Imagine this
At a time when threats to the life and people we love seem overwhelming and out of control, it is essential that we focus on those things that matter most, and those things that we can control. Our imagination is one such thing.
President Rebecca J. Stoltzfus
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Distinctively Goshen
Reflections from President Stoltzfus
100,000 COVID deaths, George Floyd and Pentecost Sunday
I’m writing on Pentecost Sunday, filled with powerful images of breath and fire. I think of 100,000 people (and many more) who ceased to breathe. And one unarmed black man named George Floyd, who could not breathe under the weight of a white police officer on his neck. And the fires that have erupted in the midst of protest, leaving all of us mesmerized and breathless.
An incredible ask
Teaching through this transition has been one great act of love on the part of Goshen’s faculty. Last week I reached out to a few of those involved in this massive undertaking and asked them to convey something of their experiences to us.
A conversation with Christian Yoder ’80, global health researcher, in the midst of COVID-19
Goshen College graduate Christian Yoder ’80 is one of many GC alumni turning his efforts toward medical and public health solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic. I recently sent him some questions. Here are some of his thoughts about what we are experiencing and seeing, and the role he is playing.
Checklist part 3: The most powerful ways to disarm our fear
The most powerful ways to disarm our fear are spiritual. Christianity offers us tried and true practices such as prayer, contemplation, singing and approaches to Scripture that, when practiced deeply, move us into a strongly felt sense of love. People over the centuries have described this sense as “expansion” (Teresa of Avila), “a strange warming of the heart” (John Wesley) or abiding in love (Jesus).
Checklist part 2: ‘Emotions need motion’
We can’t skip the stages of grief, but we can be kind to ourselves and one another as we flow through them — sometimes in waves and loops.
A checklist for all of us
I keep a sticky note on my computer monitor with my personal checklist. It’s a reminder, especially when I am stressed or overwhelmed, to go through my checklist, take stock of these dimensions of myself, and to devote attention and care to all of these capacities. This is more than self-care, it is self-equipping.
A special message for our seniors and graduate students
With all of the recent changes on our college campus due to COVID-19, I wanted to share a message with our seniors and graduate students in these challenging and unprecedented times.
COVID-19 calls on our better angels
I’m not an expert on viruses, but I do have a lifetime of experience in public health. Public health is about the health of all of us, as a community. Public health does not deny our innate need to attend to our own safety and survival, but it also calls us to do more than that: to act on behalf of the common good.
‘We needed this’
Last week I accompanied the Voices of the Earth (formerly named the Women’s World Music Choir) on their spring break tour in Puerto Rico.