Stretching for solidarity in global Anabaptist education
In a time when the role of education is being contested, and church bodies are experiencing divisions, something new is coming together.
President Rebecca J. Stoltzfus
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Distinctively Goshen
Reflections from President Stoltzfus
My word for 2024
My word for the year is faith because it’s what I need. Faith is such a familiar word that it can sound bland, and so I’ll try to explain what I mean. Faith for me is the belief that God is love and that God is at work in the world and in me. In these times, I need to feel a deep confidence in the marrow of my bones that love is the most powerful force in the world.
Subversive ideas that have made us better
It is no secret and no surprise: Goshen College has been in many ways subverted – turned from below – by our inquiring and passionate students and faculty and the transformational changes they have brought about. John D. Roth, professor emeritus of history and a leading Anabaptist-Mennonite scholar, illuminates and honors that history in: "A Mennonite College for Everyone(?): Goshen College and the quest for identity and inclusion, 1960-2020."
Holding grief in community
Our campus and our broader community have been dealing with an unusual amount of grief this fall. This blog is adapted from comments I made in the special convocation on campus, “Holding Grief in Community,” on Oct. 26, 2022.
Thoughts from a moderately anxious woman of faith
Anxiety has become a national crisis. This is the conclusion of a U.S. panel of experts, and it is also the manifest reality for many of us who are parents, community members, pastors, teachers, employers – let’s just say for all of us who are humans.
Redefining community — what about our non-human neighbors?
If we are to save ourselves and our planet from the devastation we have wrought, it will require a redefinition of community.
Glad to be here
I thought to myself: If we must live through this ordeal (and indeed, we must), this is the community I want to be a part of.
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.
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.
Pondering Hispanic Heritage Month, Latinx and borders
Coming to Goshen College has helped me to realize how much I have to learn from the Latino community here.