‘08 Alumnus Josh Sandoz shares his experience of growing up an expatriate in Seoul, South Korea, and the questions he carries because of this experience. Josh is offering a workshop for adult Third Culture Kids at The Seattle School on April 6. Learn more about this event.

At seven years old, I experienced a mind-bending crisis of identity. There I sat, watching the LA Olympics on a small black and white TV, as boxers from the United States and South Korea took the ring and began pounding one another senseless in mutual pursuit of gold and glory. The official result of that match? I have no idea. I was too preoccupied, furiously wondering if I fully belonged anywhere in this world.

Born in Seoul to foreign missionary parents, I grew up a Third Culture Kid (TCK), part of an international community, attending a school with students from over fifty different nations. Experiencing myself “at-home” as a foreigner in South Korea and as a “hidden immigrant” when visiting my passport country, the United States, it’s not uncommon for me to find myself wondering to this day, “What is going on here?”

One way to look at that question would be to call it an anxiety-laced problem demanding quick resolution. Honestly, I’ve tried traveling that road, and I found the quality of adventure there quite lacking. However, as one of my favorite TCK authors, J.R.R. Tolkien, is known to have written, “Not all those who wander are lost.” Thusly, I found myself some years ago wandering to Seattle, stumbling through the doorway of a school that seemed to hold questions in an entirely different light.

During my counseling psychology studies at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, I was challenged to embrace genuine questions more deeply and cultivate a spirit of honest curiosity that could be generative in an ongoing way. Applied to my own emotionally-charged questions, this capacity to honor them more fully has come to serve me well, both personally and professionally, as I continue to extend and receive care for that seven-year-old me, full of Olympic-sized panic, and his many kindred spirits that I continue to meet in Third Culture Kids of all ages.

While in graduate school, I kept strong ties to the international TCK community. Having served for two years as the Director of Child and Family Support Services with Interaction International, I continue to help facilitate Transition Seminars for TCKs moving to North America, and I like offering talks and workshops on the TCK experience. I get to meet with TCKs in my daily work as a mental health therapist in private practice, helping them consider deep questions of cultural identity, grief, loss, and the experience of what it’s been like to grow up “in-between.”

In addition to the “in-between” nature of my upbringing, my training and profession ask me to routinely consider another kind of in-between as well. Listening together to all manners of suffering and joy, I am mindful to wonder what is going on within another, within myself, and between the two of us as we work together. Given my background, I have strong bias that both realms of in-between are deeply meaningful. And I’ve come to enjoy wondering with others, “What is going on here?” as a path toward making a home for self and others in the substantive in-between.

Josh is a licensed mental health counselor and has a private practice in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood, working with individual children, adolescents, and adults. He is continuously surprised by how much he enjoys living in Seattle, finds that a campfire is even better with a book of poetry in his hands, and has an abiding affinity for the imaginative process. For more information visit joshsandoz.com.

To celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, President Keith Anderson sent this message to The Seattle School community and we wanted to share it with you all.

“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” —Amos 5:24

I was a child of the 60’s. Alive and well as a student, in high school and then college in what we now know as the era of the civil rights movement. That phrase makes it sound coherent, almost linear. It was not ever a direct line. It was, instead, a mélange of instincts and impulses that seemed to converge in stuttered actions and often unrelated steps — sometimes in the same direction; often, not. Black power. White guilt. Religious instincts for justice. Cultural instincts for equal rights. Economics. Political action. Speeches, poetry, proclamations, even sermons. All of this led to legislation and sometimes to steps forward. The best of politics and the worst abuses of human power. Deeply true ideas which celebrate the very essence of human dignity and the worst of human abuse and evil. It was a remarkable time to say the least.

Alive and well, I was; I was, however, less “alive and aware.” I watched from a place of secure white privilege and then educational privilege. I watched from a place of economic privilege and religious disengagement. I watched more than engaged until…later. I watched more than participated until I learned to see. I am happy to say that my own journey toward engagement came through theological and intellectual teachings taught faithfully by a handful of Christian faculty who saw and understood and asked us to see and understand, stand up and engage in the great social and cultural moment in which we lived.

What was coherent in that time was the voice and leadership of a young Baptist preacher, immersed in biblical teachings of gospel and justice and love. His voice was consistent as he taught us that right behavior toward others is as important as right feelings about others. He didn’t wait until everyone “felt” respect or love for others; He taught us to treat even our enemies with respect worthy of our own human dignity. He freely used the texts of scripture to show us that God’s passion is for all people to live in dignity, respect, honor, and equality. He preached in words that soar with the greatest orators of all time, but he led from “out front” on the street, at the head of the march or from “inside” in the cells of righteous non-violent civil disobedience. And he led from ideas of shalom that he learned in the pews of his church and the neighborhood of his community.

When I stood at the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in Washington, DC, last year, I was tearfully moved by this man – imperfect, finite, and flawed – who lived the gospel he believed. He is one from whom we can all learn what it means be competent in text, soul, and culture, unashamed of his faith in Jesus Christ in an often dangerous and hostile culture. On Monday, I hope you to actively celebrated the holiday set aside in honor of his life: whether you rested, played, or participated in one of the many civic or worship gatherings held in and around Seattle. And I hope you listened. His voice echoes loudly, not only on this day but in the great narrative of justice which is being written every day.

Keith Anderson serves as President of The Seattle School as well as a Professor of Spiritual Formation. He works tirelessly to see the mission of the school come to fruition.

Can I be honest? The nativity story has grown a little stale for me.

Those of us raised in the Church, at least, have heard the story multiple times each December for every December of our lives. For evidence that the store is tired is easily found at many Christmas services: it seems every year ministers try, in near desperation, to make the story new and shocking, as it must have been to first-time listeners. They explain what it was like when they (or, more often, their wives) were nine months pregnant. They attempt to evoke the scents and noises of a barn. They emphasize, ad nauseum, that the God of the cosmos became a vulnerable infant.

And congregations yawn.

Baby Jesus may fail to impress, but unicorns… Ah. Unicorns are magical, mysterious, mythical, brilliant in the most glitter-infused sense. They are extremely wild, a symbol of purity and grace. Some have believed that the horn of such a creature can render poisoned water potable and heal sickness. In The Chronicles of Narnia, unicorns are among the most noble and honorable creatures, known for their fierce loyalty to Aslan, their wisdom, and their strength in battle . In Harry Potter, unicorn blood can keep alive those on the brink of death. In short: the unicorn is a symbol of whatever is most good and life-giving.

Sufjan Stevens performs “Christmas Unicorn”

Which brings me to the Christmas Unicorn, featured in a song of the same name released this season by Sufjan Stevens. After our first listen, my husband asked, “what did you think?”

I think this is the freshest incarnation I have ever known. God becoming human has become familiar, even overly-familiar, yet the incarnation of a unicorn, the human embodiment of purity, grace, wildness, one who brings living water and heals the sick… Are we talking about unicorns or Jesus? Is there a difference?

Highlighted throughout the majority of the song is the repetition:

I’m the Christmas Unicorn,
You’re the Christmas Unicorn, too
It’s alright; I love you!

The good news of the incarnation that we often forget, the message of the Christmas season that we wish would last throughout the year: it’s not that Jesus was born, lived, died, and lived again. It’s that Jesus was born, lived, died, and continues to live through the spirit, through the church, through each of us. Jesus is the first Christmas Unicorn, but you’re the Christmas unicorn, too.

Even this concept, that we’re unicorns, has a kind of magic to it. I don’t know what it means to follow Jesus: is it wearing robes without mixed fibers like A. J. Jacobs in The Year of Living Biblically? Or perhaps more seriously, picking up hitchhikers and attending Jewish festivals like Ed Dobson his Year of Living Like Jesus? I think it’s something much more wild and beautiful, unique to each of us; Jesus didn’t ask us to live his life, he asked us to live our lives following him. Somehow the phrase “living like Jesus” is more clearly evoked in “being a unicorn”– it’s being what we already are, not mimicking someone from a different time and place. Sufjan addresses this well. Something of what it means to be Christmas unicorns is summarized between the repetition of the Joy Division lyrics “Love: love will tear us apart” and “It’s alright; I love you!” In the human suffering of Jesus we see that love will indeed tear us apart, that the road of love leads to crucifixion, and yet it’s alright, Jesus loves anyway, we love anyway, and in the end love somehow comes out on top, resilient against all resisting forces.

That first listen, the possibilities of the incarnation of a unicorn were swirling in my head, the freshness of this Christmas retelling making me feel like I could dance, and even prance, all while telling everyone I know that they may be in “the human uniform” but are really unicorns just like me, singing that it’s alright, I love you!

I hurriedly rushed some of these thoughts out to my husband, who listened with raised eyebrows and responded, “I love that it has Joy Division.”

Yes, I like that too.

Kate Rae Davis is a writer working on her Masters of Divinity. Her literature degrees allow her to pretentiously cite poetry in thick-framed glasses; she gains street cred from theologically heavy tattoos. In rare breaks from reading and writing, she can be found practicing yoga, making Harry Potter and Star Trek references, or in the kitchen. Originally from West Michigan, Kate lives in Queen Anne with her husband, their dog, her violin, and two white elephant tea pots.

Photo by Stephanie Berbec

For the past several years, I have been imagining what it would look like to use surfing as a platform for community engagement in a rural village along the Indian Ocean coastline of South Africa. Toward this goal, I formed a partnership in 2010 with a Denver-based nonprofit named Empowering Communities to Transcend Adversity. ETCA was started to create a framework and structure for this vision, and the Surfcare project was born. Our mission is sustainable community development through surfing. As Surfcare is not yet operational, it is essentially a marinating recipe of ideas and people who share a common dream. The Seattle School is allowing me a space to reflect and process through what Surfcare is and where it is headed. More so, the school has been a major catalyst in my re-imagining of what healthy mission and community development really are. As a visionary, I am being called into a new understanding of what engaging communities in South Africa through surfing could look like.

The focus of my adult vocational pursuit has been engaging global issues of the Majority World through humanitarian aid, community development and missions work, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. Since coming to The Seattle School, my stance toward this type of work, in particular, global mission, has shifted momentously. As I see differently, I engage the world differently. As I begin to see with more expansive eyes, I embrace the world more expansively. My desire to “help” and “rescue from” has been replaced with a desire to inhabit with, to be present with people in these communities who are marginalized and oppressed. I now espouse a paradigm that is at its core incarnational rather than paternalistic. I have let go of the worn-out, harmful approach of the colonial and modern eras. I cannot perform the messianic tasks of saving and rescuing. I cannot even “help” without hurting. But what I can do is enter into relationship with those who, like me, are wounded and suffering, I can inhabit with and be present and listen well. I can share my passion for surfing. I can relax and be myself and allow the divine mystery to make Her voice known.

I have suffered immensely while engaging issues of grinding poverty in difficult places like Sudan, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa and India. My heart has been ground to a fine pulp while being in these places; the trauma of violence, illness and poverty wreaking havoc on my being. Yet, I have begun to understand that as I bring myself in all of its crucified-ness to another, to the pain of the suffering other, something happens. Through a cosmic mystery, something life-giving is birthed in that space in between us. Something opens up. Space is created. And sometimes, our mutual suffering is transformed.

A portion of my current reading list for my Integrative Project.

Should all go according to plan, I will graduate next summer with a Master’s degree in Theology & Culture (MATC). When asked about my studies, the question that most often follows is what I’m going to do with such a degree. Unlike the other two programs at The Seattle School, the Master of Divinity (MDiv) and the Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology (MACP), the MATC is not a degree pursued for a specific vocation. While most of our classmates are training to become pastors and therapists, we are a handful of misfits trying to find a different way.

In 1997, Apple Inc. began using the phrase “think different” as an advertising slogan. Along with this campaign, the following text was used in Apple’s television commercials featuring those whose lives illustrate what it means to ‘think different’:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do.”

I couldn’t describe those of us who find ourselves en route for the MATC any better. We are a passionate people and full of compassion; lovers of God and people. We are dreamers. We make things up. We are going somewhere, we just aren’t always sure where we may end up. Indeed, we are following a path less traveled by. We aren’t quite sure where we fit, and are often described as the middle child within the programs. But we are crazy enough to think we can change things. And I think we will are.

The program itself is being shaped by the people in it. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all degree. In fact, the very thing I love about this program is that it can be customized to fit each one of us who don’t quite fit elsewhere.

From my youth, I’ve had a strong desire to work in ministry. At one time, my options were limited primarily to work within the church. I’ve since come to the realization that ministry is not so limited. I’m here because I’m intrigued by communitas, specifically as it relates to roasting coffee, being in relationship with those whose livelihoods are directly affected by coffee, and a love for theology that I can’t seem to shake. My classmates are theologians, photographers, writers, artists, film/theatre directors, creators of non-profits, and advocates against injustice. Some of us may never have a title, and we’re okay with that. Our theology is what shapes us and informs what we do. While many of us may never find work within the church, I would argue that our work is ministry nonetheless.

We realize that most of us can do our work without having to obtain a degree. At the same time, we could not imagine doing our work without this degree. Truly, we are indebted to this program, in more ways than financially. The education and experience we’ve gained through our time in the MATC at The Seattle School is invaluable.

Stephanie Berbec is a second-year MATC student focusing on Theology, Imagination, and the Arts. She grew up in North Carolina and attended Emmanuel College in Northeast Georgia where she pursued a B.S. in Christian Ministries. Naturally, she speaks with a southern drawl. Stephanie is married to her best friend, Steven, whom she shares many of the same interests: theology, coffee, photography, writing, reading, and road trip adventures.

Interested in joining us? Learn more about the MATC degree or how to apply to The Seattle School.

As a young child, the hot debate in the church my family attended was whether or not women would be allowed to become deacons.

In middle school, I read a story called “The Boy Who Called God She,” and excitedly told my mom about the possibility that God is feminine. She furrowed her brow and scoffed, “I guess he didn’t get the whole Father, Son, and Holy Ghost thing.”

The house church I was part of asked me to become leadership, and I quickly responded, surprising even myself, “I can’t, I’m a woman.”

It took a lot of work for me to realize I had the freedom to use feminine pronouns, that there’s plenty of biblical support for a feminine God and female leaders, and to give myself permission to begin unlearning the patriarchy inserted into Christianity, and even to allow the good news of Christianity to form me into more of a feminist.

When I was writing my application essays for The Seattle School, I had a sentence about the work of the Spirit, noting what a better leader She is than I. Every single person who edited my paper wanted me to change the She to a He. “It sounds like you’re making a statement.” Well, I am making a statement, I would respond. “No, but, it sounds like you’re being argumentative for the sake of being argumentative.” One after another, every friend and family member attempted to convince me to drop that one capital S.

I stopped arguing theology with my community. I kept the “She”, I told them, because if the school is going to reject me for calling God She, they might as well reject me for having a womb. It was a belief. It was a statement. It was a test.

I turned my application in with the “She” intact. And was accepted to The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology with great enthusiasm.

Looking back, what’s more interesting to me than any theological stance is the conversations I had with people who love and care about me, people who support me in my desire to earn my degree in Divinity. The same people who were telling me I could be a leader in the church as a female were also telling me that a feminine pronoun is dangerous, argumentative, deeply undesirable. I don’t know how to reconcile this.

I wish I could write that the community here has been immediately accepting and understanding, that it’s been entirely safe within these walls. The truth is, there’s nowhere to escape the difficulties of being engendered. When the meanest insult on the playground is “you’re a girl” and actions are invoked with “a real man would”, reaching adulthood unscathed isn’t a possibility. Although there are no pure safe-havens, there are oases where the conversation can be unfolded, the engendered lens evaluated, the future re-imagined. The Seattle School is not only a lively oasis for women and men, but seeks to ever-expand into the desert.

Kate Davis moved from Grand Rapids, Michigan to become a feMDiv (that’s female Master of Divinity). Her bachelor degrees in literature allow her to legitimately wear thick-framed glasses; she gains street cred from a sermon-inspired tattoo. In rare breaks from reading and writing, she’s likely to be found practicing yoga, instructing krav maga, or in the kitchen. Kate lives in Belltown with her husband, their dog, her violin, and two white elephant tea pots.

During the State of The Seattle School event, President Keith Anderson announced a few new and exciting things. We’ll highlight each here on stories, starting with the creation of the Intercultural Credibility Task Force.

I didn’t start out with a belief in the kingdom of God that was bold. My “kingdom” was tribal – white, narrowly defined evangelical, middle class, and pretty safe. But I met people and read more scripture until my understanding of the kingdom grew into something larger than the tribal ghetto in which I was birthed in faith. I stood with Tom Skinner one morning in a college chapel and he said, “Keith, you know, the Kingdom of God doesn’t look like this.” He didn’t mean the white, suburban and rural middle class students who sat on the seats in the gym weren’t part of the kingdom, just that the kingdom needed more seats for others who weren’t in the room.

This past week, I announced the formation of a Presidential Task Force on Intercultural Credibility. Our current strategic plan calls us to develop movement toward intercultural credibility. The choice of these words was intentional. Combined with our mission statement, “intercultural credibility” is the continual movement as an institution to inspire belief in people from various cultural perspectives that we “train people to be competent in the study of text, soul, and culture in order to serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships.”

This work is foundational to our mission, it is not simply an add-on to our work. It is foundational to our mission because it is foundational to the work of the kingdom of God. It is theological; it is biblical. Text and soul and culture. We don’t come to this task today only through the lens of soul or story or experience. It doesn’t stop with my experience or yours alone. We don’t come to this work today only through the lens of a cultural value, a politically or socially correct cultural more that somehow reflects the ethos of sophisticated Seattle alone. We don’t separate text-soul-culture as we do this work. We are committed to it because we are called to be agents of reconciliation, people of justice, followers of Jesus, obedient to the call and kingdom to which his redemptive sacrifice calls us.

There are at least four essential elements in the work ahead of us:

• To create critical self-awareness within our community.
• To lead us into an increasingly nuanced conversation in curricular and co-curricular content and institutional policy and culture.
• To help us develop shared vocabulary around terms like culture, difference, racism, reconciliation.
• To help us to continue to develop a shared strategy of steps needed to be taken to move us toward intercultural credibility.

Some of us have been on this journey for a long time. We have seen communities take one step forward and multiple steps backward. We have seen our country do the same. We have seen our school do the same. It is not a task that will be “completed” when we create policies, curriculum, and change our culture. Why then do we persist? Because we have been won over by the teachings of Jesus who has won us over to something that is here and now and out of this world.

Keith Anderson serves as the President of The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology as well as a teaching professor. He received his D.Min from George Fox University and has been a mentor for leaders in churches and higher education for the past 30 years.

Cori Smith writes about the transition from being a globe-trotting missionary to a full-time student at Mars Hill Graduate School and what it means to care for yourself as well as others.

I returned to the States nearly a year ago now after traveling overseas for 11 months. I went to Central America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Southern Africa, and Southeast Asia with about thirty others as part of a missions trip. Now I am nearly finished with my second semester of graduate school, and it is crazy to think of all I’ve experienced since beginning at Mars Hill Graduate School.

I applied, was accepted, and moved up to Seattle in a crazy last minute whirlwind. It was one of those “I’m not really sure where I’m going to live or how this will work but I know I need to go” kind of situations. My initial adjustment of going back to school after both being out of it for two years and after being overseas was difficult, and I questioned my decision pretty seriously for the first month or so. In my previous world I was busy leading youth group meetings for kids in Nicaragua, holding orphans in Swaziland, or befriending women who worked as prostitutes in Thailand. Suddenly I found myself sitting in a classroom, doing homework, and talking about issues that are close to my heart instead of actually doing anything about them.

Continue Reading A New Journey

Matt Allen writes some thoughts on Away We Go, a film prospective students are asked to respond to as part of the MHGS application process.

Newness comes precisely from expressed pain. Suffering made audible and visible produces hope, articulated grief is the gate of newness, and the history of Jesus is the history of entering pain and giving it voice.

-Walter Brueggemann from The Prophetic Imagination

As Verona and Burt lie on a mist-covered trampoline on a starry night in Miami, they reminisce on the country through which they have traveled, a country that has a disappointing hope. Verona and Burt have a deep hope for their daughter growing in Verona’s belly and hope for one another. What is this hope? They want their love to matter.

Continue Reading The Trampoline of Lament

The more I work in the MHGS Bookstore the more I fall in love with the place and the people of Mars Hill Graduate School.

During my first year at MHGS I felt that I was limited in access to the rest of the classes and – while I loved my people in the 1 year – I wanted to interact with those who had gone before and survived. This opportunity came during the summer term of 2010 and I could not have been more excited to stand behind the counter and interact with my fellow students, spouses, community members, faculty, and staff. In the two months of summer term I saw faces and met people that I might never have seen otherwise.

Now into my second year I can still rejoice because I have the opportunity to interact with the new first year class; what a pleasure it has been for me to see more new faces and hear more stories of how they’ve been affected by the class material and the MHGS culture at large! To be able to look into the face of a first year and know that to them, I am the one who has gone before and I, too, have survived makes this job a joy for me. To hear the stories of everyone who walks into this space and to provide an ear to bend makes me feel as though I have a purpose besides simply hawking the MHGS Bookstore wares, and also that people find peace in the midst of the four walls that create this space inside of a space has been reaffirming for me in this position.

To feel as though I play a integral role in the story of MHGS – this is what drives me as a MHGS Bookstore associate. Come on in and feel free to share how you’re day has been.

Courtney Warren is a second year MACS who hails from Magnolia, Texas (go Bulldogs!). She rode into town in a rented KIA minivan over a year ago and has enjoyed every moment of her life in the Pacific Northwest, but especially loves the changing of leaves in the fall. you can follow her random musings on her blog here or feel free to stalk her on Twitter @_courtneyann_.