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STATE OF FORMATION Weekly

How Pregnancy Loss Shaped My Spiritual Journey

Andrew Bowen shares his story

Life is a fluid, something that arrests us with wonder, and yet something we often take for granted. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in the moments of birth and death.

One event in my life bears a combination of the two, the dual power of which changed my life forever and sent me on a collision course with religion itself: my wife's ectopic pregnancy.

My wife Heather and I decided after our second daughter was born in 2005 that our family was complete, and so Heather received a tubal ligation, a procedure that closes off the fallopian tubes, making pregnancy a near impossibility.

Life however, is indeed fluid, and often balks at impossibilities.

Later that year, we discovered that we were in fact pregnant. The shock was profound; considering the odds of the pregnancy, however, disbelief was soon transformed into joy. What an unexpected gift! 


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Why I Bother: Voting as a Young American

By: Mary Ann Kaiser

While I understand the frustrations and struggles of many of my peers, I understand my personal context to morally require me to vote. I do not think the political system is the answer to all of our problems nor do I idolize any candidate. I also respect some of the reasons some don't vote and acknowledge and condemn the barriers that keep those who want to from doing so. Yet, as a young American, I hold many identities. I am young, but I am also white, female, lesbian, educated, and Christian. As such, here at the ten reasons I believe I must vote.

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The Limitations of Free Speech -- Part 2

By: Amjad Saleem

The problem though is that we view each other with our own lenses and through the mirror of our own prejudices. The truth of the matter thaen becomes that as we peer into the mirror to ask questions as to what went wrong, we are faced with a shattered mirror in the analogy of Sir Richard Burton in the The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdiwho wrote “Truth is the shattered mirror strewn/In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.” Thus parts of the truth are everywhere and the whole truth nowhere!

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State of Formation is a forum for emerging religious and ethical leaders. Founded by the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, it is run in partnership with Hebrew College and Andover Newton and in collaboration with the Parliament of the World’s Religions.