Each summer, we gather with friends, and friends of friends, to join in an important conversation about our shared life together and our shared call in the world. It’s a chance to meet some bright and interesting people, practice the lost art of curiosity, and have a good conversation about something that matters.

Alumni and current students, church folks from across the metro, faculty and staff, and board members are all a part of this milieu – you are invited too! We’ll be engaging with the recent work of David Brooks, How to Know a Person; and/or a subsequent lecture he offered at UVA on the theological underpinnings of this book. Once you RSVP, we’ll be in touch with more details!

This event is one way we are continuing and expanding the conversation our students began during the school year on division and polarization, this time focusing on what might be done on a more intimate level – in our neighborhoods, schools, and homes. Emerging research and political thought locates loneliness and isolation as some of the root causes of our discontent – as individuals, as communities and as a nation. There are practical steps we can take to heal some of the divisions among us, which can also animate and undergird the important policy work that needs to happen.

We are called to both love our neighbors as ourselves, whether we agree with them or not. We are also called to be repairers of the breach, and restorers of the streets we live in. This is a monumental and complex call and one we cannot do on our own. Luckily we have one another!

Please RSVP here today! I’m looking forward to being in conversation with you! -Pastor Kate

PS – If you’d like extra credit, you can check out this book on Hannah Arendt where among other things, the author elucidates Arendt’s work that links loneliness and totalitarianism. Don’t have capacity for that? You could also listen to this On Being podcast episode with the author for a conversation on similar themes!