Warm afternoon light poured through the arched windows of the Williams Chapel at Harvard Divinity School as a small but attentive crowd gathered to hear poet Donald Revell deliver a poetry reading, craft talk, and discussion sponsored by the Center for the Study of World Religions. Revell has authored 16 poetry collections, the most recent of which, White Campion, was published in 2021.

For when we worry that transcendence might be an escape from our here and now, I want to ask whether we should be confident that we know our here and now, or in the plural, our “heres” and our “nows," writes Charles Stang, Professor of Early Christian Thought and director of the Center for the Study of World Religions.

In a conversation sponsored by the Transcendence and Transformation initiative of the Center for the Study of World Religions, Jack Hunter, a Welsh author and anthropologist who studies consciousness, religion, ecology, and the paranormal, discussed his academic work and his own supernatural experiences with Giovanna Parmigiani, a lecturer on religion and cultural anthropology at the Divinity School and a scholar of contemporary paganisms.

Anthea D. Butler, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, delivered Harvard Divinity School’s Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice last Thursday.