Harvard Divinity School

Shining, in the Gathering Light | “Holy Darkness” by Dan Schutte HDS Choir with Xavier Sayeed, MTS I, guitar and bass Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life. The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s TRANSCRIPT: Refrain: Holy darkness, blessed night, heaven’s answer, hidden from our sight. As we await you, O God of silence, we embrace your holy night. I have tried you in fires of affliction; I have taught your soul to grieve. In the barren soil of your loneliness, there I will plant my seed. Refrain. I have taught you the price of compassion; you have stood before the grave. Though my love can seem like a raging storm, this is the love that saves. Refrain. In your deepest hour of darknes

Communal Invocation | Adapted from the poetry of Hafiz Read by Kerry A. Maloney and Xavier I. Sayeed, MTS I Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life. The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s TRANSCRIPT: One:Light will someday split you open even if your life is now a cage, All:for a divine seed, the crown of destiny, is hidden and sown on an ancient, fertile plain you hold the title to. One:Love will surely burst you wide open into an unfettered, blooming new galaxy All:even if your mind is now a spoiled mule. One:A life-giving radiance will come; the Friend's gratuity will come. All:O look again within yourself, for I know you were once the elegant host to all the marvels in creation. One:Fr

Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life. The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s Transcript: Good evening and welcome to this year’s Seasons of Light celebration at Harvard Divinity School. My name is Kerry Maloney, and I am the Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life here at HDS. Seasons of Light is our campus’ annual ritual to honor the unity of holy darkness and holy light in the world’s religious traditions that are represented on our campus. While we usually enjoy the deep intimacy of one another’s presence for this event, jammed into our largest sacred space on campus to share music, prayers, chants, and texts, this year, of course, due to the pandemic, we are scattered across the Unit

Kindling the Light | “Vajra Mantra” by Satigata Chris Berlin, Counselor to Buddhist Students; Darren Becker, MDiv ’15; Andrew Stauffer MDiv ’18; and Alanna Coady, MDiv ’18 The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.

Prelude | Adagio by Franz Josef Haydn Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, piano Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life. The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s

Nyasha Junior, Visiting Associate Professor of Women's Studies and African-American Religions, and Catherine Brekus, Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America, discuss Jarena Lee as Protestant icon.

The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.

The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.

The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.

The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.

The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.

The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.

The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.

The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.

The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.

The 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School share their backgrounds, fellowship projects, and how they hope to engage with the RCPI and RPL communities during their fellowship year. To engage further, get in touch with RPL at https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/about/contact-us.

The COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to explore how religion and whiteness are interconnected. Where is religion in a president refusing to wear masks in public? What of whiteness in a governor suing one of its state’s own cities to prevent mask mandates? These current events, and their asymmetrical racialized consequences, offer a view of whiteness’s historical and phenomenological role as one of religious ‘prophylaxis,’ a living theodicy, a rejection of our responsibility to one another across lines of social distance that gives way to a sanctioning of and justification for social atrocities past, present, and future. This talk explored whiteness revealed as spirit possession in moments when the efficacy of this prophylaxis is challenged, and also showed how whiteness is working to transform the occasion of pandemic response into a perverse opportunity. Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/10/09/video-spirits-whiteness-age-covid-19

As the 2020 presidential election nears, Lauren R. Kerby and Jeff Sharlet discussed the politics of white evangelicals in the U.S. today. Kerby's book, Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation's Capital and Redeem a Christian America, offers a starting point for this important conversation about how race, nationalism, and Christianity become entangled for many white evangelicals through what they learn from their leaders about American history. Their political commitments are baffling to many observers, but this conversation will explore how white evangelicals’ relationship to the nation offers a key to understanding their continued allegiance to Donald Trump. Lauren R. Kerby is a lecturer on religious studies at Harvard Divinity School and the education specialist for the Religious Literacy Project. She earned her PhD from Boston University. She is the author of Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation's Capital and Redeem a Christian America (University of North Carolina Press,

Mystical-type experiences are profound and often characterized by an authoritative sense of the unity and sacredness and sometimes interpreted as an encounter with God or Ultimate Reality. Although such experiences have been described by mystics and religious figures throughout the ages, there are few experimental studies because such experiences usually occur at low rates and often unpredictably. Psilocybin in the form the Psilocybe genus of mushrooms has been used for centuries within some cultures for religious and healing purposes. This presentation, held September 15, 2020, reviewed a series of studies investigating the effects of psilocybin administered to carefully screened and psychologically prepared volunteers who were encouraged to close their eyes and direct their attention inwards. Under such conditions, psilocybin occasions profound personally and spiritually meaningful mystical-type experiences in the majority of participants. Roland Griffiths is Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and

This conversation was presented on August 27, 2020, by the HDS Women’s Studies in Religion Program, which brings five scholars in gender from around the country each year to enrich the experience of HDS students. The research associates shared their thoughts on the ethical responsibility of scholars to be engaged in the study of gender. Full transcript here: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/08/27/video-ethical-scholarship-gender-religion-and-difference