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SKSM Now Accepting Course Proposals for 2012-2015
2012-2013 First Call Deadline: June 6, 2011
The Curriculum Committee at Starr King School for the Ministry is now acceptingcourse applications for its 2012-2013, 2013-2014, and 2014-2015 course offerings. The committee decides the Adjunct Faculty courses to be offered and awards student teaching fellowships each year.
The deadline for submitting proposals for the 2012-2013 year is June 6, 2011. Submissions completed by this time will be considered on June 13 with final decisions forthe 2012-2013 year on October 3, 2011. The committee is willing to receive course proposals for 2013-2015 at any time and will keep them on file for future consideration periods.
At Starr King School, our Adjunct Faculty adds an array of talents and diversity to our course offerings. Many adjunct faculty members are Starr King graduates who return to the school with broad expertise in progressive religious issues. Ministers and religious leaders, activists and organizers, doctoral students at the GTU or elsewhere, and other practitioners with particular expertise are all welcome to apply.
In all of our classes, we prepare people for Unitarian Universalist ministry and progressive religious leadership in society in ways that counter oppressions, create just and sustainable communities, and encourage multi-religious engagement. Along with traditional semester-long classes, we invite applications that incorporate community fieldwork, praxis and theological reflection; local, cultural or international immersion sites in diverse communities; and various modes of engagement including online courses, one-day workshops, week-long intensives and half-semester classes, to be taught either at the school or in the community.
In accepting course proposals from a wide range of religious disciplines, the committee supports the school’s curricular framework to offer courses which prepare students holistically for religious leadership through competency in the eight following areas. The committee seeks to develop a well-rounded curriculum around these fields and offices of religious leadership.
Life in Religious Community and Interfaith Engagement
Provides education and training for the office of leadership as Pastor, and typically includes courses in Functional and Pastoral Theology and Cultural and Historical Studies of Religions
The office of Prophet, and typically includes courses in Ethics and Social Theory, and Religion and Society
Sacred Text and Interpretation
The office of Preacher, and typically includes courses in Biblical Studies, Biblical languages, Homiletics, and Cultural and Historical Studies of Religions)
History of Dissenting Traditions and the Thea/ological Quest
The office of leadership as Scholar, and typically includes courses in History
Spiritual Practice and the Care of the Soul
The office of Counselor, and typically includes courses in Religion and Psychology and Spirituality
Thea/ology in Culture and Context
The office of Thea/ologian, and typically includes courses in Systematic andPhilosophical Theology and Cultural and Historical Studies of Religions
Educating for Wholeness and Liberation
The office of leadership as Teacher, and typically includes courses in Theology and Education
The office of Artist, and typically includes courses in Liturgical Studies, Art and Religion, and Spirituality
For more information on these threshold areas or Starr King School for the Ministry’s educational programs, please visithttp://www.sksm.edu/info/news_and_events.php#courseproposals
If you are interested in applying, please fill the form, which is available on our website.
Please be aware that before the committee makes its final selection those applicants who are shortlisted will be asked for additional information about the proposed course and their educational experience or background.
We ask that your proposal be sent electronically if at all possible. Electronic proposalsshould be sent to jwaters@sksm.edu. All applications will receive an email response, to confirm that the school has received your proposal.
Starr King School for the Ministry is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Persons from traditionally under-represented populations are especially encouraged to apply.
Sincerely,
Curriculum Committee
Dakotta Alex, Student Representative
Tom Bozeman, Student Representative
Ibrahim Farajajé, Chair, Faculty Representative
Rebecca Parker, Faculty Representative
Facilitator: Caitlin S. Cotter
One of the things I do most in my work as an environmental educator is encourage kids to touch things. We feel the texture of a tree’s bark, judge its girth and guess its age. We scoop things out of streams and sit in quiet circles to meet animals that once lived in the wild. Yes, you may feed that earth worm to the box turtle. No you may not poke the rabbit- she will bit you. Of course you can hold the feather, the bear claw, the leaf. Be gentle, practice stillness, do not be afraid.
My favorite thing is getting kids to handle dirt. Earth, soil, humus, clay, gravel, silt, sand… mud. Mud is the best. It’s squishy, it’s messy, it stains and it squelches. There’s nothing earthier, more real or honest then mud. You can’t help but be present when there’s mud between your toes, in your socks, or painted on your face. Jumping in mud puddles is a holy level of glee. Shaping mud into pies, slip and sliding across muddy grass, and sinking in the mud up to your knees are holy acts.
These are holy because they are acts of connection to our parent earth, our speck of cosmic dust. When we hold a pile of dirt or a chunk of clay in our hands we are holding a piece of the universe, a piece in its own way as majestic and amazing as a black hole or supernova.
Feel the weight of the clay you were handed with your program. Does it have a smell? Note its texture. Know its potential, consider its history, feel your relationship to this bit of the galaxy. Do you see the holiness of this mundane scrap of earth? Mold it with your fingers, let them be stained and feel the joy of that, this evidence that you have touched another part of our planet. Like a child sitting in the middle of a mud puddle, be present to this embodied experience. Like the children meeting the box turtle, take this moment to be still and quiet and attentive to what your senses have to teach you.
Earth is a dynamic process, and we are a part of that. We live here, and our parent planet holds us even as today we hold this piece of clay. Let us be gentle with each other.
Facilitator: Caitlin S. Cotter 
I was born in raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, the buckle on the bible belt- a city where not even the salads were vegetarian, public transportation and environmental consciousness were a joke, and we often proudly proclaimed that we had more churches per person than any other city in the country. I left for Alaska less than a week after graduating from high school, eager to find places where progressive thought was something that existed outside of the walls of a Unitarian Universalist church. Knoxville was a place where I never felt like I belonged, and the summer when I went home from college to work only served to enforce my image of this city as ignorant, uber-conservative, and homophobic. I continued to visit my parents and my church, but I was certain I would never want to really return to the Tennessee Valley.
This means, of course, that I was away on the day when the unemployed truck driver walked into my church with a sawed off shotgun hidden in a guitar case. I was not there when he opened fire in the crowded sanctuary, killing two people and injuring six others. I was working at a Girl Scout camp in Pennsylvania, and I found out what had happened at TVUUC when my father called the camp office to check on how I was handling the news.
The shooting seemed a confirmation of my worst fears, and beyond my worst nightmares. This community that raised me with the message of acceptance had been targeted precisely because it was a safe space. The shooter told the police that he took his depression and anger out on my church in large part because we “never met a pervert they just didn’t embrace.” Of course, I thought, this is what it’s come to and no doubt the rest of the city will be shaking their heads and saying it’s a shame but we brought it on ourselves.
What happened in the wake of this violent act took me entirely by surprise. I did not expect the leaders and various faith communities of my hometown to come out in solidarity with our church and all that we stood for. I could not have imagined that this church where love lived would inspire a national campaign working for equality, diversity, and human rights. I was astonished to realize the members of my congregation truly were the heroes I believed them to be and that the people of Knoxville, Tennessee were my people after all. The outpouring of statements of support, assistance for our members, and public acts of interfaith prayer and worship took my breath away.
I think what is so remarkable about TVUUC is that as wounded people our response was love, and love was what we received.
This gives me hope, that it is possible to make a difference, that standing up for what you believe in and sticking with your principles can shift the world around you. Change does happen. I know this is true because I went back to live in Knoxville and found a copy of Out magazine for sale at a supermarket checkout stand. There is a bustling vegetarian restaurant across the street from where my mother teaches Tai Chi, a new county-wide recycling program, and an improved busing system throughout the city. The safe space for queer kids my church started has spread to local high schools, and the anti-bullying work of our youth honored by President Obama. Our interfaith work supporting immigrant families who come to the area, agitating for conservation and green energy, supporting non-violent peace movements, and taking on oppression whenever we could.. has borne fruit.
I am proud of where I come from, and proud of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist in East Tennessee.
I stand on the side of love, and invite you to do the same.
A Worship Service: Everything is at Risk: The Counter Oppressive Work of Tupac Amaru Shakur and Toni Morrison
Gratitude to: Mr. Bill, Rev. Dr. Blake, Christina, Jennifer, Jasen, Crystal, Gabi, Chole, Lesane, Stafanie Smith, Octavio
Introduction to Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a teacher, a guest curator at the Louvre museum in Paris, a Nobel prize winning author, a human being labeled as an African American woman. And as I hope to convince you today, she is a public intellectual, a force of story and history, and she has produced not just truth or beauty, but A DISTINCTIVE STYLE OF action….
revolutionary thought and action that is both recognized and mis-recognized by people all over the world. For me, her work is not just important, it is necessary. It is not just relevant, it is crucial. it is not just shocking or offensive, it is TRUE.
Toni Morrison, (and that is not her given name) takes another look at what we ‘think we know’ and asks us to think again. In her words, she invites us to make ‘a narrative gearshift,” (Playing in the Dark p.x) in our patterns of thinking.
Morrison holds a mirror up for Amerika to gaze into if it dares to see first the horror of the African American forced presence in the America’s, second the trials that accompany the figure of ‘woman’ in history, and finally, the tremendous power for creativity, redemption and love that people, black people, black women have inside of them.
For me it brings to mind the idea at the heart of the pedagogy of the oppressed: Oppressors do not have the capacity or the power to liberate anyone. It is only the strength and the insight of the oppressed which has the power to set us free of ourselves-as we have been constructed by colonizers.
You may know her novels, her plays, her articles, her Nobel prize acceptance speech, or maybe you know her. But today, I hope to offer you another look at the person hood of someone they will still be reading in 500 years.
Introduction to Tupac Shakur:
Tupac Amaru Shakur was a black man in Amerika. he grew up poor, showed unusual creativity and he died violently, in a drive by shooting in front of hundreds of witnesses. This murder is still to be solved.
Tupac was a human being. But he may be known to you as a ‘gangster rapper’ or even a movie actor. or maybe you know him as a convict. Or maybe you know him as a martyr.
or maybe you have no idea who I’m talking about.
But however you know or don’t know him, today I want to share something with you about this man, and the journey of this human being that is Important. no, it is unavoidable, and it is gritty and it is necessary.
Tupac’s mother was a black panther, and she was in prison when she was carrying him inside of her body. She had to get a court order for a glass of milk and one egg every day.
Before Tupac was born, she was released, and much to her surprise, given her inability to carry a child to term up to that point, she gave birth to the man we are calling Tupac Amaru Shakur (which also, was not his given name.)
Tupac changed music or ‘hip hop’. He was here for only a moment, but in that moment he changed the world around him. He spoke to a generation, and his life became a CREATION myth for young and old people alike.
I often wonder what his legacy really is, given the confusion and the violence around his passing and the songs which he is best known for.
But I also know this is important, and it is mythic and it is relevant to our lives as religious leaders and as human beings.
Sermon on Toni Morrison:
The woman I am talking about today is known to the world as Toni Morrison. But Toni Morrison is not her real name, and I suggest that Toni Morrison is therefore a creation. there is a human being behind this name, and that human being is an incredibly complicated story teller, writer and revolutionary thinker who has overcome the limitations and expectations placed upon her as a black woman, from Loraine Ohio, where she says she “returns to” when she begins writing.
Toni Morrison is more of an action, a happening, a voice, which speaks to people all over the world but emerges from the conflicting crossroads of race, gender, in Amerika a story that reflects the universality of Morrison’s work for me is from when she went to speak at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the students and teachers were gathered to greet her with signs, which read. “Toni Morrison Entre nosotros.” which means, Toni Morrison among us.
During her presentation, the audience was asked if they wished a translation of Toni’s comments and reading into Spanish. Members of the audience bellowed out, ‘NO, PorFavor No!’ ‘We came to hear Toni Morrison’s voice.”
“We can understand her in her language because we are IN her novels.” “Toni Morrison is Entre Nosotros.”
The Mexican people could understand her work as reflecting something from their own experience. for those people, Morrison was not an ‘other’… she wrote about their lives and things they knew deep inside.
In this way, Morrison speaks to and represents not just the struggle of women and African Americans, though she does directly speak to that, she represents something that all people who have suffered oppression can relate to.
Toni Morrison historically fits into the category of the ‘other’ but as I think this story shows, ‘we’ are often others. And when we realize this, how much more important does her writing become? She is talking to us, and she is I think asking us to do something if we are wiling to listen.
Toni Morrison is able to use our patriarchal colonial language and tell stories about unspeakable things, and give voice to people formerly unheard.
Considering language , She talks about why she chose to begin her first book the “bluest eye” with the words “quiet as it’s kept’ because she is about to share an unspeakable secret with the reader. She writes ” I did not want the reader to have time to wonder. “What do I have to do, to give up, in order to read this? what defense do I need, what distance maintain?’ because I know and the reader does not that this is a terrible story about things one would rather not know anything about.”
In this case, this story is about a little black girl who is raped by her father, abused by her community and finally takes refuge in the idea that her eyes are blue, which to her means beautiful.
This is not a ‘Santa Claus is coming to ‘town’ story, and the ugly duckling in this case does not become the swan. This story reflects the consequences of racism and violence that is happening every day, and often remains unseen and unheard. Part of what unspeakable means is that you are isolated in whatever has occurred and that there are no words to describe it and even if you find those words, other people will not understand you. And if you do speak up, the tendency is to be blamed and ridiculed for being hurt in the first place.
In a situations of tremendous hurt, being able to speak, or to feel seen and heard, listened to, is a powerful piece that can potentially begin a process of healing. Feeling all alone, with shame or racial self-hatred is probably one of the worst things that can happen to a person.
And Toni Morrison is able to speak to that, tell these stories and shine the light into the underbelly of Amerikan society and the consequences of our so called ‘freedom and justice for all.
The first time I met “Toni Morrison,” I was 13 years old. I didn’t really know who she was. When I was with her, I didn’t notice her eyes or her skin, or even her voice. The thing that I remember from that day was her presence, and what I sensed from her stillness.
Toni Morrison in her novels describes the horrors of racism, sexism, and the pain of being isolated inside of trauma, which demonstrate her understanding. Yet when I think of her that day, it is not the horror that stands out to me, it was her presence and her creative power for reinterpretation. she knows the cost of being black in Amerika, a woman in the world and human in the cosmos and she is urging us to rethink and seek inside of ourselves for a reformative humanizing response to oppression.
I sensed that she had creative power roiling inside of her… and I realized that I had it too! We all have the potential for this power because it comes from inside. and that power gives us the ability to reinterpret and take action…. and even when the world hurts like murder, there are still ways to carry on and keep moving. life is not fair, and lots of this is not okay, but we alive and our hearts and our minds are still capable of resisting and rethinking the injustice of the American nightmare. One of our most important ways to do that is through retelling the stories, and creating artistic communiques to reach out to the world.
Toni Morrison’s writing asks us to give something up to read her words. She asks us to take part in what is happening. This is why I say she is not just a person but a revolutionary act. Her books are not something you read, but something your experience.
She is a myth maker, using the stories of the past to press us to reconsider and look at how we benefit from, or how we unjustly pay for the society we live in. I believe this comes from her understanding that ‘everything is at risk” and she has created Toni Morrison to speak to us about it. I suggest that for Morrison, the cost of our trying and failing is not as high as the cost of us not trying at all.
(impromptu summary about her presence in the world, literary and beyond)
There was also a sermon about Tupac Shakur, but I did not write it down, and what I did write down I lost.
I discovered Tupac when I was 13 and I wrote my Senior thesis about the religious significance of his life work and death. Therefore, I felt it was unnecessary to write something down, since my experience of Tupac comes out of my heart.
Keep Climbing
In this weeks chapel service …. March 29, 2011
Facilitators: Christina Gargiullo, Rose, Erin Levy, Sarah Nimmo, Deborah Addington, Munro Sickafoose, Octavio Carrasco, William Levwood, and Caitlin Cotter.
The occasion was Ostara, the spring equinox. The ritual was based around the Sumerian myth in which Inanna, goddess of civilization and fertility, visited her sister Ereshkigal, the queen of the underworld and the dead. Participants moved among the thresholds between light and dark; day and night; inner contemplation and outer growth. The center altar visually represented Ostara’s balance of these forces. We began seated around this altar, surrounded by sheer curtains. During the ritual some stayed and drummed or meditated, while others passed through the curtains and walked a symbolic journey through the seven gates between the upper and lower worlds. At each of these gates Ereshkigal’s guards challenged Inanna to give up something, and priest/esses challenged ritual participants, too: mistakes, old griefs, work undone, voices unheard, left at seven gate altars in the form of beads. Heartbeat drumming, murmured questions, and the clinks of beads into glass collection bowls filled the room. As people finished moving through the gates, they picked up drums and joined those in the center.
Rose spoke for Ereshkigal. She called for participants to face their own guilt and fears, and in facing them to move through them. She cried for the pain that is not heeded. People sat in silence for a long moment. The drumming slowly began again, and the gatekeepers invited those who had journeyed to retrace their steps through the altars. When Inanna returned to the realm of the living, she retrieved each symbol of power that she had left behind. As ritual participants returned through the gates, they were invited to take up joys, new wisdom, work well done, and beauty co-created. After the last gate people gathered again in the center to share food and community, and to thank the goddesses and elements acknowledged at the start of ritual.
These are just a few downloadable documents of the many in the spiritual direction and counseling 3 ring binder across from the reception desk. Click below to access these.
Comprehensive list created by CDSP
CDSP – Directory of Spiritual Directors, Therapists, & Retreat Centers – 2005
Graduates of SKSM
Marie Pappas
Susan Schulman
Other Resources:
Rev. Joellynn Monahan, MEd, MD
Julie H. Baker, MS, MFTI
Hilltop Counseling Center
Rabbi Steven Fisdel – Spiritual Counseling
Don Mack, MFT – Student Psychotherapy
A Women’s Circle
TransFaith Online – supporting the spiritual vitality of transgender and gender non-conforming people.
