At the January, 2025, meeting of the Seminary of the Southwest Board of Trustees, the board unanimously voted to approve the promotion of Dr. Claire Miller Colombo to Associate Professor of Writing, Theology, and the Arts.
“This vote to give Dr. Colombo tenure and promotion is a wonderful acknowledgement of the many ways she has gifted our community with her knowledge, skill, and spiritual wisdom,” said Dr. Scott Bader-Saye, dean and president. “As director of the Center for Writing and the Arts she has helped us explore the ways that creativity sparks revelation. As a professor of theopoetics, she has introduced students to a field of study that highlights words, materiality, art, and imagination as pathways into knowledge of the divine. And she has taken this passion for deepening spiritual life into her leadership of our Masters in Spiritual Direction program. I am so grateful for all the ways she makes us a better place.”
Dr. Colombo directs the Center for Writing and the Arts, has been teaching at Southwest since 2012, and became member of the MDiv faculty in 2020. She also coordinates and teaches in the Master of Arts in Spiritual Direction program. Her work in these areas allows her to weave together her interests in writing, spiritual practice, and theological expression. “I am so fortunate to serve a community who values the kind of interdisciplinary work I do,” Colombo says. “Often, when I visit spiritual communities who also value creativity, people say, ‘You have my dream job!’ I am always happy to reply, ‘Yes, I have my dream job, too!’”
Colombo produces the seminary’s literary and arts journal, Soul by Southwest; she oversees the delivery of writing support services; and she researches and writes at the crossroads of poetics, theology, and spirituality (a field also known as theopoetics). Her most recent publication, “‘Something Mystical Is Happening’: The New Sobriety as Spiritual Awakening,” appeared in the December issue of Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction. The article explores how spiritual directors can understand and serve those engaged in changing their relationship with alcohol as a spiritual practice — a practice, Colombo says, that “also opens up space and energy for creativity in a person’s life.”
