February 17, 2017 at 7:07 pm
“’The near enemy. It’s a psychological concept. Two emotions that look the same but are actually opposites. The one parades as the other, is mistaken for the other, but one is healthy and the other’s sick, twisted.’ (. . . ) “ ‘There are three couplings,’ said Myrna, herself leaning forward now, and whispering though she […]
February 9, 2017 at 4:37 pm
A few weeks ago during my meeting with Jess, she gave me a reflective exercise hshio do over the next two weeks. The exercise involved identifying and defining five qualities I valued from a list, then spending the next 10 days reflecting on how I embodied those values each day. The important part wasn’t to […]
February 2, 2017 at 11:09 pm
I listened to a song by Florence + The Machine this evening while working in the office at the chapel. Usually, the pulsating drumbeat and flowing melody of this song let me relax and clear my head for a while. But this time, the lyrics felt more melancholy than usual. “She can’t see the landscape anymore […]
January 19, 2017 at 8:36 pm
This past Sunday, I listened to a sermon delivered by the Reverend Jen Quigley, one of my supervisors at the chapel. Her sermon talked about the time she spent doing work at the Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center, handling documents that were in the Martin Luther King Jr. collection. While reading these documents, she came […]
December 8, 2016 at 9:05 pm
“A true war story, when truly told, makes the stomach believe.” I read this sentence in Tim O’Brien’s fictional novel The Things They Carried when I was a sophomore in high school. The chapter that this line came from, “How to Tell a True War Story,” recounts how one of his fellow soldiers died during the Vietnam war. […]
November 30, 2016 at 9:44 pm
When friends ask me how my Thanksgiving was this year, my answer can be summed up in one word: “quiet.” There are a couple of reasons for this, not the least of which being that I lost my voice as soon as Thanksgiving break began. To be fair, it did return within several hours, only […]
November 16, 2016 at 11:06 pm
When I first came to Marsh Chapel during my freshman year, I became known by the staff for consistently cleaning the dishes after Monday night community dinner. At the time, I didn’t think anything remarkable of this. Cleaning serves as a meditative practice that I find enjoyable most of the time, ever since my mother […]
November 9, 2016 at 10:52 pm
In light of the recent presidential election, the phrase “opening a Pandora’s box” seems rather apt right now. I remember reading the story behind this phrase as a kid, and wondering how all the evils of the world could be stuck with hope in one box (or jar, if you’re reading the Ancient Greek). Zeus was […]
November 2, 2016 at 10:09 pm
This afternoon I had my first experience actively teaching a class. It was in a discussion section for a neuroscience course, where I’ve been a teaching assistant (TA) for about half a semester. A few weeks ago, my teaching fellow (TF) and I were talking about observations for an education class I was taking with another […]
October 27, 2016 at 5:47 pm
Many years ago, I sang an oratorio piece in a choir at my congregation in Brookline. We spent months rehearsing and preparing for the performance in the spring. As a musician, it was by far one of the most challenging pieces I’ve ever taken on. At the same time, practicing and performing with the other […]