Criticism and Grace

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Ellayne Shaw

Trigger Warning: discussion of body issues (self-esteem, eating disorders, etc.)

Way back in January of this year, one of my aunts posted on Facebook about picking a word for the year. The idea was that you pick a word that becomes, more or less, your year’s theme. Some people picked thankfulness, others picked joy, I chose the word grace. My thinking going in was that I would work on extending grace both to others and to myself. Now, as we are on the eve of the new year, I think it’s a great time to reflect back on the year and see how it went. Continue reading →

Eucharisteo

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Ellayne Shaw

Picture a dazzling spring day in the Pacific Northwest. In a small classroom at a Christian college, five senior English majors sit in a semi-circle, attentively listening to their professor as she elaborates on medieval theology. The course? Chaucer and his contemporaries.

This was my last English class in undergrad, and I remember it well. Not only were Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales entertaining, but the history surrounding his tales is remarkable.
We studied the Crusades, of course, and we studied contemporary theology. After all, the church had a lot of influence in Chaucer’s society, so he slipped in all kinds of references to Christian living and Augustinian thought. Continue reading →

Remembering to Breathe

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Ellayne Shaw

by Calliopejen1, from Wikimedia Commons

I’m standing on a worn wooden floor, marked with dents and silvery grey streaks. Two walls of this large room are lined with floor to ceiling mirrors, and the outside wall is covered in large picture windows. It’s an unusually warm spring day, and I can feel sweat on the small of my back from the warm-up. I snap my heels together à la Dorothy Gale, and the steel taps on the bottoms of my shoes click pleasantly. The sound blends in to the other clicks around the room as the rest of the class fidgets between songs. Continue reading →