Exploring Religious Questions Series - "Beyond Deep Gladness: Coming to Terms with Vocations We Don’t Choose”October 18, 2021 at 7–9 p.m.
We have all experienced various losses and forms of suffering, including during the ongoing pandemic. For over a year now, the global pandemic has brought death, depression, and despair.The pandemic has also exposed racial injustices and ongoing inequalities related to health care, income, and education. At the same time, we have had to pay closer attention to what nourishes us, fosters resilience, and sparks joy and positive change. In this series, faith leaders and specialists in the science of resilience help us reflect on anguish, hope, and the paradoxical capacity to embrace both grief and gratitude amidst loss and suffering.
Speaker: Dr. Deanna Thompson
Thompson is Director of the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community; and the Martin E. Marty Regents Chair in Religion and the Academy at St. Olaf College. Thompson has a B.A. from St. Olaf College, a Master of Arts in Religion from Yale Divinity School, and a Ph.D. in Theology from Vanderbilt University. Since her 2008 diagnosis of incurable cancer, Thompson has published several books related to suffering, grace, and gratitude, including: Hoping for More: Having Cancer, Talking Faith, and Accepting Grace (Cascade2012), a theo-memoir on living with cancer; The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World (Abingdon, 2016) on how digital tools can help the church better live its mission of caringfor those who suffer; and Glimpsing Resurrection: Trauma, Cancer, and Ministry (Westminster John Knox, 2018), a text that uses research on illness-related trauma to explore places in the Christian story for those undone by serious illness and offer glimpses of resurrection.