Lilly Summer Discernment Institute Speakers 2007

 

The Reverend Becca Stevens is an Episcopal Priest who has served as Chaplain of St. Augustine's at Vanderbilt University since 1995. It is a growing congregation of students, faculty and staff, as well as community members that see ecumenism and service as an integral part of their faith commitment.

Soon after she came, she founded the Magdalene House, residential communities designed to rehabilitate women with a criminal history of drug abuse and prostitution. To date this entrepreneurial model has raised about five million dollars. Magdalene launched a for-profit cottage industry called “Thistle Farms” in 2001. In 2004 Thistle Farms was distributed in over 60 stores in five states and hosted over 100 salons in people's homes. Becca was raised in a home where giving back to the community was a high priority. Her mother, the late Anne Stevens, was the director of St. Luke's Community Center for many years here in Nashville. Becca has served as a volunteer and board member, currently serving on the NCCJ and the Jubilee Ministry Board. In 1998, Becca led a group of eight students and community members to Ecuador. Now in its eighth year, 25 people, including translators and doctors, will make the annual visit to the Anne Stevens School, to continue to build the community, help with construction, and run a clinic for a 1000 people. The school currently serves 80 students. St. Augustine's has just begun to formalize a partnership with Holy Cross Hospice in Botswana and plans their first trip in the Spring of 2005.

Becca has received awards from many community organizations. She was named Nashvillian of the Year in 2000 and received the Academy of Women in Achievement award in 2001. In 2004 she was given the alumnus award from the School of Theology called the “Dubose Award for Service”. In 2004 she wrote a women's bible study for Abington Press and has just finished her second book for Abington, which is called Sanctuary: Unexpected Places Where God Found Me .

More information on Becca can be found at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/staugustines/ & http://www.magdalenehouse.com

Megan McKenna, a native of New York City has lived, visited and gypsied through North and South America (especially Bolivia/Peru), Europe and a collection of islands: Celtic, Japanese, the Philippines, Singapore, Haiti and the Hawaiian Islands and through Malaysia, India, Marshall Islands, Thailand, Australia and China. She works with Indigenous groups, in base Christian Communities and with justice and peace groups as well as parishes, dioceses and religious communities. She has been on the United States National Board of Pax Christi and in 2002 was appointed an Ambassador of Peace for Pax Christi.

An internationally known author, theologian, storyteller and lecturer, she teaches at several colleges and universities and does retreats, workshops and parish missions. She has graduate degrees in Scripture, Adult Education and Literacy from the Graduate Theological Union and the University of California, Berkeley, and a Masters in Systematic Theology from Catholic University, Washington, DC But foremost she is a lover of words: the Scriptures, stories and tales, poetry, images and phrases spoken aloud, written down and spun to make meaning and how these both convert and transform us and bring meaning and hope to the world.

She is the author of more than thirty books, including And Morning Came - Scriptures of the Resurrection; Praying the Rosary; Send My Roots Rain; The New Stations of the Cross; On Your Mark - Reading Mark in the Shadow of the Cross, and recently released in Ireland and Great Britain, Harm Not The Earth.  Megan McKenna is also author of Parables: Arrows of God (on the Gospel parables) and Keepers of the Story: Oral Traditions in Religion. 

More information on Megan can be found at http://www.meganmckenna.org/

Martin Smith is well known throughout the Episcopal Church and beyond as writer, retreat leader, and teacher exploring contemporary spirituality. A priest since 1971, he currently serves as the Senior Associate Rector at St Columba’s church in Washington, D.C., the largest parish in the Diocese of Washington.

He was born in the northwest of England in 1947 and trained as a theologian at the University of Oxford. He prepared for the ordained ministry at Cuddesdon College, Oxford. After several years in the parish ministry, he joined the oldest religious order for men in the Anglican Communion, the Society of St John the Evangelist, and served in the community in Oxford before transferring to the North American branch of the community in 1979. After completing three terms as Superior of the community, he left the order in 2002 and now pursues his ministry independently. From 2002-6 he was on the staff of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Among his best known books are A Season for the Spirit, The Word is Very Near You, and Reconciliation. His most recent work, Compass and Stars, was published in April 2007.

 

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