Articles by Eileen Campbell-Reed, Academic Entrepreneur

January 14, 2010Epiphany 2010 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Epiphany III

Storytelling . . .

In 2001, as I was working my way through doctoral courses in Religion, Psychology and Culture at Vanderbilt, I read pastoral theologian, Andy Lester’s book, Hope in Pastoral Care and Counseling. In that book he articulates several important ideas including the notion of “future stories.” The stories we tell ourselves about the future can have as much impact on us in the present as do all the stories we tell about our pasts.

For instance right now I’m carrying around a host of future stories about everything from what time I’ll turn out the lights tonight to what movie I might see this weekend, to where I’ll be teaching and what I will be researching 20 years from now. The power of future stories seems obvious when you try it on. But it is a significant challenge to the psychological traditions which mostly focus on the past as the main or only key to understanding personal identity or behavior in the present.

January 9, 2010Epiphany 2010 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Epiphany II

Tomorrow is the second Sunday in Epiphany.* Many churches will read and hear the story of Jesus’ baptism. Some churches will invite worshippers to remember their own baptisms. I want to remember mine with you for a moment . . . I was baptized on Easter Sunday, 1973. I know because the date and occasion are written in a Living Bible (very popular in the 1970s) that my parents gave me on that day. What I remember vividly is the little white dress I wore that Sunday.

January 6, 2010January 6, 2020Epiphany 2010 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Epiphany I

A wing and a prayer . . . This morning I prayed in darkness. And then I saw a great light. It was the sun. Filling up the all of the cold morning. My husband called me into the kitchen. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sparrow breathe,” he said. Not taken to fits of poetry or even flowery prose, he had to be speaking literally. He began to explain. It seems that the sun is at just the right mid-winter angle to fill our backyard bird feeder with light. If they perched just right the birds at the breakfast buffet were silhouetted by the rising sun. As they took their turns and tilted their heads just so, puff, their tiny warm breath exhaled in a little cloud.

January 2, 2010Christmastide 2009-10 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Christmas III

one tiny nest
perched high against a cold december sky
what comfort?
soaking up the gray morning

December 30, 2009Christmastide 2009-10 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Christmas II

Pastors don’t pray much it seems. They are busy. But they are not filling their time with prayer, meditation or personal devotion. At least a study that came out this week says this is the case. Seems to me that more than families are likely hurting if pastoral leaders are spending so little time attending to their own spiritual lives. But lest I sound too judgmental, I remember well the struggle to care for my own spiritual well-being while also attending to the spiritual well-being of those I served in the years when I was full-time on a church staff. Even when I was doing what I knew to do to care for my own soul, it was not always the most effective or spiritually nourishing thing I could be doing.

December 26, 2009Christmastide 2009-10 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Christmas I

Christmas has finally come and gone and the night is deepening around me. Silent but for the tapping of keys on my computer and the distant whine of a train whistle. A few cracks and pops say that my in-laws’ house is still settling in for a long winter’s nap. Family Christmas celebrations are complete. Scraps of wrapping paper litter the floor and the bare-bottom tree seems a little spent.

Christmastide, being one of the shortest seasons of the liturgical year, celebrates the revealing of God in the world, the inbreaking of a Living Word into the mundane and daily routines of our lives. But how does the season live on through the year? Or should it?

December 23, 2009Advent 2009 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Advent VIII

Unhinged and upended . . .

In my first Advent post I wrote about opening the little doors on an Advent calendar [link]. Today I’ve been thinking about a different set of doors.

It was 1993. (Don’t tell me, please, if you were in kindergarten that year.) I was just graduating from seminary. And I attended a worship service in Birmingham at the annual Baptist Women in Ministry (BWIM) meeting. Nancy Hastings Sehested was the preacher that day. The occasion was a ten-year anniversary of BWIM.

December 20, 2009December 20, 2021Advent 2009 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Advent VII

Ten weather balloons.
One contact lens.
One very young, very pregnant girl.
Needles in a haystack, all.

December 16, 2009August 18, 2021Advent 2009 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Advent VI

Reshaping the body with prayer

As I lay face up on the table a few weeks ago, my massage therapist interrupted my reverie.

She said, “Do you know that your right leg is listing outward.”

“Nope, I had no idea really.” She was standing at my feet and gently adjusted my wayward right leg. “Now that you mention it . . . I notice what you are saying.” My left knee cap pointed straight toward the ceiling, but my right one was tilted outward.

December 12, 2009Advent 2009 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Advent V

On Thursday of this week I found myself stunned by beauty twice in an hour. Let me tell you about the first of those two moments. The evening before I’d been in something of a foul mood, feeling anger and disappointment, which can take their toll on a body. But the drive and conversation between St. Paul and Collegeville, Minnesota had tempered and mellowed me. I was open in mind and heart, relaxed in body, but I was unprepared for what lay ahead.

December 9, 2009Advent 2009 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Advent IV

I’ve fallen for a rock band. Shocking, I know. Well, when you hear this song, I think you’ll understand my attraction. The group, Switchfoot released their latest album in November. “Hello Hurricane” has some fabulous tracks, and I’ve been filling myself up with them this Advent season.

December 5, 2009Advent 2009 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Advent III

It is late in the season of Ordinary Time. I am sitting in worship. Not in my usual home congregation but another setting. I find myself sinking deeper and deeper into despair.

December 2, 2009Advent 2009 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Advent II

Falling . . .

The thing about falling is not the falling. That can be lovely in itself. Remember the “Nestea Plunge” into a pool on a hot summer day? Or falling into a really big pile of autumn leaves? Ever tried skydiving or hang gliding? Even running is actually falling and constantly catching yourself with each step. And of course there is falling in love . . .

No, the thing about falling is not the falling. It’s the hitting bottom. The landing. The thing about falling is the end of the fall.

November 28, 2009January 14, 2022Advent 2009 by Eileen Campbell-Reed

Advent I : Be Present to This Moment

I first learned the word “Advent” not as a season, but as a description of small cardboard calendars that my parents brought home from Europe. Each year following Thanksgiving, we unpacked them from musty decoration boxes . . .

Author: Eileen Campbell-Reed