Acts 2 in Edmond, OK

A Reading & Reflection from Morgan Jones:
On Sunday, Rabbi Harris said something that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. She said (and I’m paraphrasing), “We often try to make those who are different than us like us, so that we can love them.” That little truth nugget describes so many of our modern formative experiences. We learn from an early age that to be accepted, to be loved, or to fit in, we need to behave a particular way. That is not entirely a bad thing. We need to learn how to behave. We aren’t born knowing how to share, how to put others first, or how to do any of the things that are contrary to our selfish nature. But too often, these lessons about how to behave begin to form the basis for how we accept and give love. Instead of simply learning that how we behave matters, we begin to internalize people’s reactions to our behavior and tie those reactions to our self-worth.

A Reading & Reflection from Dr. Robert Gorrell:
When my oldest granddaughter, Jordan, was in graduate school, she attended a traditional Jewish university. Although Jordan was baptized a Methodist and confirmed a Lutheran, her dad and his family are Jewish. While she earned her degree in English Literature, she also experienced a bit more of her father’s cultural heritage.

A Reading & Reflection from Madelyn Thane:
A few weeks into my first semester at Oklahoma State, my advisor suggested I attend a meeting about starting a religious studies club. I wasn’t very interested. I had been a Christian (specifically a United Methodist) all my life and never planned on being anything else, so why did I need to learn about other faiths? But my advisor was going, it started right after our appointment, and it was just down the hall. When I walked by and saw how few people were there, I felt a little pang of obligation to stay.