McCormick Day Recap: Reimagining the Past and the Present

11-01-2021

Laurel Hamilton’s attention was captured by the diverse Exodus stories of flight and freedom which were presented at this year’s McCormick Day. “Isn’t that what we are trying to do right now,” asks Rev. Hamilton, M.Div.’96, “aren’t we trying to free ourselves from the grips of a pandemic and find our way in its aftermath?

Rev. Hamilton, the pastor at Range Line Community Presbyterian Church in Hebron, Indiana, was one of the many alums, faculty, staff, and community guests who showed up online to explore this year’s theme, Radical Imagination in Unprecedented Times.

“Many churches are in a wilderness experience right now,” says Rev. Hamilton, “we are struggling to determine if we are who we were two years ago or are we being called to be something new and different. At times this is scary work and sometimes it’s enlivening.”

For Rev. Hamilton, McCormick Day affirmed many of the ideas she had heard earlier this year at a round table discussion hosted by McCormick’s Trauma Healing Initiative, THI. Sponsored by a grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., THI is helping the seminary develop a model for creating a trauma-informed healing-centered culture within institutions of theological education. It’s also deepening relationships with faith and local communities to help them respond to the personal and collective trauma of their constituents.

“Listening to the various perspectives on the Exodus story reminded me of the importance of naming that which has traumatized us,” says Rev. Hamilton. “In naming it, we start to get power over it. In my world, it’s meant naming the losses that have accompanied the deaths due to the pandemic. We’ve lost members who fear coming to church because it could be a super-spreader event. We’ve lost our sense of safety. There’s even the loss of renewal and community that comes from sharing a meal and getting a hug from fellow alums at an in-person McCormick Day.”

Attending McCormick Day was a reminder that she is not alone in ministry, notes Rev. Hamilton who served on the Alumni Council from 2014 to 2016. “How I’m feeling, thinking and reacting to the world around me is being shared by others who are here,” she says. “In our times of worship, prayer, singing and presentations, I found ideas that have ministerial implications for the bends in the road that are still to come. Like the people who were fleeing Egypt, we don’t know what’s around the next bend. We don’t know the tomorrow when we will be out of this wilderness. But gathering with others empowers us to stay positive, to continue to be led by God’s spirit, and do what we can.”

View videos from McCormick Day here.

Rev. Laurel Hamilton

“We don’t know the tomorrow when we will be out of this wilderness. But gathering with others empowers us to stay positive, to continue to be led by God’s spirit, and do what we can.”