Week One
Theme: “Testing in the Wilderness – Company of Beasts and Ministry of Angels”
by the Very. Rev. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, ThD, Dean Emerita
Begin by watching the Video Reflection:
Questions for Reflection and Discussion:
- How do you reflect on the ambiguous metaphor of wilderness in your life right now? Is it a battle? A contest? Is there hunger? For what?
- What are the communal dimensions of time in the wilderness, for your community, parish, the nation, the worldwide body?
- Where might you see angels and how are they “serving”?
- Where/how are you able to glimpse a pale crocus or a cool trickle in the desert?
- The prophet cries, make a way through and out of the wilderness. What might that look like for you, individual and community?
- How might you be called to serve as the angels did and as the women who followed Jesus?
Scripture and Other References:
- Isaiah 35:1-7
- Psalm 91
- Mark 1:12-13
- Kittredge, “Wolf Moon,” Anglican Theological Review, Summer 2011.
- Kittredge, A Lot of the Way Trees Were Walking: Poems from the Gospel of Mark (Wipf & Stock, 2015).
Download the video reflection here. Search for the download icon under the speakers name.
Download a PDF of all content for Week One here.
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The Very Rev. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge
The Very Rev. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge serves as Vice Chair of The Church Pension Fund Board of Trustees and is currently the assisting priest at The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Austin, Texas. In 2013, she became dean and president of the Seminary of the Southwest after serving on the faculty as the Ernest J. Villavaso, Jr. Professor of New Testament and as Academic Dean. Prior to joining the seminary faculty in 1999, Cynthia taught at Harvard University and the College of the Holy Cross. She was a member of the steering committee for Theological Education in the Anglican Communion, chair of the board of the Episcopal Evangelism Society, and president of the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars. She is a contributor to The New Oxford Annotated Bible and the Women's Bible Commentary, and the author of Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John and Community and Authority: The Rhetoric of Obedience in the Pauline Tradition. She co-edited The Bible in the Public Square: Reading the Signs of the Times and Walk in the Ways of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. She is the co-editor of the Fortress Commentary on the Bible: The New Testament. She also wrote A Lot of the Way Trees Were Walking: Poems from the Gospel of Mark. She was elected to her first term on The Church Pension Fund Board of Trustees in 2022. She received her MDiv, ThM, and ThD from Harvard and a BA from Williams College.