Valhalla Reflection

Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the greatest of them all? I ponder over this question as I stare vacantly at my reflection. It shows myself at the age of four, wobbling back and forth like a rocking chair, nerves and empty thoughts racing through my mind as I stand at the very front of the line on the first day of kindergarten. It shows myself ten years from now in a stable job as a successful lawyer on a more busy than average day. It shows me my struggles, my doubts, my anxieties, and my failures. It shows me my successes, my euphoria, my dreams, hopes and aspirations. It shows me my teachers, my peers, my culture, religion, my friends, my mother, my father, my brothers. Myself. I see the world,

The irritating, influential, and overwhelming documentary was directed by Ava DuVernay (Samito, 2015). While the documentary shakes the audience, it challenges their concepts regarding race intersection, mass incarceration in the U.S. and justice. It is a subject matter that sounds less cinematic. It has been increasingly difficult to separate Ava DuVernay filmmaking from her activism (Gray, Palmiotti, Archer & Guzman, 2007). The 13th is a timely movie just as Black Lives Matter protest and the presidential election that was imminent.

Galaxies that used to lie in deep slumber in your stomach now lie inside me restless and they bleed out in the cold regions of space

“The Void,” I say the words as a whisper, like they’re almost too good to be true. There’s a way we can fight back. We can be free.

Over the past eight months since I graduated from Nobles, I have experienced dramatic growth in my understanding of the world and the privilege/responsibility of my Nobles education. Experiences such as AP Euro with Mr. Denning, Noises Off with Todd Morton, The Nobleman with Mr. Kinard, and PHP/NEDTalks with Ms. Maldonado form the foundation on which I experience academic and personal life in college. As I learn to redefine my relationships with faculty and peers from Nobles, I find myself forever grateful and indebted to the pedagogy of relationship-based learning.

My typical day at Namaste started off with “chat in’s” at the beginning of my shift and “chat out’s” at the end of my shifts. This is extremely important because my chat in’s allowed me to merge my goals for the day, but also my supervisor’s expectations. For me, one of my goals was to better understand all the residents and learn how to best meet their social needs within their mind, body, and spirit. My supervisor’s assigned me to do one-on-ones where it would be challenging for me and the residents. One-on-ones are basically spending 10-15 minutes with a resident, interacting and engaging with them in the present moment. One-on-ones are also assigned to residents who are declining at an intense rate compared to others. I absolutely appreciate this style of communication from my supervisor, because I was able to learn based on my interest, and then able to transfer that growth into my learning based on program’s obligations to the residents.

Hello, my name is Godson Joseph I decided to take this class because I needed a historical, political or a Global perspective course as a requirement. My major is business administration and I am currently working towards my AA, I may transfer early to USC to continue my college education. Furthermore, I love football I am currently training five days a week so I can get a huge opportunity to play at the college level. But mainly I like sports, and video

I love to attend this small men's bible study at this little diner just down the road from where I live. It astounds me that despite the diverse framework of backgrounds and beliefs, all the men in this group share similar struggles with the flesh. Struggles with fear, anger, lust, doubtfulness, and pride. Struggles that are immensely difficult yet remain elementary pursuits in our walk with God. These struggles even the apostles battled through.

I stared out at the sunset from my post of land in the woods. The bleeding of reds, oranges, and pinks together perfectly reflected onto the shimmering lake. My stomach ached, but the taste of beauty made the pain somewhat bearable. This past summer, I went on a La Vida trip, where I was required to do a solo experience, where I was denied food and social interactions for two days. Fasting was proven to be difficult, but it was through that experience that I began to understand the concept of giving all yourself in worship to God. Most of my life I was only familiar with worshiping God with my time, resources, or through song. In denying myself food, I was shown how to worship God through fasting. From the lessons I learned at La Vida, my goals for the next four years are to do what Jesus said in Luke 10:27: “to love the Lord (my) God with all (my) heart and with all (my) soul and with all (my) strength.” Over these four years, I plan to worship God through every aspect of my life, including but not limited to in my academic and musical pursuits.

God can be viewed as a hero through the eyes of many different people in many different religions. He is a spiritual guide to people of all ages all over the world. I have never been a religious person and I have never been exposed to any type of religion. I have just recently been taking an interest in God, but it has been mostly within the Christian and Catholic religions. I think it is truly incredible how God has such a powerful connection with people that He has and never will be able to meet. The comfort that comes with having a reason for everything that happens in the world is intriguing. Learning more about God will allow me to better understand how His spiritual guidance has affected His people and how it has led them to believe that He is a hero.

As a hospital chaplain, I occasionally led the weekly group meetings about spirituality on the Psych Unit. One week, a resident named Dee joined us. Dee shared that she did not believe there could possibly be a God because if God was real, then she would never have felt as lonely as she did at the deepest point in her depression. As she shared, I was overwhelmed by the pain and alienation she felt. Yet, the Holy Spirit drew her toward us this morning. While in that room, surrounded by people like Dee, who chose to share their faith journey and support one another, we bore witness to God’s presence in Dee’s life.

Welcome back! Thank you for joining me in going just a little deeper in discovering how Jesus kept Himself from resentment.

In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, the protagonist Edna Pontellier learns to think of herself as an autonomous human being and rebels against social norms by leaving her husband Leónce and having an affair. The first half of the novel takes place in Grand Isle, an island off the coast of Louisiana. Over the summer it is inhabited by upper-class Creole families from New Orleans who go there to escape from the heat and to relax by the ocean. During the week, the women and children stay on the island, while the men return to the city to work.

How does one capsulize in a page, a volume, or a library, the Atonement of our Savior, Jesus Christ? A project that was intended to take me several weeks has quickly turned into almost a year. What I have come to understand most through this project, is my inability to express in words what my soul understands as being the most important thing that has or will ever happen. So, a page is too little and yet very hard to fill. For this short paper I will address our need for a God’s atoning sacrifice and the course we must take to make the atonement affective in our lives.

The fact is, the closer to The Light one is, the stronger are the forces of ‘natural resistance’. Deeply ingrained Habitual Consciousness is still capable of undermining and ‘sabotaging’ The Cosmic