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Articles by Emmy Brett
Annunciation House and the Illegal Humanitarian – Scalawag
On February 6, 2024, for maybe the thousandth time in the decades-long existence of the Annunciation House, a volunteer opened the shelter's doors to a new arrival. But instead of welcoming a migrant guest, as volunteers of Annunciation House's shelters have done for over 40 years, this volunteer was met with a lawsuit.
Rising Floods for Basement Apartment Dwellers
Over 100,000 people live in New York City basement apartments; most are immigrants. It’s an open secret that, while basement apartments offer cheap rent, they are potential death traps in a city experiencing more frequent and severe flooding due to climate change. Government programs to address the problem have largely failed. Producer Emmy Brett asks where people go when there is nowhere safe or affordable to call home.
A Refugee’s Feast: the story of Maria Skobtsova with Amy Frykholm (S3:E8)
Welcome to In Search Of, a podcast where we go in search of voices and perspectives that inform and expand a life of faith. In this episode, Amy introduces us to St. Maria Skobtsova, who studied theology and practiced hospitality from St. Petersburg in 1917, to Paris in the 1930s, until her death in a Nazi concentration camp in the 1940s. Learn which aspects of her life make her a personal saint for Amy on the season finale of In Search Of. A transcript of this episode can be found here.
Divine love in Hosea 11
At its heart, Judaism is about love. If you find that claim surprising, you’re not alone. Many Christians and Jews—and, sadly, even some of my rabbinical students—view Christianity as a religion of love and grace while viewing Judaism as a religion merely of law and justice. We assume that Judaism values rituals and actions more than beliefs and emotions, and we’re taught that the God of the Hebrew Bible is angry and vindictive while the God of the New Testament is loving and forgiving.
Eastertide
for Andrew Mead I am watching a moose ripple out of his antlers. I am watching Tollund Man, arm-in-arm with Judy Garland. I am trying to believe implausible things: that we too will abdicate, spurn bone crowns, and turn tender; that we too—raised, wide-eyed—will skip along gold roads. I am trying to trust that oldest rebuke, all things made new, beyond entropy. Above our urge to preserve. This poem appears in the April 2024 issue.
Why I came back to the lectionary
I stopped using the lectionary for a while. Then I went back, and it saved my life. The plain reason I stopped using it was that I wanted to be original. I have nothing against the lectionary or the church seasons and colors, in fact I love them. I love how the lectionary helps place us in the context of an ongoing story and superimposes the cycle of life onto the calendar year. It puts us in the Bible and the Bible in us.
Bearing the scars
The recent election of Javier Milei as president of Argentina—with his telling slogan “Make Argentina Great Again!”—brought back memories of studying and living there. I was there during the Dirty War in the 1970s and early ’80s, which pitted a military dictatorship against the Argentinian people, leading to the kidnapping and death of some 30,000 people, many of whom were tortured before being dropped from planes into the ocean. Milei has his own version of events favorable to the dictatorship.
Lectionary essay for April 7 Easter 2B John 20 19 31
In 1997 I went to new york city for the very first time. I had been enamored with the idea of the place for as long as I could recall, so getting the opportunity to go with some classmates from my high school was a dream come true. As you can imagine, we hit all the touristy hotspots—the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Times Square. Each one felt surreal. My 16-year-old brain could hardly process it all. The memory that I think of most, however, is about something I didn’t see.
Can incarceration ever be just?
In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Harvard philosopher Tommie Shelby asks whether incarceration can ever be just, either in an unjust world such as ours or in a fully just society. He shows his cards early, writing on page 4 that after using all the philosophical tools in his toolbox, he favors prison reform over abolition, believing that there is a way in which prisons can be just. I do not come to the same conclusion, even after reading Shelby’s book twice.
Overshadowed by the Twelve
Whenever I set up a new TV, part of the process involves calibrating the screen’s brightness. If the screen is too dark, I’ll miss out on things that are visible but hard to see. Turning up the brightness brings clarity and depth to the picture, revealing things that might otherwise have escaped my notice. That is a lot like my experience reading Holly Carey’s new book.
Murder of Baptist pastor in Myanmar brings new attention to 'under-reported' war
The fatal shooting of a Baptist pastor in Myanmar reflects an upsurge of civil war violence targeting Christians, Muslims, and other religious and ethnic minorities. Outrage over the March 18 killing of Nammye Hkun Jaw Li comes at a time of rising global diplomatic and economic pressure on the Tatmadaw military junta to cease its oppression of Baptist Christians, Rohingya Muslims, and other groups.
The wisdom of not knowing
(Illustration by Chantal Jahchan) I love church potlucks. There is grace in sitting down at a table with people known and unknown and making awkward, good-natured conversation, grace in the abundance of a single folding table that offers me lasagna, enchiladas, ham sliders, macaroni and cheese, fiesta chicken, pasta salad, black bean salad, couscous salad, fruit salad, eight kinds of bar cookies, apple pie, and a chocolate sheet cake. Who can resist trying a little bit of everything?
In praise of church musicians
Much of the meaning we find in our personal lives stems from contributions by people we often neglect to thank. Individuals who impact us in untold ways inadvertently get overlooked. Some of the unsung heroes who’ve helped make me who I am are church musicians. Worship organizes my life and centers my soul in ways that you can only know by knowing me. But the music of worship is what has helped generate the particular kind of person I am. Gifted church musicians know how to help people sing together.
Episode 38: Franciscan Sister Ilia Delio, author of The Not-Yet God
Welcome to Madang. Madang is the outdoor living room of the world. Here, we invite you to sit and tune into unreserved, remarkable conversations with renowned authors, leaders, public figures, and scholars on religion, culture, and everything in between.
To forgive is exclusively divine
Source: Detail from Battle of Israel against the Amalekites by Abraham de Blois (Creative Commons) In 1969, Jewish Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal published a controversial book called The Sunflower, based on an experience he had as a young man in 1943 in the Janowska concentration camp in Poland. Wiesenthal had been assigned to forced labor in a converted army hospital, where he was instructed to clear medical waste.
Intelligence moved by love: Thecla as philosopher with Dawn LaValle Norman (S3:E4)
Welcome to In Search Of, a podcast where we go in search of voices and perspectives that inform and expand a life of faith. This week, we hear the story of Thecla, an early Christian philosopher. Dawn LaValle Norman tells us about Thecla’s adventures–including carnivorous seals, and an all-female symposium–and the world of women philosophers in the first few centuries.
My Asian American family's days of wanting
Shortly after arriving in America as a war refugee in 1975, my brother David was hit and killed by a car. I was five and he was six. It was my oldest brother Thierry’s birthday, and the rest of the family was busy making preparations for the party. David and I decided to pick some flowers across the street. He was in front of me, just barely ahead.
Goofus and Gallant In the Global Pandemic
Rebecca Saltzman’s humor writing appears in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Belladonna, and Weekly Humorist, and was selected for the print anthology Keep Scrolling Till You Feel Something: Twenty-One Years of Humor From McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. She is the fiction editor of Washington Square Review, and an MFA candidate at New York University.
Daily Itinerary of an Alien Pretending to Be a Human Barista
6:14 AM: I arrive for my first day at The Cool Bean. The door is locked so I smash the front window to gain access. If the customers cannot get in the cafe how will we sell the magnificent bean water? 6:30 AM: The manager screams and enters. “Gorp! What happened?!” I sense she is upset. Did I do wrong? “I don’t know” I say. I feel terrible for lying but I must complete my mission to gather intelligence on the humans.
How To Tell If You’re the Protagonist Of a Sally Rooney Novel
A handy guide for every 21-year old who is the most interesting person alive You have oodles of cultural capital that you cannot pay your rent with. You experience an emotion you can’t identify but are capable of describing perfectly using a taut, refreshing metaphor. You are extremely thin, so thin that there’s no way you could ever give birth to a child. Pregnancy would cause your slender little legs to crumble like a digestive biscuit, probably.
Ways to Refer to a Thing Someone Said Without Actually Calling it Racist
Racially motivated Racially charged Powered by a vaguely racist AAA battery Full bodied with mild notes of racism Containing racist overtones Containing racist undertones Containing racist tritones Adrift approximately three knots east of racist relative to the westward wind Intolerant Undertolerant Tolerance averse Possessing a mild allergy to tolerance Within the vicinity of ethnonationalism Processed in a facility that may contain racism Embellished with a racially charged and entirely...
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