A letter from the editor.

By Abby Peterson

The following is an opinion piece and does not necessarily reflect the views of The Clarion, its staff or the institution. If you would like to submit a response or an opinion piece of your own, please contact [email protected].

This past summer I sat in the dining center of Wheaton College Science Station for the 21st year – equivalent to how long I’ve been alive – and ate dinner with my family under the gaze of the Black Hills National Forest.

I listened to Wheaton lecturer and artist Leah Samuelson talk about the inspiration for her latest art project, a mural, as I chewed the remains of my food. She was enamored, she said, with the concept of the semipermeable membrane.

I paused when she said this and imagined cells and structures and microscopic tissues – the things I associate with words like “permeable” and “membrane.” I pondered this for the rest of the evening as I watched night descend on the western South Dakota landscape and hover over the mountains.

Semipermeable. Allowing some things to pass through, but not others.

I clung to this concept for the weeks and months that followed, while I finished my time in the mountains and drove the hundreds of miles back to the Twin Cities and entered my final year of college.

Semipermeable. Acting as a gate to some particles, acting as a barrier to others.

Faith, with all its edges and corners and textures and sides, shapes every aspect of life on our campus. We are constantly embraced, assaulted and barraged with new and old ideas about faith. We are challenged with the task of discerning between these ideas.

This issue of The Clarion reflects those battles of discernment.

As you read it, consider the semipermeable membrane. Consider what it means see your faith as a semipermeable membrane – a faith that allows some things to pass through it, to affect it, while barring others out.