity School, we strive daily—even if with as much failure as success—to honor and to exercise the habits of mind and heart that might produce a hope stronger than despair, a love stronger than death. This issue of ConSpiracies provides a glimpse of those habits refracted through several writings, prayers, and sermons offered this semester by a few members of the HDS community. “Will there really be a morning?” We sing this forlorn question into the night together as we grapple with our shadow side, which always produces the mayhem we summon, knowing that we’re all all interconnected, we’re all implicated. In a time when we seem as a nation to have lost our way—and maybe even our souls and minds—we are striving to remember that like all liberal arts institutions, HDS is uniquely called to be in the mind and soul business. Each of us. All of us. May we be helped by all we call Holy to live into and up to that calling. 3 Harry Lyn Huff, 1952-2016 On November 3, 2016 hours after the observance of All bring down a room. And he would do it in ten minutes Saints and All Souls Days in his Christian tradition, our before Noon beloved Director of Music Harry Huff passed into the arms Service. Just magic. of God. He had suffered a cerebral aneurysm on Monday October 31 and never regained consciousness. We cannot Harry also changed yet begin to fathom, let alone to chronicle, the immensity the way that I of the loss of this magical, beautiful genius—not only to thought about the HDS campus but also to Old South Church in Boston, group singing. Now where he served as Minister of Music since 2007, and to at Simple Church I the wider world. From Bach to Bacharach, Schubert to only introduce new Sondheim, Pärt to Parton, Harry “Houdini” Huff was a songs sandwiched lover and master of nearly every genre of music. He was between songs that also a master of teaching, a master of community, and a people know and sing well already, so that people feel master of kindness. A true maestro. One of the most comfortable and confident singing as a group. That fitting and moving tributes to him, and one of the most generosity of spirit mixed with the desire to teach and succinct of the many eulogies written in the days take people where they wouldn't go on their own has following his death, was posted to Facebook by Zach changed me as a musician and a pastor. Kerzee, MDiv ’14 on the night Harry died. Zach’s words go proxy for all our tributes, all our grief, and all our I'll never forget the way that he would stomp his foot gratitude. with a thunderous crash during "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning," or the way that he would take a picture of his constantly morphing choir each week, drawing out a smile with a high pitched "Tennessee" I received an email this instead of "Cheese." … morning letting me know that Harry Huff had For the season you were in our lives, all of us were suffered a brain aneurism enriched, Harry Huff. We'll miss you terribly. We'll see and was in the hospital. you again. Minutes later as I scrambled to see if I could You can read Harry’s obituary published by Old South squeeze in a visit tomorrow, I got word that he had Church and visit the Memorial Facebook page established passed. in his honor, where you can also catch a few Harry meant so much to me at my time at HDS. Every recordings of him at the time he saw me from across the chapel he would come organ and at the piano. and embrace me and smack a loud kiss on my bald head, never failing to call me "You beautiful boy, you." He Thank you and farewell, would then grab me by the arm and push me... onto the sweet Harry. May you steps near the piano to sing with the choir (whether I felt conduct the choir of like it or not). angels forever in eternal delight. I've seen Harry pull together a random group of people, many of whom have never sung together before, and draw out music from that choir of strangers that would 4 Anti-Racist Pedagogies: A Reflection Tyler Schwaller MDiv ‘10, PhD candidate in New Testament and Early Christian Studies On September 30, 2016, in response to the ongoing state-involved murder of people of color as well as the white supremacist, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-queer, and misogynist rhetoric of the 2016 Presidential campaign, the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and members of the HDS faculty held a two-hour community teach-in/speak-out on the steps of Andover Hall. Tyler Schwaller delivered these remarks. Tyler, whose dissertation is on slavery in early Christian life and thought, is also an ordained deacon in the United Methodist Church. His scholarship, teaching, and activism in and through the church intersect in concerns for foregrounding visions and practices of racial, gender, sexual, and economic justice. When I was first asked to speak, particularly in my role as Departmental Teaching Fellow, I was both grateful for the invitation to participate, because I think this is incredibly important, and nervous about what I actually have to contribute.