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Light & Bones

Marita Anderson – Chaplain, Writer, Teacher, Parent

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Tag: Trauma

‘She Said’ by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

October 25, 2019 Marita Anderson Book Review

“She Said” is more than an inside look into the outstanding investigative reporting by two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, which is fascinating in its own right. What Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey have presented in this best-seller is a birds-eye perspective on the #MeToo movement and

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Standing on Ground Sanctified by Lynching Victims

June 15, 2018 Marita Anderson Essays

With my 9-year-old son, I recently visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala. The Equal Justice Initiative erected this powerful memorial to honor the victims of racially driven hatred and terror by lynchings, and it is worthy of pilgrimage. We went

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Wise Hearts and Sanctuaries

February 17, 2018 Marita Anderson Book Review, Essays

In my work as a chaplain and as a person out in the world, I sometimes encounter vulnerable people who are survivors of abuse, abandonment and human cruelty. Their inevitable questions rise up: “Why did this happen to me? Why did this person do that

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Interfaith Presentation at the Wild Goose Festival 2017

May 15, 2017 Marita Anderson Classes

I’m really excited to be included as an interfaith contributor at the Wild Goose Festival this July.  I will be sharing how the poetry of the Jewish Prophets in the Torah can help us deal with communal and personal traumas of today. The Wild Goose is an experiential

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That Time I Freaked Out About My Daughter’s Pony Party

April 27, 2017 Marita Anderson Essays

My youngest daughter was about to turn 5 and days before her birthday, I still had no plans. I searched for ideas online, hoping to find something that would be quick and easy to plan, and found a website that offered pony parties. The ponies could

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The Anatomy of Disaster: Learning Spiritual Resilience from the Prophets

April 7, 2017 Marita Anderson Classes

The world can seem so hard to deal with sometimes. Marita Anderson, chaplain and writer, shows us how the prophets of our tradition dealt with their own and their people’s trauma–and also gave us tools to deal with ours.

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Picking Up Trash

February 28, 2017 Marita Anderson Blog

Every time I walk to school to pick up my kids, I have to cross a busy intersection. Every time, I pick up trash: cans, cigarette packs, water bottles. I pick up all the trash that I can carry and my kids carry more. And

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Lamentations

Eicha: The Most Difficult of Questions

August 12, 2016 Marita Anderson Essays

On Tisha B’Av, we read Lamentations, one of the most difficult books in the biblical canon. I once read that the opening of the Book of Lamentations (Eicha in Hebrew) is pronounced with a catch of the throat to convey the breath-stopping shock in the

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Halloween imagery

It’s Halloween: Trigger Treat

November 21, 2014 Marita Anderson Essays

A friend of mine suggested that I write a letter, addressed to my future self, that she would mail to me next October. The letter would remind me to be extra gentle with myself in October — a month that brings with it disorienting anxiety,

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