Gina N. Brown

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  During the readings for this week I was honestly surprised to what depth the Sernee Jones’ retelling of the Passion reached me.   As a Christian for over thirty years, if we only count the thirty plus Good Friday through Easter season that I have experience - not taking into consideration personal devotion, I thought I understood what the Passion conveyed.   Possibly on “a” level I do however with Jones’ insight and access to trauma and grace she has cracked a new understanding for me together with were we find ourselves in history.   It is amazing how exposure deepens understanding.   I don’t believe I was processing the fullness of the story.   Definitely harvesting the parts about myself.   Viewing the story but thinking about myself. Trying to assure my salvation. Like a person who robs a hit and run victim as they lay helpless in the street.   Serene Jones readings have helped me to name that selfishness.   Captured an awareness of it and helped me to see it in the traditions of

Youth Ministry Assignment ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS:   Go out into your local area either by car, public transportation, or on foot. Make notes of what you see. Take videos and photos as evidence of your cartography fieldwork. Using your notes, create a map of your local area. You may hand draw your map or create a digital map with your notations. You may also print a map from the internet but if you choose to do so, you must also include a separate document with your detailed notations that correspond to your printed map. Upload the map, your notes, fieldwork evidence(videos, and photos), and anything else to Moodle with your reflections on your experience.   Use: Internet research: Go ahead and search the web along with physical mapping, but know that Google and other search engines will not show you everything. Your senses: What do you see, hear, etc.? Smartphone: Take videos and pictures to upload onto Moodle as evidence. Please see the instructional video about using YouTube to uplo

  Taken from the class Youth Ministry Create a Pictorial Essay: I mages from Adolescence Using images of your choice, map out the significant markers of your adolescent experience. Here are some prompts. You are not limited to these prompts. What were some important experiences? What brought you joy? What were the pain points? What questions shaped you? You may use your own images or ones you find online. You may collage them together in any uploadable or linkable format you wish.  Please also include a 500 word write up or recorded audio and/or visual narration about the images you are sharing based on your personal experiences. Your write up or narration should include evidence of having read the readings and listened to/watched the lectures. You may cite or paraphrase. Think dialogically about your personal story of adolescence and the course material this week.

Blue Note preaching assignment completed a unit in Preaching During Crisis and Trauma Introduction Artists are doing more  self-portraits   during the pandemic. It makes sense: what else can you do when you're stuck at home with nothing to look at but yourself, day after day? COVID-19 restrictions have made it difficult to hire models to paint, or to wander neighborhoods in search of human inspiration--and then get close enough to those faces to photograph them. The self-portrait, like the  Ars Poetica,  is a classic art form that most artists experiment with eventually; now, self-portraits have become a way to document our life in this pandemic. Here are some examples that the  Washingtonian  collected, from a call for submissions:   https://www.washingtonian.com/2020/05/15/check-out-these-dramatic-quarantine-self-portraits-taken-by-professional-photographers/ Preachers don't do self-portraits so much as we do  portraits .  (We could debate that statement, but let's hear i

Faith & Human Development Child Interview Subject:  Kitty Witty Age:  6 turning 7 in two months at the point of the interview Background:  Kitty Witty lives with her mother, father and brother who is approximately two years younger than her.  Economically the family would classify themselves as lower middle-class African Americans and lives in a predominately urban and African American subdivision.  Her father is a police officer and her mom is a stay at home parent who blogs for part time income.  Kitty Witty is first generation African American on her mother’s side and third generation African on her father’s side of the family.  Kitty Witty attends a language immersion school where she is dually educated in Spanish and English.  While Kitty Whitty’s mother believes in God personally, they do not attend church as a family and recently began attending a Presbyterian Wednesday Kids Club and dinner fellowship where the children are gain information regarding Christian education.  Ki

  Translation But this was greatly displeasing to Jonah.  He was miserable and incensed and he urgently sought God saying, “God, was this not what I said while I was in my own country?  I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God who is patient, slow to anger, full of loving kindness and one who repents from punishing!” “This is the reason I fled to Tarshish in the first place!” “So, since you have chosen to spare Nineveh, please take my breath from me.  For it is better, for me, that I am dead than alive because of your decision.” God responded to Jonah saying, “Is it right for you to be angry with me?” Then Jonah left the city and went east where he made a temporary shelter / booth.  He sat beneath it in its shade and waited to see what would become of the city. Introduction By way of consensus from the articles and commentaries read it is widely held that Jonah is a comedic text.  Almost as a comic strip of sorts which was intended for laughter.  “Rethinking Humor in the Bo

Hebrew Exegesis:  Esther 4:9-17 Translation So Hathach  returned, from the King’s gate  where Mordecai was mourning , and relayed Mordecai’s charge  to Esther. Esther replied, “Everyone knows, the servants and the people of the provinces, that if a man or woman enters into the inner court of the King without having been summoned  that there is a law which says that all, including me the Queen , will be put to death.  The one exception is if the King holds out his golden scepter to that person then they can live.  I have not been summoned by the King in thirty days.” They  told Mordecai what Esther said and he responded to her by saying, “Don’t think that you will be spared  (from decree /death)  because you are in the King’s palace - over all the other Jews.  Should you choose to remain silent, at this time, help and rescue for the Jews will come from elsewhere but you and your Father’s House will perish .   Could  it be that you are Queen , in this kingdom, at this time for this very

  Wannabe: NOUN wannabes (plural noun) · wanna-be (noun) · wanna-bes (plural noun) · wannabee (noun) · wannabees (plural noun) a person who tries to be like someone else or to fit in with a particular group of people. ADJECTIVE aspiring or wanting to be a specified type of person. ORIGIN 1970s: representing a pronunciation of want to be.   While the British pop group, The Spice Girls, did not coin the phrase “wannabe” their 1996 song entitled “Wannabe” definitely helped to popularize the term and embed it into today’s modern vernacular.   The term utilized as a noun is reminiscent of a person who is trying but not quite meeting the mark and carries a negative connotation.   However, as an adjective it refers to aspiring or wanting to be a specified type of person.   In this context we are under the assumption seminary students desire to do the work of the ministry.   To be successful at their form of it and particularly those aspiring to pastor.   They

This is a sermon from my Preaching In Times of Crisis and Trauma class.  Please see the assignment scope below: Assignment:  We all have connections to communities that fear their stories are coming to an end--that someone else, or something else, is writing the last chapter on their life together and there is nothing they can do about it. Their story and their agency to tell that story have disappeared. Imagining a future with hope is beyond them.  Write a 5-8 minute spoken reflection  that offers this community another narrative: a resurrection story.  A resurrection  invasion . And remember how Blount has framed resurrection, for crisis-hewn, apocalyptic preachers like us:  Resurrection is a weapon. Resurrection is God's weapon, for an invasion of the dead. Resurrection is the virus of life, infecting a world breeding on death.  Sermon: My dear fellow seminarians.   This has been a remarkable year, however not remarkable in the way we normally use that terminology.   This year h