friends

What’s Your Choice? by Karen Leslie Hernandez

Choices.

Many times choices are difficult. Some of the time choices are easy.

I have had a rough year. Probably one of the most difficult yet in my adult life.

I began this year with an offer of a job, where I would have used every bit of my knowledge and education, which included a move to Dallas. That job, due to fear and discrimination, ended as quickly as it started. Now, 12 months later, I am job secure and I still live where I began 2018.

Aside from job security, I have been dealing with a serious incident of verbal abuse, from someone in my family, who should never do to anyone, what they did to me. It has been devastating, debilitating, and incredibly difficult, to say the least.

I have also been thinking about my choices of men. That seems to always be disastrous for me. I do not choose wisely. And I am uncertain as to why.

Last, I have been thinking about my choices of whom to include in my life as friends, and whom I must not include. This particular choice is not easy.

The fact is, I have a choice. We have a choice. Always.

Continue reading “What’s Your Choice? by Karen Leslie Hernandez”

Feminism, Friends, and Faith by Michele Buscher

Michele Buscher Almost a year ago, I contributed my first post to this blog. I wrote about the struggles I had encountered mostly during my time pursuing my PhD in Religious Studies. Reflecting on my experiences helped me realize the impact women have had on my successes and how their support during my failures meant everything.

Now, I’m reflecting on a similar theme but with particular attention to my friendships with women. Certain events that have taken place over the past few days have helped shed light on these friendships and how the dynamic I have with two women, in particular, has shaped my personhood, helped my continued pursuit to define what feminism means to me, resulting in a spiritual, faithful experience. Continue reading “Feminism, Friends, and Faith by Michele Buscher”

Thinking About Thanksgiving by Carol P. Christ

Thanksgiving evokes deep memory and raises questions about what we are celebrating, now that we know the stories we were told about the Pilgrims and the Indians are not the whole truth about America’s early history. I thought about all of this as I prepared for Thanksgiving this year and cleaned up for days afterwards.

Although I do not live in America, I have celebrated Thanksgiving with a group of friends in my home in Greece many times during the past twenty years.

For me, Thanksgiving brings up happy memories of family gatherings in a time when my extended family, including Mom and Dad, brothers, great-aunts and great-uncles, aunts and uncles, cousins and second cousins, gathered at Grandma’s to eat turkey with all the trimmings. Grandma Lena Marie Searing Bergman was not only a great cook but also an excellent hostess. Her tables were laden with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, biscuits with butter and homemade jam, corn and green peas, pumpkin and mince pies, and also with crystal, china, and silver, and flowers from her garden.

Uncle Emery, my grandmother’s older brother, told stories about life on the farm in Michigan, where they had a pony and he lost parts of his fingers in a threshing machine. We children played croquet in the garden and ran races all around it while our mothers, aunts, and grandmother laid out the feast and cleaned up afterwards. These were the blessed days before television and televised football games came to dominate holidays in the United States. My memories are laced with the sadness of knowing that those days are in the past. Continue reading “Thinking About Thanksgiving by Carol P. Christ”