Greetings!
I am pleased and grateful you are here. Here’s a bit of my background experience. Born into a Roman Catholic family on the South Side of Chicago, raised in the south suburbs, I migrated first to Northfield, Minnesota, to attend St. Olaf College. St. Olaf College is a college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, with a strong Nordic tradition.
In high school, I excelled in choir, then musical theater. My friends and I volunteered to sing with several church choirs in the area in order to gain further exposure to music, sight signing, and different music directors. As a result, I came to understand that each of these churches had faithful, dedicated people, who pretty much discussed Jesus similarly. I began to form the opinion that all of us are similarly human with differences, and the differences make us interesting. I think we’ll discuss this quite a bit in Blessings of Discord.
One of the tenets of St. Olaf College is that its students learn how to learn. The liberal arts are held in high regard there, partly because the genesis of the college was an intention to form leaders who would lead their communities with principles, values, and faith. I was there when the college celebrated its centennial anniversary. I recall that the centennial events featured retrospection held in balance with a pretty equal focus upon envisioning a future for the college and its community of faculty, students, parents, alumni, staff, and benefactors.
I had my first particular encounter with this St. Olaf ethos of learning how to learn when I was guided away from pursuing a music major toward a theater major. I devoted a gap period of a couple of years to find out whether I could get hired as an actor and begin gathering a resume. That seemed reasonably successful, yet I returned to college to practice learning, to encounter academics that would be a stretch. I also completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in speech and theater, while working part time for the campus NPR radio station.
There have been many years and experiences since that I look forward to sharing with you, my friends. I hope that the experiences of my life and faith journey may be instructive for those of us interested in human discord and what faith inspires for ways to help the world we perceive become still more just and peaceful. I hope others will respond, comment, and contribute to the conversation. Welcome!
Deacon Tim+