Below is a list of all papers delivered at Prairie Group during the 2020s. Some papers have links to them and have been saved as a PDF. Some papers may be found in the archives at Meadville Lombard Seminary in Chicago. All papers were delivered except as noted at Pere Marquette Lodge, Grafton, IL.
Prairie Group 2021 – Trauma
Session #1: Trauma-Informed Pastoral Care and Theology of Trauma
This first session is intended to establish guiding principles for this year’s Prairie Group:
1) In speaking of trauma, we must remember that we can never truly “speak” of trauma. Instead, trauma is specifically a thing that always eludes our ability to express it in words. Because trauma is always embodied, it can’t be understood through intellectual abstractions or through academic, spoken or written language only. It must be felt and performed.
2) We all are affected by trauma in some way. This may take several different forms, including intergenerational, historical/racial, personal or vicarious. For this reason, the topic may trigger physical and emotional reactions that may be unexpected, frightening, and even profound. It will be especially important to be gentle with ourselves and with others, and to make ample space for silence and for opportunities to observe our own physiological and emotional responses. Self-care and care for others’ well-being must take precedence over the rigors and expectations of tradition.
3) A trauma-informed ministry is one that emphasizes the particular over the abstract, renounces the goal of perfection, and decenters the Word to make space for the body, the gesture, and the silence that exceeds description.
Keeping all these things in mind, we hope that this first session will examine AND EMBODY a theology of trauma and trauma-informed pastoral care both through words and through ritual and silence. We hope that this first session will be as much a framing moment of pastoral care as it is about pastoral care.
Some questions to consider: How can we protect our own emotional/spiritual integrity and well-being as we witness the trauma of others? How can we maintain an awareness of our own trauma even as we help to heal others? What is there in our Unitarian Universalist faith that we can use as a resource in the healing of ourselves and others? How is the science of trauma supporting or complicating our understanding of the importance of non-anxious presence in pastoral care?
Paper: Janne Eller-Isaacs
Chaplain: Jennifer Nordstrom
Required Reading:
Serene Jones, Trauma and Grace
Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others (Parts Two and Four)
Fred Rogers, “Disasters: When Children Face Tragedy” syndicated article (1986).
Additional Resources (Optional):
Rita Nakashina Brock and Rebecca Parker, Proverbs of Ashes
Viktor Frank, Man’s Search for Meaning
Shelly Rambo, Spirit and Trauma
Session #2: The Unspoken Voice: Trauma Embodied
Trauma has long been dealt with by western medicine as something to be talked through or medicated. Many eastern traditions, on the other hand, have recognized that trauma lives in the body and is healed through the body. Medical studies now affirm this. How does this dialectic of trauma of the mind (Freud, et al) vs trauma of the body reflect a larger conflict between mind/spirit focused philosophy (Descartes, Augustine, etc.) and body-focused alternatives? How has this dynamic played out within our own UU heritage and in our congregations today? What are the implications for our anti-oppression work and decentering whiteness?
Paper: Alan Taylor
Respondent: Kim Mason
Required Reading:
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
Peter Levine, In an Unspoken Voice (ch. 1, 3, 12, 14)
Additional Resources (Optional):
Films: Atlantics (2019); Fearless (1993); Manchester by the Sea (2016); Marnie (1964); Moonlight (2016); Mystic River (2003); Ordinary People (1980); Room(2015)
Non-fiction books: Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery; Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog
Session #3 Moral Injury: Trauma of the Conscience
Most often, we associate moral injury with participation in war, but, more recently, the term “moral injury” has been used to describe the experience of medical professionals who can save lives but are restricted by insurance and malpractice worries, those serving in law enforcement, and even citizens of the United States who are implicated in what is happening at our southern border, in our prisons, and among our most vulnerable populations. How can we apply the concept of moral injury to our ministries, whether in a chaplain or parish setting? How are we as religious professionals prone to moral injury?
Paper: Bill Neely
Respondent: David Schwartz
Required Readings:
Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini, Soul Repair
Johann Choi, Re-thinking/embodying Pastoral Theology: Ritual in the Care of Moral Injury in Veterans https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/xp68kg30k?locale=zh(ch. 2 and 5)
Film: Eye in the Sky (2015)
Additional Resources (Optional):
Rita Nakashina Brock and Rebecca Parker, Proverbs of Ashes
David Grossman and Loren Christensen, On Combat
Robert Meagher, Killing from the Inside Out
Konstantinos Papazoglou et al, “Moral Injury in Police Work” Leb, Sept. 10, 2019
Jonathan Moens, “On Top of Everything Else, the Pandemic Messed with Our Morals,” The Atlantic, June 10, 2021
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/06/pandemic-trauma-moral-injury/619129/
Jonathan Shay, Odysseus in America
Aesthetics Session – Trauma-Informed Yoga
Leader: Diana Davies
Session #4: The Healing that Never Ends: Intergenerational, Racial/Ethnic and Societal Trauma
How can clergy help process intergenerational trauma? What is our role and the church’s role in this? What is the connection between intergenerational/racial trauma and the social justice and pastoral work of the congregation? How do we nurture resilience in traumatized populations, including ourselves?
What is there in our Unitarian Universalist faith that we can use as a resource in the healing of ourselves and others? How can we utilize art in developing empathy and an understanding of intergenerational and racial trauma?
Paper: Sydney Morris
Respondent: Kathleen Rolenz
Required Readings:
Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands
One of the following novels:
Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Tommy Orange, There, There
Additional Resources (Optional):
Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound
Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
Tirzah Firestone, Wounds Into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma
Sheila Wise Rowe, Healing Racial Trauma
Film: Shoah (Lanzmann); Two Distant Strangers (Free & Roe, 2020); Burning Cane (Youmans, 2019)
Graphic Novel: Art Spiegelman, Maus
Podcast: On Being with Krista Tippett — Rachel Yehuda: How Trauma and Resilience Cross Generations
Television Series: Watchmen (HBO)
Session #5: Cultivating Healing Grace in Our Ministries: Trauma-Informed Liturgy
Classic Freudian psychoanalysis puts the word/language at the center of healing (the “talking cure”); this kind of thinking is in keeping with our Congregational (Puritan) heritage, which puts the word at the center of worship (the importance of the sermon) as opposed to ritual. How might an awareness of trauma influence the way we incorporate ritual and other embodied experiences into worship? What is there in our Unitarian Universalist faith that we can use as a resource in the healing of ourselves and others? This paper shall include an embodiment of a liturgy of trauma.
Paper: Wayne Arnason
Respondent: Kendyl Gibbons
Required Readings:
Shelly Rambo, How Christian Theology and Practice are Being Informed by Trauma Studies https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/how-christian-theology-and-practice-are-being-shaped-trauma-studies
Leslie Takahashi 2019 Berry St Essay: Truth Trauma and Transformation
Joan Huyser-Honig, “Trauma-Informed Congregations”
ICTG, Seven Key Traits of a Trauma-Informed Congregation
Additional Resources (Optional):
S. L. Bloom, Guidelines for surfing the edge of chaos while riding dangerously close to the black hole of trauma. Psychotherapy and Politics International. e1409 (2017)
Philip Browning Helsel,”Witnessing the Body’s Response to Trauma: Resistance, Ritual, and Nervous System Activation,” Pastoral Psychology. October 2014
Jill M Hudson, Congregational Trauma: Caring, Coping and Learning (chapter 6 “Worship as a Tool for Healing”)
Joelle Kidd, “A Gentle Invitation to Worship”
Karen Krogh, Love Is the Spirit
Hilary Jerome Scarsella et al, “The Lord’s Supper: A ritual of harm or healing?”
UUTRM Worship Service Elements Related to Critical Incident Response
Videos:
Worship in Times of Crisis and Trauma
Trauma, Culture Care and Public Worship
Other Texts Considered:
Melanie Brooks, Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma
Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God
David M. Carr, Holy Resilience: The Bible’s Traumatic Origins
Henry Giroux. The Violence of Organized Forgetting
Jules Harrell, Manichean Psychology
Carol Howard Merritt, Healing Spiritual Wounds
Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child
Fiction and Memoirs: Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Alison Bechdel, Fun Home; Bernice McFadden, Praise Song for the Butterflies; Toni Morrison, God Bless the Child
Films: Monster (Jenkins, 2003); The Machinist (Anderson, 2004); How to Let Go of the World (Fox); The Fisher King (Gilliam, 1991)
Prairie Group 2022 – Climate Catastrophe
Session #1 Sustainable Spirituality: Preaching and Pastoring within Climate Catastrophe
Paper: “Love is a Teacher” by Matthew Johnson
Response: Eileen Wiviott
#2. Theologies of Climate Apocalypse
Paper: “Theologies of Climate Apocalypse” by David Schwartz
Response: “Prophets of the Final Redemption” by Sarah Gettie McNeill
#3 Entanglements
Paper: “Moving in a Tangled Web” by Luke Stevens-Royer
Response: “The Life and Times of a Taoist Master” by Josh Snyder
#4 Indigenous Perspectives
Paper: “A Four Sisters Garden: Respect, Reciprocity and Climate Resilience” by Kim Mason
Response: “Getting Us Back to the Garden: Where There Is Dirt Even Under God’s Fingernails” Marlin Lavanhar
#5 Political Theology
Paper/Response Conversation: “UU Political Theologies of Climate Justice” by Ashley Horan and Jen Crow
(This presentation was offered as a combination of video conversation a between Revs. Horan and Crow, followed by small group discussion. A printed transcript of their conversation was available to participants.)
Prairie Group 2023 – Reparations
Chaplain: Molly Housh Gordon
Session 1: Preaching and Pastoring Reparations
- Worshipful introduction to the topic, grounding and centering
- Responding (pastorally and prophetically) to historic wounds as well as guilt and denial in our congregations, organizations, and in ourselves
- Concrete resources for spiritual communities and congregations that want to engage in reparations work
Readings: Danya Ruttenberg, On Repentance and Repair (Beacon Press; 2002), Chapters 2,3,4; Edgar Villanueva, Decolonizing Wealth (Berrett-Koehler; 2018). Part 2; Restoration and Reparations (UUA); Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh (Convergent 2022), ch. 10,11, 14, 15
Paper: Jen Crow
Response: Jason Lydon
Session 2: Theologies of Reckoning, Repentance and Repair
- Theologies of repentance, forgiveness, and atonement
- The theological anthropology of sin; who has the power and right to repair
- What does our faith have to say about repentance, sin, accountability
- How does punishment figure into this; what is the relationship between punishment and repentence/repair?
Readings: Danya Ruttenberg, On Repentance and Repair (Beacon Press; 2022), Chapters 1, 7, 8; Kelly Brown Douglas, “A Christian Call for Reparations,” Sojourners, July 2020; Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower (Schocken; 1998), Book 1
Paper: Kathleen Rolenz
Response: Kelly Weisman Asprooth-Jackson
Session 3: Reparations and Remembrance
- How what we remember shapes who we are
- How do we incorporate memory, repentance and repair into our identities and into our ongoing practices
- How Unitarian Universalists are addressing the need for reparations within our own faith, arising from our history
Readings: “The Case for Reparations,” Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Atlantic.pdf; Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed (Little, Brown, & Co; 2021), “The Whitney Plantation,” “Goree Island;” Katrina Forrester, “Reparations, History, and the Origins of Global Justice”; David Pettee, “The Ties that Bind: A Deeper Exploration of My Family’s History with the Slave Trade;” “Unitarian Indian Boarding School and WA Interfaith Response to the Burials”
Additional resources (optional): Clint Smith, “Monuments to the Unthinkable,” “Montana Industrial School;” “East Brunswick Lost Souls;” “Reparations”; Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery; Bond’s Mission School
Paper: Sarah Gettie McNeill
Response: Karen Armina
Aesthetics: Jennifer Nordstrom
Session 4: Reparations and Restorative Justice
- Dialogue about restorative justice in practice
- Deep dive into specific context
Readings: Danielle Sered, Until We Reckon (New Press; 2019), Chapters 3, 4, 7
Paper: Tamara Lebak
Response: mandi huizenga
Session 5: Reparations in Action (Case Studies)
- Experiments in reparations within various communities
- Frameworks for congregations engaging in reparations work
- How do we as religious professionals preparing ourselves to lead this work?
- Now what?
Readings: Reparations Toolkit; The Big Payback Film Discussion Guide; The Big Payback Podcast (episode: The History of Reparations); M4BL Reparations Toolkit; Sacred Reckonings
Other resources: “Inside the US city that’s been paying slavery reparations for years”; “Episcopal Diocese of New York apologizes”; San Francisco; California testimonies; (current events)
Paper: “The Road Toward Reparations” by Eileen Wiviott
Response: Jim Foti
Prairie Group 2024 – Speculative Fiction
Session 1 (Tue AM)
Essay: “What If” by Rev. Karen Armina
Response: “‘what if’ about ‘the river’ by adrienne maree brown” by Krista Taves
In what ways does speculative fiction offer guidance or wisdom to the experience and embodiment of creating beloved community?
Key Questions:
- How does speculative fiction, especially eco-queer narratives, offer insights into the creation and sustenance of beloved communities?
- In what ways can the themes of environmental justice, queer identity, and speculative futures inform our understanding and practice of community building?
- How do eco-queer speculative stories challenge and expand our notions of justice, equity, and compassion within the context of beloved community?
Session 2 (TUE PM)
Essay: “Evidence to Confirm What My Soul has Evidence Enough For” by Rev. Kelly Asprooth-Jackson
Response: Rev. Lara Cowtan
In an age of harmful misinformation, how does speculative fiction contribute to our understandings of truth?
Key Questions:
- How does speculative fiction contribute to our understanding of truth in an age of misinformation?
- In what ways can speculative narratives help us discern fact from fiction and navigate the complexities of modern information ecosystems?
- How do speculative stories address themes of misinformation, disinformation, and the quest for truth?
Session 3 (Wed AM)
Essay: “Prayer Book: Humble Counsel on Surviving from Speculative Fiction” by Rev. Jennifer Nordstrom
Response: Jennifer Innis (in-person, interactive activity)
Speculative fiction consistently interrogates the ways in which human hubris and disconnection from spirit inevitably lead to authoritarianism and exploitation of both humanity and the earth. In the context of this political moment, as escalating global fascism and irreversible climate collapse hurtle towards us, what does speculative fiction offer to us as counsel about how we are to survive the apocalypses of our times?
Session 4 (Wed PM)
Essay: Rev. Diana K. Davies
Response: Rev. Roger Bertschausen
What gifts, and challenges, does speculative fiction offer our ministries?
Key Questions:
- With changing forms and needs of ministry, how does speculative fiction offer us possibilities for creative new modes of working toward collective liberation within community?
- What cautions or challenges does speculative fiction offer our faith tradition, grappling with the ways religious institutions (generally and specifically) fail to live into a flourishing future?
Prairie Group 