The 1991 movie Thelma and Louise and its protagonists continue to be cultural icons for many women of all ages. With quotes, song lyrics, the metaphor of living on the edge from the film and collected wisdom from pedagogy, two religious educators reflect on their vocation and leadership in a dialogue that draws implications for the teaching ministry. The themes highlighted address friendship, the journey, risk-taking, awakening, turning points, and the choice to keep going no matter what. The authors believe that their friendship and co-creating dialogue offer their students hopeful models of leadership through their conversations about their vocations in ministry and higher education. Further, the way that they share ideas and experiences are good for their students and themselves.

Order and organization are valued in the classroom, and there is a prevailing understanding that chaos should be avoided. Yet chaos can also be potent space or a source from which new things spring forth. This article investigates biblical, scientific, and cultural understandings of chaos to discover how these contribute to a revelatory metaphor for teaching. It examines Catherine Keller's engagement with chaos theory in creation theology for pedagogical implications. Using a framework suggested in the work of Mary Elizabeth Moore, the author interprets powers and practices of chaos teaching and provides examples of how the metaphor plays out in the teaching of religion and theology.Order and organization are highly valued in life and in the classroom. A prevailing understanding of chaos is that it represents disorder, bedlam, and pandemonium, and is to be assiduously avoided. Chaos can also mean potent space, a place of incubation, or a source from which new things spring forth, and it can evoke a sense of strangeness and unpredictability. In this essay I examine chaos in this latter sense as a metaphor for teaching and learning by investigating biblical, scientific, and cultural aspects of chaos in order to discover how these may contribute to a revelatory metaphor and to identify characteristics of the powers of chaos and pedagogical practices.As one might expect, there are opposing views of the biblical theme of chaos. The Hebrew Bible speaks of a formless void, tohu vabohu (Gen.

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A challenging intercultural teaching experience provided an opportunity for engaging embodied pedagogies that facilitated border crossings of language, age, gender, and experience. Influenced by the work of Augusto Boal, the author describes how improvisation, role-play, music, and drawing led seminary students in Mexico into sacred time and space toward relevant learning. Drawing upon the critical pedagogy of several educators yields implications for teaching theology and religion. The essay also invites readers into dialogue about how such border crossings can benefit their own teaching.I begin this article by inviting you to remember a specific occasion when you have crossed borders (literal and metaphorical) in your teaching. This might mean entering into unexplored subject matter, trying a new strategy, or teaching out of your usual context. Pedagogical borders are also differences that teach; differences that we cannot pretend do not exist. The borders can either teach fear and suspicion or an openness and respect that liberates and transforms. Keep this in mind while reading this analysis of my own experience. I will return with questions for you to reflect upon, on how crossing pedagogical borders enhances your teaching as well as theological education and religious studies.With increased global connections in higher education, many professors have opportunities to teach in countries and cultures other than their own. There have been a few forums for educators to process and share their learnings, and I will note some resulting insights (Kennedy 1993;Wimberly 2004). My experience is that theology mostly neglects addressing issues involved in teaching in diverse cultural contexts. I believe that theological reflection on pedagogy that crosses and softens boundaries will change our teaching. A particular teaching experience I had in Merida, Mexico led me to adopt and continue to develop a border pedagogy. "Border pedagogy" is a term associated with Henry Giroux, a leading proponent of radical, critical models of education (Giroux 1992). I will further explicate his border pedagogy as it relates to my teaching experience in Mexico, but first, here is some background.

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