Author Archives: Matt Griffing

The Still, Small Voice of One Girl: Learning to Listen in Uganda

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Hearing Bach’s cantatas at Emmanuel Church each week has encouraged me to listen in a whole new way. I carried this evolving aural ability with me as I traveled to Uganda to learn about the health and wellbeing of women and children.

I set off with two other American women into a rural mountainous region near the Democratic Republic of Congo. A few days prior to our arrival, a massive flood had swept away entire villages in the Rwenzori Mountains, leaving a wide plain of mud and debris in the town of Kasese, where we were staying. Continue reading →

Light in the Darkness

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Greetings Emmanuelites and Happy 2014! I was sick for most of last week, so I missed both Common Art and Café Emmanuel. However, last Monday at the prison there were some new faces as well as some women who had not been present to make cards for their loved ones in a few weeks. It is always such a wonderful feeling when the women return to make art and engage in creating a community with us. I love to see their smiling faces and hear their greetings. Some of them have even felt comfortable enough to hug the volunteers hello and goodbye and I have noticed a much more talkative room these last few weeks. Continue reading →

Amanda

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Hi, my name is Amanda Rigatti, I am an art therapy intern here at Emmanuel  from Lesley University’s graduate expressive therapies program. Evey, Liz, and I all feel incredibly lucky to be a part of this community and I can’t even begin to express how thankful we all are for how kind everyone has been to us as we work our way through our first semester.

It’s hard to believe that it’s only been three weeks since I began at Emmanuel. I feel like I have learned more in the past few weeks working with common art, Ethos, and women at the Suffolk county prison than I have in years of schooling. I have learned to expect the unexpected. Continue reading →

Hard Learning

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Proper 28A
November 15, 2020

Judges 4:1-7. And the Israelites came to Deborah for judgmentor God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ . . . therefore encourage one another and build up each other
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ . . . therefore encourage one another and build up each other.
Matthew 25:14-15, 19-29 Weeping and gnashing of teeth

O God of our learning, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Our Collect for today is one of my favorites and maybe yours too – a prayer in which we assert that all holy scriptures were caused to be written for our learning – the ones we love and the ones, well, not so much. We pray that we not just hear them, but that we read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them – for the purpose of holding fast to hope of union with the Holy One, which is another way of saying everlasting life. With some readings from scripture, I think, we need digestive aids – some spiritual bi-carb perhaps while we are learning.
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