Meijer’s Garden and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan
“The Covid-19 pandemic underscored how intricately interconnected and dependent on complex global systems we are and how full of vulnerabilities and inequalities those systems are.”
“Healing. Refugia are places to heal. We seek to create healing contexts for people and the earth. We recognize healing as redemptive work.”
Debra Reinstra
It makes a difference where you read! Reading the book “Refugia Faith” in Western Michigan immediately connected me with the author Debra Rienstra. The author is a professor of English at Calvin University who is a careful observer of our current plights. She is particularly cognizant of the role of the Covid-19 pandemic and the precarity that has been introduced in our visions of the future.
In her book, she has managed to weave together an alternative vision of healing that looks for the small responses of each of us to address the BIG issues of our dilemmas. There is no denial of our losses. She describes a kind of resilience that has its roots in faith communities and an understanding of our connectedness to the “other” as found in the created world around us.
For me, reading in a place that I have called “home” allowed me to see the “awe” in what I have frequently taken for granted or ignored.
Thanks for the reminders of where healing is happening in the ordinary and small places of our lives no matter where you live!
Marvin
References
Rienstra, Debra. Refugia Faith (pages16, 227). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition
Hage, M. L. (2012). Kingdom Learning.
http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2012/02/kingdom-learning.html
Hage, M. L. (2013). Resistance/Resilience.
http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2013/08/resistanceresilience.html
Hage, M. L. (2017). Home.
http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2017/03/home.html
Hage, M. L. (2012). The Awe of Healing.
http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2012/01/awe-of-healing.html
