Lenten Formation Series: Hope in Hard Times

"Hope in Hard Times" with Flora Keshgegian

A six-part lunch series on Wednesdays, 3/9-4/13, 12:30-1:30

How do we sustain hope in the midst of all that is happening in our world today? Christian hope invites us to translate messianic ends - like justice, freedom, and peace – into present values. Moving deeper than our yearning for a better future, we will re-imagine hope as we learn how to retell the Christian story and that of our lives, and develop spiritual habits of hope. This communal and interactive Zoom series will explore the nature of Christian hope, progressing each week through key habits of hope including: honoring time, moving in place, imagining creatively, participating in interrelation, and living in wild wonder. Christian hope enables us to encounter God exactly where we are, not in spite of it. 

About the Rev. Dr. Keshgegian

Flora A. Keshgegian is passionate about life, religion and faith. She wants readers to find nourishment for their yearnings in her books. Her three books, God Reflected: Metaphors for Life, Time for Hope: Practices for Living in Today’s World and Redeeming Memories: A Theology of Healing and Transformation, focus on re-imagining Christian ideas about who God is and how God acts, suffering and memory, justice and hope. Her writing draws on her experiences growing up in an immigrant home and as a child of survivors of the Armenian genocide. She is particularly interested in what it means to live an abundant life, especially with a legacy of trauma and suffering. She also explores the nature and dynamics of power, particularly given cultural and gender differences.

Growing up in Philadelphia, Flora Keshgegian attended public schools and the University of Pennsylvania where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Religious Thought. In addition, she has a Master of Divinity Degree from the Philadelphia Divinity School and a Ph.D. from the joint doctoral program of Boston College and Andover Newton Theological School. She has taught at Brown University, Seminary of the Southwest, Stonehill College, Church Divinity School of the Pacific and the Graduate Theological Union. She has also had a long working relationship with Brown University where she served as Associate Chaplain from 1984-1998 and as Faculty Ombudsperson from 2006-2009. Ordained in the Episcopal Church for many years, Flora has ministered and taught in a variety of other settings.